Critical Exponent

Sarah Dickerman at Slate has a nice overview of whole grains…

The Boston Globe has this update on progressive radio in America.

The New York Times points out:

President Bush and his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if they produce the result we want.

But at least now we know what it takes to get Bush out of Crawford. If we could only figure out a way to keep him there…



Congress is overreaching its authority, and causing a persistent legislative state, while a priest says this has nothing to do with the sanctity of life. Indeed, some say it was the family that force fed us this story.

How will this affect the future of American politics? Sidney Blumenthal weighs in on Bush moving the religious right into the center of the GOP with the Schaivo case and Katha Pollit comments, that maybe, just maybe, the Right has overreached.

The Age of Missing Information - The Bush administration’s campaign against openness. By Steven Aftergood

The extremist approach of burying our heads in dogma when it comes to sexual education and behavior is having some quite, uhm, interesting results:

Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex.

The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the researchers found.

…against the little grievances that plague us:

To examine the little weapons people use for everyday survival is to be given a free guidebook on getting by, created by the millions who feel that they must. It is a case study in human inventiveness, with occasional juvenile and petty passages, and the originators of these tips are happy to share them.

Hot off the presses:

SAN FRANCISCO — A judge ruled Monday that California’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, saying the state could no longer justify limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

The Guardian reports on a Sandinista revolutionary whom the State Department refuses to let in to take up her Harvard professorship— even though she was granted entry to America in the past.

[The decision] comes at a time when President George Bush has appointed as his new intelligence chief a man associated with the “dirty war” against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

…

Professor Andres Perez Baltodano, a Nicaraguan sociologist based in Toronto, said: “Dora Maria is as much a terrorist as George Washington.” He described the taking of the National Palace as a heroic act which had helped to lead to the overthrow of a dictator.

Slate.com has an interesting article on the Ten Commandments cases before the Supreme Court…