White House aides rankle at any comparison to Bush and Cheney. They dutifully note that in his first days in office, Obama ended the use of torture (a.k.a. enhanced interrogation techniques) and declared his intention to shut down Guantanamo. (Gitmo remains open, but that's mainly because congressional Republicans and Democrats thwarted the White House effort to develop a high-security facility in the United ...

In case you ever wondered just how much wealthy students dominate America's top colleges, here's a nice illustration from a new report by the Century Foundation. At the most selective schools in the country,* 70 percent of students come from the wealthiest quarter of U.S. families. Just 14 percent come from the poorest half. And while these statistics date back to 2006, I ...

As shocking and appalling as Wednesdays brutal murder was, Woolwich (wool-ich) is a not so surprising location for such an attack. As someone pretty local to Woolwich, I thought I might give a little profile of the area, if anyone is interested. Woolwich is traditionally a military area, with the old Arsenal at its centre and the new barracks one of London's important military ...

More: Has the Oklahoma Atheist Been Saved? Belief Blog Blogs Stand by. The Religious right assholes are either going to go apeshit about this or try to bury it. Please, feel free to tweet/retweet it to Bryan et al. (CNN) - Just days after she announced to the world from tornado-ravaged Moore, Oklahoma, that she is an atheist, it looks like Rebecca Vitsmun has ...

So all those crazy things he said can just be disregarded As Democrats and the media continue to hammer Virginia lieutenant governor hopeful E.W. Jackson for his past comments on social issues, the Christian minister says he is battling what he calls the “mainstream media’s caricature” of him. In an email sent to The Daily Caller this week, the running mate to Republican gubernatorial ...

If you need further proof that Congressional Republicans are waging a War on Women, you need look no further than Thursday's congressional committee hearing on H.R. 1797: District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill sponsored by notoriously anti-choice Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ8) that would criminalize abortions after the 20th week. There are currently 98 women serving in the House of ...

More: How California Is Debunking the GOP's Obamacare Talking Points This is some powerful stuff. I wouldn't want to be an Obamacare repealing Republican asshole in a state that isn't embracing the Affordable Care Act in 2014. Once small businesses learn that California (and other states embracing the ACA) are less expensive, they'll flock out of the states that don't. Covered California, the agency ...

6) If husbands want more sex, women should do everything they can to give it to them. Focus on the Family's marriage counselor Juli Slattery is blunt about: Married men need sex, and so wives who aren't providing enough need to step up. While she claims she isn't trying to guilt trip women into having more sex, she argues that sex is a ...

Tesla haters just lost another quiver in their dwindling arsenal. The upstart electric automaker has paid off the entirety of its Department of Energy loan -- a whopping $451.8M -- and did it nine years ahead of schedule. "I would like to thank the Department of Energy and the members of Congress and their staffs that worked hard to create the [Advanced Technology ...

PS - Just tested the new LGF Bookmark functionality - "saaweet"!

Fifty years ago, African-Americans were targets of the Ku Klux Klan's violent hate agenda as the Civil Rights movement gained steam in desegregating public institutions across the South. The Birmingham church bombings, which killed four little girls in 1963, was one of the most violent crimes the Ku Klux Klan has been responsible for in attacking Black Americans (on Friday, the president signed ...

Well, the preliminary numbers for CA are in -- and they're looking very good, with costs coming in below expectations. At this point, it looks as if this thing is indeed going to work. And think about the political dynamics. Because the Supreme Court decided to let states opt out of the Medicaid expansion, some states -- notably Texas -- will have a ...

Spacecraft could determine their position anywhere in the solar system to within five kilometres using signals from x-ray pulsars, say astronomers. Navigating in space is a tricky business. The usual method relies on Earth-based tracking stations to work out a spacecraft's distance using radio waves, a process that is accurate to within a metre or so. That's fine for the radial distance, but ...

"Crisis Pregnancy Centers" (CPCs) or Pregnancy Resource Centers advertise on your campus and in your community. They pose as comprehensive women's health clinics and advertise under "abortion" and "family planning" services, but do not offer abortion services, contraception, or referrals. CPCs often provide false information about abortion, birth control, and the effectiveness of condoms for the prevention of STIs and HIV. Ultimately, their ...

Nice, right? Anyway, here's my thesis: Raiders of the Lost Ark is not an action-adventure movie about an archaeologist who plays by his own rules and saves the day. Instead, the film is an exploration of Marion Ravenwood's crippling drug addiction. An addiction that was born from her unhealthy relationship and continued association with Indiana Jones. Is it true? Who cares. Can I prove ...

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) brushed away a question about Latinos working in his administration during a roundtable discussion at The Union League in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday, telling the moderator, "If you can find us one let me know": MODERATOR: Do you have staff members that are Latino? CORBETT: No, we do not have any staff members in there. If you can ...

More: $40 for Case of Bottled Water? 'Preying' on Oklahoma Tornado Victims Investigators with the Oklahoma Attorney General's office have already uncovered evidence of businesses taking advantage of the recent tornado's devastation by price-gouging in the weather-ravaged region, including a grocery store accused of charging consumers $40 for a case of water. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt told ABC News that 30 investigators from ...

there's no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there's everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn't want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing." - Marissa Mayer, Yahoo ...

It has long been part of the Washington game for officials to discredit a news story by playing up errors in a relatively small part of it. Pfeiffer gives the impression that GOP operatives deliberately tried to "smear the president" with false, doctored e-mails. But the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes ...

Obesity is on the rise-- as is the incidence of Heart Disease, Diabetes, Stroke and various forms of Cancer. And, shockingly, diseases that had in the past begun in old age are now appearing at much earlier ages. A groundbreaking scientific study showed how easily (and inexpensively) the rate of occurrence of these and other serious illness could be greatly reduced-- but this information ...