My mom died of obesity-related diabetes. I hope we tax food out of

...*Curious George* wants to know who's visiting porn sites.  Hmmmmmm... thought spying was only supposed to be used to catch *terrorists*....

U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business WriterTue Mar 14, 8:16 AM ET

The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.

It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.

The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.

Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.

The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.

The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google — and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.

Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.

The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally, Berman said. While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.

Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.

Cooperating with the government is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.

Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.

The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.

Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.

The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.

  Is that his nick name for McCain supporters?  Hey how about McCain sell a few of those houses and give it to the financial companies????  How about the rich do something for a change????  How about that???? 

This makes me sick, all of it!  We need to be addressed by these candidates and not set aside until oil companies and rich folks figure out what happened!!!!  We are looking at who is going to be our next President and all Bush cares about are his pockets being lined?  Poor thing; did he invest in the wrong stock??? 

I must be really whacked, but I feel this candidacy is waaaaay more important than IGA, IGM, Wash Mut, Bank of America, Lehman, Looman, Dooman, or dooofus, whatever!!!!!  These lenders loaned the money to people who they knew couldn't pay it back and now it has come back to bite them and now its the rest of us having to bail them out.  No sympathy here!  I stayed within my budget; so sorry others did not!!!!!!!!  These candidates are going to run this country.  I think Obama is right; let's get it on with the debates....   JMO... 

Police said they were treating the death in Chingford of Neil Coulbeck, who worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2004, as unexplained.

He had been interviewed by the FBI as a potential witness.

Three ex-workers of RBS subsidiary NatWest are being extradited to the US on Thursday to face fraud charges.

in Iraq compared to Vietnam?  We have lost 1,700 soldiers in Iraq compared to what, nearly 100,000 or more in Vietnam.  Give us a break.  Nobody believed it before the 2004 election.  Why do you all keep spouting the same unsubtantiated crap over and over?  It really makes you all look stupid.  I'm beginning to wonder if the left has any original thoughts.  You all sound like clones of each other.  EVERY milestone for Iraq has been met thus far.  We turned sovereignty over to the Iraqi's and they've had elections.  They are re-building infrastructure at an alarming rate....Iraq is a success.  The loser John Kerry put out a letter today stating that we needed to have definite goals in Iraq.  Everytime John Kerry said we couldn't accomplish something in Iraq we did!!  John Kerry doesn't know when to shut up and realize "he lost", but obviously thinks he's a contender for 2008...I almost feel sorry for the guy...almost.

Sure there are insurgents, but the damage they ar inflicting is minimal....and yes, there are Iraqi's who LOVE Americans, believe it or not.   I live near a military base, and several soliders have told me how the Iraqi people cry when they leave.  

You can believe all the crap the media is telling you, but your precious Downing Street Memo is not evidence of anything.  Bush has not been proven to lie, period. You can say it all you want, but it doesn't make it true.   The little fairy tales the left make up about Bush and then get their buddies in the media to echo are just that "fairy tales."  

The issue of illegal immigration has been around way long than Bush's term in office.  While I do agree it is an even bigger problem with terrorism looming, this was something that should have been addressed long long ago.

My grandmother said they did not agree on politics and she would never vote for the same person he did, so therefore her vote would cancel his out and she felt like that was wrong because he was the head of the household!!!  Can you believe - as soon as he died, she never missed voting again for who she wanted.

cancer greatly influenced his life.  He said she was gentle, kind, and strong.

keep us free from the nazi regime/communism? What about the Korean War? They died, too, to keep communism from spreading.

Viet Nam was another story. They died and people here were so outspoken about it (just like it is happening now), and  that it brought the moral of the tropps down. When our president pulled them out so quick, all he-- broke out. The Viet Cong and Cambodia armies slaughtered thousands.

Those fighting now mostly support and believe in what they are doing. If the troops are pulled out as quick as O wants, the same thing may happen there. This is why they are trying to get Iraq's military and police set up so another Viet Nam will not happen. Support our troops.

*FOR WHAT???  So people halfway around the globe can have democracy?  Please....*

That is about as selfish a statement I've heard as of late.

What if the soldiers had gotten *so tired* in World War I or II?

What if the revoluntary soldiers had gotten *so tired* in the Revoluntionary war?  

Your world would be different today, that is, if you would have existed at all.

Even if you have family or friends in Iraq or Afghanistan right now your complaining and fussing about all the work they are doing is doing nothing to help them.  Support them.  Send them a letter or a care package.  It would make a soldier's day, be it someone you know or someone you don't, and it would certainly brighten your mood in the process.  You don't have to support the president or the war, but your frustrations can be turned around into producing something good for someone else.

OMG!!  Toooooooooo funny! 

When you described the various religious beliefs of your family members, you illustrated very well why government and religion don't mix.

Whether I (or you) agree with their views, they still have the right to have those views. 

Reaping the rewards.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
St. Francis of Assisi

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his dealings wtih animals.

Immanuel Kant

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — Democrats and their allies mapped out a strategy on Friday that they hoped would enable them to override President Bush’s expected veto of a bipartisan bill providing health insurance for 10 million children, most of them in low-income families.

Democratic leaders said they would highlight the contrast between the president’s request for large sums of money for the Iraq war and his opposition to smaller sums for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as Schip.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, “It’s ironic that in the very same week that the president says he’s going to veto the bill because we can’t afford it, he is asking, what, for $45 billion more over and above his initial request for the war in Iraq, money that we know is being spent without accountability, without a plan for how we can leave Iraq.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, “This is all a matter of priorities: the cost of Iraq, $333 million a day; the cost of Schip, $19 million a day.”

The campaign for the legislation will also include grass-roots advocacy and political advertisements, and will initially focus on about 15 House Republicans who voted against the bill. Supporters of the legislation hope to persuade them to switch.

But House Republican leaders said they felt sure they could sustain the veto, and two lawmakers on the Democrats’ list said that they would support Mr. Bush.

The bill passed this week by the House and the Senate would provide $60 billion for the program over the next five years, up $35 billion from the current level of spending. On Wednesday, the administration said it would seek $42 billion more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing its total request to nearly $190 billion for the 2008 fiscal year, which begins Monday.

In an interview on Friday, the House Republican whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri, said there was “a 100 percent probability” that the House would sustain the president’s veto.

But, Mr. Blunt said, the coincidental timing of the vote on the child health bill and the request for money in Iraq “was not helpful.”

The White House, on the defensive, is trying to bolster Republicans who fear they might be penalized by voters if they side with the president.

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said Friday, “It is preposterous for people to suggest that the president of the United States doesn’t care about children, that he wants children to suffer.”

Ms. Perino said the president had a policy difference with Democrats in Congress because he did not want “additional government-run health care, socialized-type medicine.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who helped write the bill, said he would reach out to House Republicans and urge them to override the veto.

“This bill is not socialized medicine,” Mr. Grassley said. “Screaming ‘socialized medicine’ is like shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. It is intended to cause hysteria that diverts people from reading the bill, looking at the facts.”

The battle will be fought in the House, where the child health bill was approved on Tuesday by a vote of 265 to 159 — well short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto.

Ms. Pelosi called Mr. Bush on Friday and said she was praying he would sign the bill.

But Mr. Blunt said: “I bet she’s praying for him not to sign it. The bill is all about politics. It’s pretty good politics for the Democrats.”

Still, Democrats face an uphill fight to persuade Republicans to change their votes. Supporters would need 289 yes votes to enact the bill over the president’s objections if all the members were voting.

The House now has 433 members and two vacant seats.

One of the Republicans singled out for special attention by Democrats was Representative Judy Biggert, from a suburban Chicago district. She was one of 16 Republicans who signed a letter to the speaker last week, urging her to take up the Senate version of the child health bill.

The compromise closely followed the Senate version, but Mrs. Biggert voted against it, saying, “It would push Americans one step closer to socialized medicine.”

In an interview on Friday, Mrs. Biggert said she would vote to sustain the veto.

Democrats said they would also focus their efforts on Republicans like Representatives Timothy V. Johnson of Illinois, John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York, Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan and H. James Saxton of New Jersey.

Mr. McCotter said he was a big supporter of the child health program, but would vote to uphold the president’s veto, even if critics ran television advertisements against him.

Under the bill, the federal excise tax on cigarettes would be increased to $1 a pack, from the current 39 cents.

“I vowed never to raise taxes on anybody, no matter how disliked they might be,” Mr. McCotter said in an interview. He said he would rather be voted out of office than go back on his promises to constituents.

Republican senators who worked on the compromise bill, like Mr. Grassley and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, said they had tried in vain to persuade White House officials to join the negotiations.

Ms. Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said that after vetoing the bill, Mr. Bush would like to “sit down and come to a compromise” with Congress.

The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said the president should not hold his breath waiting for such a deal. Democrats, he said, have already made many concessions to keep the support of Senate Republicans.

A lot of times a "no" vote comes from some hidden provision that doesn't jive with the candidates' personal policies, i.e. it might not be that they disagree with the issue, but instead that they disagree with the strategy proposed to tackle it.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/god-constitutions.htm

I'm not sure if this website has any politicial affiliation (I couldn't find one), but I checked several of the states constitutions out and they were spot on.  Now, I'm not a Bible thumper (or even attend church regularly), but I thought this was interesting considering Obama's speech.  

Please note that at no time in any of these constitutions is anyone told that they MUST worship God.