Schiavo Autopsy Renews Debate on G.O.P. Actions - New York Times: "autopsy of Terri Schiavo - particularly the findings that she had irreversible brain damage and was blind - left Republicans who had pushed so aggressively for federal intervention struggling on Wednesday to defend their argument that she should have been kept alive.

Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican who pressed the case most, said he has since had second thoughts about Congress's involvement.

'I really probably come to the view this has to be more resolved at the state level, seems like the kind of issue the state courts deal with,' Mr. Martinez said."

(Via NY Times.)

Salon.com News | Deadly immunity: "When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic."

...

"Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children."

(Via Salon.)

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "The gay rights bill I reported on last night just lost in the Washington state Senate minutes ago by a 24-25 vote, i.e., by one vote.

All the Republicans voted against the bill, and at least one Democrat. Apparently the forces of good did win a procedural vote to force the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor, but then it was killed by the 24-25 vote. As an interesting aside, if you can call it that, one of the moderate Republicans voting against the bill was the guy representing Redmond, Microsoft's district.

And speaking of Microsoft, haven't heard a lot from them today, have we.

I'm hearing rumblings that Microsoft is now claiming the story in The Stranger is 'wrong.' That's the story that exposed last night that Microsoft refused to endorse the bill this time around, even though they had previously endorsed it, and that Microsoft's non-endorsement came on the heels of a boycott threat from a single anti-gay radical right preacher."

(Via AMERICAblog.)

CNN.com - Graduation crowd boos Schwarzenegger - Jun 15, 2005: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to his alma mater turned into an exercise in perseverance when virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger's face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor."

(Via CNN.)

Salon.com | Bush is not above the law: "And, most recently, explaining these inaccurate statements, is the Downing Street memo, which summarizes a meeting at which the head of British intelligence reported that the Bush government was 'fixing the intelligence' to support its plan to invade and occupy Iraq. On June 13, Raw Story printed five additional leaked British memos showing that the commitment to go to war occurred well before the issue was brought to the attention of Congress. If true, this changes the consistently inaccurate statements into intentionally false statements.

Unfortunately, there is no court of law in which to pursue these claims. "

(Via Salon.)

Ethiopian Government, Opposition Agree To End Violence, Investigate Irregularities: "The Sudanese government and two rebel groups have continued negotiations to resolve the Darfur conflict in western Sudan. For VOA, Gabi Menezes reports from the West Africa Bureau in Abidjan the parties have made slow progress on a declaration of principles that will be the basis for peace talks."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)

Salon.com News | No exit: "But a clear consensus among experienced pollsters is finally emerging on what happened with the exits. Last month, at an annual conference of opinion pollsters in Miami Beach, Warren Mitofsky, the veteran pollster who conducted the exit poll for the networks, offered a detailed and convincing explanation of what went wrong with the polls. The reason the exits were off, Mitofsky said, is that interviewers assigned to talk to voters as they left the polls appeared to be slightly more inclined to seek out Kerry voters than Bush voters. Kerry voters were overrepresented in the poll by a small margin, which is why everyone thought that Kerry was going to win. The underlying error, Mitofsky's firm said in a report this January, is 'likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters.'

There's another interesting wrinkle in the exit poll discussion. During the past several months, some of the early 'fraudsters' -- an initially derogatory term that some in the election-was-stolen camp have embraced -- who once suspected that the exit polls pointed to election fraud, have begun to change their minds. One of these is Bruce O'Dell, a computer engineer in Minneapolis and one of the founders of US Count Votes, the group that has been leading the charge to show that exit polls prove Kerry won. After initially signing on with this view, O'Dell now thinks it's impossible to say whether the exit polls suggest that Bush stole the election. O'Dell also thinks Mitofsky's explanation -- that Kerry voters were overrepresented in the poll -- is plausible."

(Via Salon.)

The Huffington Post | The Blog: "They were short last month by a whopping 42 percent. Let’s break that percentage down. For April, the active-duty Army was short of its target of 6,600 by 2,779. Think about that. 2,779 short. It’s not like we need millions of bodies here. Just 2,779. We are at war, we have a population of over 290 million people, and we can’t get 2,779 people to join the fight? Wow.

We would have an easier time convincing parents to send their kids to the Neverland ranch for a sleepover party.

The all-volunteer military has been run into the ground and is now broken. Don’t let the Pentagon deceive you. There is indeed a manpower shortage. A 'special skills draft’ could be right around the corner. All you doctors, computer experts, pilots, police officers and firefighters had better take notice."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Salon.com News | Court denounces race bias in capital cases: "A U.S. Supreme Court decision that warns against bias in death penalty cases is the latest indication that the high court may be losing confidence in Texas, the state that executes more people than any other, legal experts say.

In Monday's 6-3 decision, the court sided with black murder suspects in Texas and California who said their juries had been unfairly stacked with whites. It was the fourth time in two years that the court has intervened in a Texas death penalty case.

'I think that probably one term ago a critical mass of justices on the Supreme Court lost confidence that the state courts in Texas or the federal courts reviewing cases in Texas were doing what they were supposed to be doing to correct constitutional errors,' said David Dow, director of the Texas Innocence Network and a law professor at the University of Houston.

The Supreme Court used the cases to bolster its landmark 1986 decision barring prosecutors from disqualifying potential jurors based on their race. Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black member of the high court, voted against both suspects."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com Politics: "Even Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., who in 2003 was so much in favor of the administration's plans that he coined the term 'freedom fries' to retaliate against France for opposing the invasion, reversed his position this weekend, saying, 'I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, [but] I feel that we've done about as much as we can do.' Jones also acknowledged that 'primarily the neoconservatives' duped the country into supporting the war: 'The reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there.'"

(Via Salon.)

The Onion | Tornado Violence: Are Tornadic Images In The Media To Blame?: "Like so many of those caught in their path, the killer tornadoes have died, fading away on the Oklahoma plains. But the questions remain. How could this happen? Why didn't anyone see it coming? What would drive an air mass to commit such a horrible act of violence?

For many, the blame lies with the media.

'Every day in this country, we are bombarded with images of powerful, destructive wind vortices,' said Roland Gilchrist, director of the Princeton University Center For Media Studies. 'Movies like Twister, TV shows like Fox's World's Scariest Tornadoes, networks like The Weather Channel—all of these only serve to glorify tornado violence and send the message that such destructive behavior is acceptable and even rewarded. We shouldn't be surprised, then, when real-life weather fronts start imitating what they see on TV.'"

(Via The Onion.)

Russia: Terrorists Caused Train Derailment : "Russian security officials say they suspect the derailment of a train traveling from Chechnya to Moscow Sunday morning was an act of terrorism. Several people were injured in the early-morning incident. Bill Gasperini has more in this VOA report from Moscow."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)

Salon.com News | G8 agrees to debt relief for poor nations: "Finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations agreed Saturday to a historic deal canceling at least $40 billion worth of debt owed by the world's poorest nations.

Britain Treasury chief Gordon Brown said 18 countries, many in sub-Saharan Africa, will benefit immediately from the deal to scrap 100 percent of the debt they owe to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

As many as 20 other countries could be eligible if they meet strict targets for good governance and tackling corruption, leading to a total debt relief package of more than $55 billion.

'The G8 finance ministers have agreed to 100 percent debt cancellation for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries,' Brown told a news conference in London."

(Via Salon.)