The Magic of Louis Theroux

For those who are unaware Louis Theroux used to have a TV show on the BBC called "Weird Weekends". This pale, gawky Englishman documents some of America's most bizarre subcultures. He embeds himself with fringe groups like the Westboro Church or blonde, Neo-nazi singing duo Prussian blue to examine their hypocrisy and reveal their humanity. Theroux's style is quirky, so even though he confronts these radical groups, confrontations which often end in awkward stalemates, these episodes also show him bowling with the Westboro Church members and journeying south of the border with renown racist, Tom Metzge. The humor of the show comes as much from Louis' inability to adapt to this unconventional way of living as it does from the subjects themselves.

Louis Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America



Louis Theroux and the Nazis - BBC - 2003



Louis Theroux Explores the Porn Industry

Friday Flashback: Randy Newman - "Political Science"

Burnt vinyl releases dioxin (agent orange)

Not enough people are aware that, when burned, a common household material, vinyl, releases an extremely hazardous toxin called dioxin also known as the poisonous ingredient in the defoliant, agent orange. Imagine what items we come in contact with daily that are made from vinyl: piping, shower curtains and siding just for starters. Exposure to dioxin bares serious health consequences such as diabetes, endometriosis, birth defects, reduced sperm count, decreased fertility, immune system suppression, developmental and reproductive effects and disruption of the hormone system (source).

Giant Chemical Corporations, including the biggest, Dow, acted in collusion to bring this danger into our homes. Dow, during both World Wars, produced mustard gas for the first and magnesium for the second. During Vietnam Dow, amongst their many innovations for that war, developed napalm. According to a Vietnam vet the masterminds behind Dow, or the "backroom boys", took a great many steps to perfect their invention.

“We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn’t so hot – if the gooks
[Vietnamese] were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a
blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white
phosphorus) so’s to make it burn better. It’ll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it’ll keep on burning
right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning.” (Source)

In Louisiana the state's health department discovered vinyl chloride in the drinking water near a Dow manufacturing plant in 1997. An area trailer park, primarily African American, used the groundwater, however, the contamination was kept secret until 2001. As a result, the entire community was forced to relocate.

The company's crimes are not limited to the boundaries of the United States. When Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in the developing nation of India they were allowed more environmental wiggle room than inside an industrialized Western country like the U.S. Dow built their factory in heavily populated city of Bhopal on the cheap subsequentally infecting 150,000 people with the hazardous material resulting in such health problems as toxic breast milk in mothers. The contamination has begun to effect the next generation of Bhopalis who are born with a range of physical and mental birth defects. To compensate Dow negotiated with the Indian government paying a scant $470 million, the victims receiving less than the American government shoveled over for wildlife during the Exxon Valdez catastrophe.

Not all of Dow's crimes have ended in such tragedy. In Midland, Michigan, a Dow chemical plant dumped toxic material into the Tittabawassee River with dioxin levels measuring at 80 times above the state's safe clean-up standard. The citizens effected sued the company. Expectedly, Dow attempted to rewrite the law by raising the acceptable level of pollutants to ten times the existing limit so the company's action would not be illegal. Thanks to a cooperative effort by the people of Midland, Dow's "compromise" was shut down.

Even though vinyl has become a fixture of most homes in America we can still apply pressure to the government to monitor and punish the corporations who endanger the environment not to mention the population at large. This isn't something abstract like "the wildness", this is our own backyards we have to be concerned with and because corporations like Dow only care about the bottom line it's our responsibility to keep them in check.

Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Jr. Show in '88

What's striking isn't how consistent his positions still are, nor how Mort's foam-spitting audience gangs up on him, or even Ron's electric delivery (even though he does get a terrific zinger in against a portly drug war advocate). What's most striking is how Ron wins the day against them all.

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Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?"

Mike Gravel - A Plan to End the War in iraq

Against Noble Poverty

For centuries intellectual sewing circles have praised the simple life as something laudable. Spinoza lived as a modest bachelor and lens grinder until his death. Gandhi embraced poverty as a father would a son. Even Christ commands the faithful to estrange their possessions before facing the Almighty. But what about those of us without genius or superhuman motivation or unnatural luck (something all three of these men had in spades)? What's the virtue of filling the streets with righteous beggars?

There is no inherent advantage to destitution, it makes the dissemination of your message that much harder. Others will have more money and allies giving them the competitive edge. It does no good to fall behind in resources, especially when some of the well-connected desire destruction, not creation. With this in mind the answer is definitely not pure Capitalism. Nothing of worth has ever come from selfish greed for very long. In order to enact real, lasting change it is best to acquire as many resources as possible in order to compete. The dilemma here is if you're collecting wealth then you're taking away from others. This is only true if you sit on it, freeze it in a bank account, hoard it outside the system.

Most of us would feel relieved to be faced with such a moral crossroads - either stockpile my fortune or act philanthropically. But if you enjoy life as a member of the American middle class then you're already far richer than the vast majority of the world's population. We, as average Americans, have a responsibility to not squander our bounty.

The road to true change starts with education. That means read, read, read and read. Sink your money into books and magazines. Know your history, science, religion, economics, anthropology, psychology...the list goes on and on. T.V. is unreliable, and radio is just as bad, but truths can be (and are) published. Devour anything written by Will Durant, Susan Sontag, George Orwell, Voltaire and the ancient Greeks. Choose what makes sense to you and keep your shoulder to the wheel. You want to know what worked for others, what failed in the past and what creative new solutions you can contribute. After you've read enough to form an educated opinion discuss it, argue your views against those who disagree and sharpen your wit against the opposition.

Along the way don't alienate too many people because nobody can change the world on their own, it takes cooperation and a collective effort among like-minded individuals. I bet there's plenty of skills that you'll never master. For me, mathematics is one such field. The gaps in your own education can be bridged by the expertise of others. That's why it's important to gain allies. Pragmatically speaking poverty could only deter this effort. When your survival is in question it's hard to attain meaningful bonds.

At this point you're still no different from your enemies. Of course they want to educate themselves as well and they certainly want to form alliances. But the X-factor here isn't superiority through want but superiority through intentionality. Govern your mind and that's where the changes begin. 500 years before Christ walked the Roman countryside the historical Buddha rejected his position of power and wealth to find enlightenment as a vagabond. But he realized this had no merit and instead found enlightenment through meditation beneath the Bodhi tree.

One of the world's top neurologists, Matthieu Ricard, discovered that meditation reduces activity in the areas of the brain responsible for anger and fear, and is a natural antidote to depression. Longtime practitioners effortlessly passed a series of mental "stress tests" with surprising accuracy, defying William James' assertion that the human mind cannot visualize an object for more than a few seconds before replacing it with a new image. What's most comforting is that those who engaged in small amounts of meditative techniques every day for three weeks saw improvement in happiness, concentration and overall compassion. All of the perfect tools to start combating tyranny.

Protesters’ Hunger Strikes Stir Worry on Campuses

When Mohandas Gandhi famously starved himself his actions were rooted in a Hindu tradition of spiritual protest. He said he never engaged in a hunger strike against his enemies, for instance Gandhi didn't try to appeal to or embarrass Great Britain through starvation. That's why I thought Cindy Sheehan's hunger strike against the Iraq War some months back was misguided. She engaged her enemies the wrong way and, if wanting to stay true to the Gandhian method, should have tried nonviolent noncooperation such as a boycott or Civil Disobedience on a large scale. Gandhi used his hunger strikes for his fellow Indians. During Partition, Muslims and Hindus were slaughtering each other as the two groups relocated. Gandhi's hunger strikes forced those who shared compassion toward him to be compassionate toward each other. One would hope, unlike the Government, University officials feel such compassion toward their students.


Protesters’ Hunger Strikes Stir Worry on Campuses
by Marcella Bombardieri

BOSTON - At Harvard, they consumed only Gatorade and water for nine days. At the University of Vermont, they subsisted for five days on orange juice, herbal tea, and sea salt. At the University of California, some lived off a potion of lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper.

This is not the latest dieting craze, but a controversial trend in student activism: hunger strikes.

Students on at least five campuses went on hunger strikes this year, most of them protesting what they saw as their university’s involvement in unfair treatment of workers. At Purdue University in Indiana, a strike last winter lasted 26 days.

In most of the protests, the hunger strikers claimed to have won concessions. But they have also alarmed university leaders and, on some campuses, triggered a backlash from fellow students.

Hunger strikes demonstrate the depth of passion many students feel about the fight against economic inequality. They also represent a certain desperation, according to some students and labor historians, as universities become less tolerant of public disruptions, such as a high-profile sit-in at Harvard in 2001. While most protests are nonviolent, activists believe that a cultural shift since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks has encouraged administrators to crack down on civil disobedience on campus.

Students know they can be arrested or expelled for taking over the president’s office — a time-tested way to get noticed on campus — but they cannot really be punished for forsaking their meal plans.

In society at large, “people are more afraid of dissent than they should be,” said Kelly Lee , who just graduated from Harvard and took part in a hunger strike there last month. “The tactics have to fit the time and the audience.”

Hunger strikes have a long tradition, from Mahatma Gandhi to Bobby Sands , the IRA member who starved himself to death in prison in 1981. But they have not been a dominant form of campus protest in the past.

Some of the recent student hunger strikes have clearly been inspired by those on other campuses. Janitors in a few places have also gone on hunger strikes, but labor leaders say there were no coordinated efforts to enlist students.

Hunger strikes — on campus and off — are a relatively new phenomenon in the labor movement, said Eve Weinbaum , a professor of labor studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Workers today have less ability to influence their employers, she said, because they are so often part-time employees who are not in unions and, in many cases, are in the country without proper immigration documents.

In the spring of 2001, Harvard students occupied the main administration building for three weeks, demanding the university pay workers a “living wage.” The school eventually agreed; some of the 30 protesters were briefly put on probation, a punishment seen as mild.

This year, activists declared that Harvard security guards, who are employed by an outside contractor, were not being offered a decent contract. Marches and rallies had produced no result, and time was running short before summer vacation.

But another sit-in like in 2001 seemed out of the question. Lee and three other students had been arrested in April for heckling the director of the FBI, which students and officials believe are the first arrests of protesters on campus in decades.

Lee, of Springfield, Ore., said campus police told the detained students that Harvard had a new policy to discourage disruptive protests. So they were worried about taking action that could get them suspended, expelled, or dragged out by police. A hunger strike seemed like the answer.

Before they started fasting, the protesters met with a university health services doctor to learn how to stay as healthy as possible. After five days on their Gatorade diet, they visited the health center for blood tests.

Late that night, Javier Castro received a call from the health center: His sodium levels were dangerously low. Castro learned he had taken in too much water, putting him at risk of seizure or coma even though he felt fine.

He was admitted to Mount Auburn Hospital at 2 a.m. but insisted on fasting for nearly another two days. “It was not the best thing a pre-med like myself could do,” Castro, 19, of Irvine, Calif., said last week. Still, “I definitely think it was worth it.”

However, most of the hunger strike participants have made it clear that they would not be willing to fast to death. At some schools, the protesters weighed themselves daily or had student EMTs take their blood pressure.

“I want to be effective, not dead,” Lee wrote on a blog kept by the Harvard activists.

Fasting was not that uncomfortable, said students who have taken part in hunger strikes. Several described the first few days as most difficult, due to headaches, stomach cramps, and nausea.

But they kept enough energy to go to classes and study for finals. Several described feeling a high or a sense of clarity and well-being on the third or fourth day.

“Basically, your body adjusts,” said Zack Pesavento , who went on a juice-and-salt-only hunger strike at Georgetown two years ago. “On day three or four I felt a sense of peace. I remember on the seventh day thinking, ‘How is it possible that I’m walking around and talking to people?’ ”

Although the hunger strikers managed to avoid punishment, in some cases they also acknowledged that the results were not all they desired.

The Harvard protesters broke their fast when negotiators appeared to be making progress. The guards and the company reached a deal a few weeks later, but only after labor leaders had threatened to disrupt commencement.

Most university officials are loath to comment on the tactics of student protesters. A Harvard spokesman would only refer to official statements expressing concern for the students’ well-being and commitment to the university’s wage guidelines.

Enrique Corredera , a spokesman for the University of Vermont, readily credited the “strong and very passionate” student activism that started long before the hunger strike in April for the university’s decision to reexamine salaries and benefits for its low-wage workers. But he refused to credit the hunger strike , saying it had only added stress and anxiety to students and administrators, without changing the results.

Some students who believe universities should treat workers better see hunger strikes as a distraction. Jessica Coggins , a senior at Harvard, said she agreed with the protesters’ goals but said hunger strikes are “a very alienating tactic” that put lives at risk and discourage more moderate students from attending rallies.

The hunger strikers counter that they needed an extreme form of protest to break though the indifference to their concerns.

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.

© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

A gambler's view of Climate Change

This is "Pascal's Wager" for Global Warming...see if you can refute this guy's claims.

CSPAN receives angry emails from Savage listeners

When CSPAN didn't air a taped acceptance speech delivered by Michael "Savage" Weiner when receiving his freedom of speech award the third-ranked shock jock apparently went ballistic. To say the Savage audience is infantlike would not be a startling pronouncement, and when they try to structure an argument it's comedic pay dirt. Listening to Savage is hilarious unto itself but to hear his pablum wrought secondhand from the undersized gray matter housed beneath the sloping foreheads of his devotees is invaluable amusement. The most laughable accusation from these Weiner-heads would be that CSPAN "sensor"-ed Savage's speech, boy, I can't wait to listen to him rant about it on his three-hour radio program all week.

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Ron Paul on the Colbert Report

Colbert gives Ron Paul the "Colbert Bump".

Only 48 Hours to Save Net Neutrality

We don't have a lot of time to save the internet. In just 48 hours the FCC stops listening to the public's thoughts on net neutrality. Without this feature of the internet youtube, guerrilla journalism and blogs (such as this one) wouldn't be possible. Last year the protections surrounding Net Neutrality expired, exposing it to attacks from major telecom companies like AT&T. If these telecommunication companies get their wish user content on the net will be replaced with corporate-generated media. This is not the time to lollygag! Visit this site and send the FCC a letter. 22,453 letters have already been sent, but the goal is 25,000 letters by Friday June 15. To learn about net neutrality click on the "net neutrality" label below.

Creationism Museum Documentary

Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich in '08?

It seemed 2008 election talk began right after Dubya's "victory" in '04. Will it be Hillary or Obama? Guiliani or McCain? I say forget them all and focus on the underdogs. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich has accomplished something radical in this time of perpetual media distortion, they've been able to communicate the truth. The truth about why we were attacked, the truth about our civil liberties and the truth about the nature of government. And, predictably, they've made enemies out of the right-wing and center-left Democrats. So, let's say these two, by some act of divine intervention, squared off in 2008...who would I choose? I sat in my thinker pose for a few hours and this is how it breaks down for me if the impossible should happen next year.

Impeachment:

And by impeachment I mean anybody in this administration who deserves it - King George, Cheney, the checkout clerk in the Whitehouse's gift shop. I just want to see some action, anything which breaks from Pelosi's "hands off" approach that's been so unsuccessful this far. With Kucinich it's clear. He has famously introduced articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, H.R. 333. What about Ron? He doesn't agree with the bill, in fact, he doesn't think there's enough evidence for impeahment at this point. I disagree, we need to winnow down the mountain of evidence. On this one Ron Paul has it wrong.





Iraq War/"War on Terror":

This one's a toughy. Dennis Kucinich never voted to support Bush's actions during the lead up to the war or any funding bill thereafter. Pretty impressive. The same can be said of Ron Paul. Both voted against the PATRIOT Act and both have been outspoken critics of this illegal war from the beginning. I do believe this one's a tie. Bravo!

Dennis Kucinich - When Others Were Silent


Ron Paul on Now With Bill Moyers - October 4, 2002




Healthcare:

Kucinich supports universal healthcare, he wants a single-payer system that would ensure every American's medical costs would be covered. On the other hand, Paul, being a libertarian, would support tax credits which would reduce the cost of prescription drugs and hospital expenses. I realize this is supposed to grant relief from "big government" to the middle class but I know people from countries with national healthcare systems and they are proud of the type of care they receive. You show up to a hospital, they patch you up, you leave...that's how simple it could, and should, be here in the states. This round goes to Denny.



Taxes:

Ron Paul wants to eliminate the IRS, income tax and inflation tax lifting a significant burden on the middle class. I like it!

Ron Paul : Stop Dreaming


And what of Kucinich? He's got some pretty good ideas, not great. He believes we should bring tax rates back to that of the Clinton Administration:

"The Clinton period tax rates for the most affluent should be returned, while the tax cuts for those earning less than $405,000 a year should be maintained, for now, until we see how the economy fares."
--Dennis Kucinich, Source

That's a bit too safe for my liking. Who likes paying taxes? Ron Paul's got the right idea.




Old fashioned Feather-ruffling:

To my knowledge Dennis Kucinich never had the same kind of smack down with members of his own party like Ron Paul did with Rudy. Anyone who can stick to their guns like Ron even after the rabidly conservative audience attending that Republican Presidential Debate turned on him is bona fide Presidential material in my book.





It seems as though we've reached a stalemate, so I've got to look at the tie-breaker: Elizabeth Kucinich. I'd take four years of her over any of our last four first ladies.

And she's not just a pretty face, she's smart too. She got her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kent and has done charity work with the British Red Cross and the House of Lords. Here's Liz in action:



Overall, either one of these men would make a superb President. Ron Paul is admirably principled and intolerant toward deceit and corruption, but for my money Kucinich, who possesses the same qualities, can contribute something extra to the Oval Office, therefore Kucinich pulls ahead of Ron Paul by a nose.

Bald is Beautiful: Thoughts on Human Nakedness

The story of evolution is anything but linear. As we ascend the tree of life organisms reliably gain complexity and adaptability, but along the forking branches we find a variety of false starts, dead ends and anomalies. It took the blind watchmaker an awfully long time to pull us out of the water and place us on the sandy shore, and along the way she tested the durability of many bygone species whose fleeting existences didn't make the cut. Is humanity one such evolutionary third-stringer? Or are we perfectly suited for the challenges of natural selection? There's no easy answer. But when placed against other lifeforms human beings are stunningly unique. When compared to our closest natural relative, the chimpanzee, one can't help but ask - where'd our hair go? Nobody knows for sure, as the fossil record lacks clear evidence, however, the theories that have emerged tell a fascinating tale of what it is to be human.

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RON PAUL Battles Hannity in Post-Debate Interview

Ron Paul spanks Hannity. First Hitchens and now Paul, Sean's obviously a glutton for punishment.

Friday Flashback: Frank Zappa - Stairway to Heaven & Uncle Remus

Ron Paul: Thorn in the side of the beast

Anyone who can make Fox News lock-steppers squirm this much gets props from me. Best part: when Hannity flat out dismisses his station's OWN POLL.

Takes a minute to learn, a lifetime to master

Ever since I saw the 14th Dalai Lama I've been fascinated with Buddhism and the practice of meditation. In fact, I've been dabbling in meditation on my own in short, 15 to 20 minute bursts. The experience has been profound. I'm not sure how others meditate - I'd like to hear from those of you who do - but what I do is put on some comfortable clothes, sit cross-legged, close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. From there luminous thoughts pass through my mind like fireflies, each competing for my attention. They range from the cerebral (if the universe is an isolated system and my consciousness dwells therein then the universe and by default my consciousness are eternal) to the commonplace (did I leave the stove on?). In either case, meditation always leaves me alert and tranquil.

I'm not claiming to have achieved enlightenment as I'm just a novice. The benefits of meditation, however, reach all who practice it, regardless of class, race or gender. It's easy enough for a child of two to learn but takes a lifetime to master. Meditation, or "sitting" if you prefer, helps slow the world down, and point ones attention inward, to understand what you think about and how to let go of your thoughts, so what's left is this feeling of interconnectedness with all life and transcendence above workaday banalities. I don't claim to be Buddhist, maybe I'm too Westernized to adopt the philosophy fully, but that doesn't matter, Christians, Muslims and even Atheists (which some Buddhists technically are) enjoy the fruits of meditation. But there's one thing everyone agrees on - the universe inspires dumbfoundment. We want to understand it, put it under a microscope and box it up to show to mom. But we can't truly grasp the immensity of this place unless we first know ourselves. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single breath.

A modern lesson from the mouth of the Buddha

The government's corrupt - get over it

Everybody seems so astonished at the corruption of this administration - but not me, not anymore. Take a look at where they all got their start.

Condi: she's switched giant firms more times than Van Halen switched lead singers.
Dick Cheney: this guy helmed Halliburton, a company that's not exactly known for their charitable nature.
And, of course, Dubya: Texas oil man through and through.

And when they're elected into office guess what they do. Surprise! They protect their interests at our expense. The only thing that's startling is why anyone thought they'd take care of us in the first place.

The trend has been to pluck people out of the business world and install them in positions of immense power. To paraphrase an old addage - you can take the man out of the business but you can't take the business out of the man.

These people probably started out their lives as good, decent folk, but they have been corporatized. I can't help but think about how bloodless they had to be in order to achieve their status. So when they strike out as public servants it's no wonder they treat government like a business.

That's how we get cronyism, no bid contracts and a complete lack of accountability. This is how a corporation functions, not a government. It's all about the bottom line, if someone or something is a casualty to profits lay them off. This can be said of the homeless whose numbers are rising and are politically worthless.

Accountability (or the absence thereof) seems to be the biggest carry-over from corporate life. Nobody at the top of the power ladder bows to any man. We have no say as to who will be the next CEO of Exxon Mobile or if Wal-mart will bust up another union. This, in theory, is the antithesis of government. Government exists solely to be accountable to the people, we're supposed to be the overseers, the fourth branch of government, and place our leaders' feet to the fire. How can that happen when the most important decisions made on our behalf happen in secret?

The obvious, yet softly-uttered, solution to this problem is to develop an adversarial relationship between government and business. I've said this once and I'll say it again, this is attainable by sending members of the lower classes to Washington. Do you really think the upper classes can offer better leaders than the middle and lower classes? If so, take a look at President Bush and just think of all the people you pass in a single day who're smarter than the most powerful man in the world.

Ooh la la!

Mike Gravel Speaks Truth to a bunch of Jelly-Spined Dems

A Privatized Dick

Although I found this NYtimes editorial illuminating, it only goes half the distance, which is to be expected. How do we stop people like Cheney from desecrating our democracy - prevent power-grabbing businessmen from entering office in the first place. Elect members of our class, the majority class, to the highest tier of the government.


Dick Cheney Rules

Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence.

This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising. Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.

In a similar way, Mr. Cheney seems unconcerned about little things like checks and balances and traditional American notions of judicial process. At one point, he gave himself the power to selectively declassify documents and selectively leak them to reporters. In a recent commencement address, he declaimed against prisoners who had the gall to “demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States.”

Mr. Cheney is the driving force behind the Bush administration’s theory of the “unitary executive,” which holds that no one, including Congress and the courts, has the power to supervise or regulate the actions of the president. Just as he pays little attention to old-fangled notions of the separation of powers, Mr. Cheney does not overly bother himself about the bright line that should exist between his last job as chief of the energy giant Halliburton and his current one on the public payroll.

From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received “deferred salary payments” from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq.

Reviewing this record — secrecy, impatience with government regulations, backroom dealings, handsome paydays — it dawned on us that Mr. Cheney is in step with the times. He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States.

James Randi exposes con artists Uri Geller and Peter Popoff

Did you know?

Newt Gingrich:

- Served his wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital sick with cancer, and ran off with his secretary

-Admitted to an affair during the Clinton Impeachment proceedings



Tom DeLay:

-Blamed the Columbine school shootings on the fact that evolution was taught in classrooms

-Said the removal of Terri Shiavo's feeding tube was barbaric yet he ended his father's life support while in a coma

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