News – Those Wacky Theists

US

TWIRP(The Woman Is Requested To Pay”) day, a long standing school tradition in Spurger, Texas, was called off after a Christian legal group complained that it would promote homosexuality. Why? Because it involves cross-dressing. “It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl — kids think it’s cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you,” said Delana Davies, who raised the stink and got the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing Christian legal group involved. So now it’s changed to camouflage day by a school district not at all inclined to engage in a legal battle. But some of the students dressed as they would have anyway. All I have to say is this: There goes the religious right, destroying another fun, not at all serious activity from a school for reasons that are impossible to prove. Unless you can show me a study that shows one day of cross-dressing a year will turn a kid gay. If you have one, serve it up, by all means.

Catholic bishops are launching a plan to promote marriage now, featuring focus groups — group discussions — with single, engaged and married people, a survey of Catholic clerics and a national research project. One of those involved in crafting it was quick to note ” See see! We’re not focused on gay marriage!” Yeah, but we’ll see how useful this is. Now if you could only keep away from dealing with gay marriage and keep your focus on heterosexuals.

Harriet Miers will be taking over the position of White House counsel left vacant by Alberto Gonzalez’s promotion. Margaret Spellings will be taking over as education secretary in place of Rod Paige, who resigned Monday. Considering she was a prime architect of No Child Left Behind, I don’t consider her coming in with a good record.

A muse of the darker potential of Porter Goss’ CIA shakeups.

The three way dialogue on welfare reform continues.

The dual voids created by Condi’s promotion. Who will replace her as Bush’s work wife?

Could the FCC start to grow in influence over the subject of indecency? I don’t rightly know.

Iraq

Rebels struck at the provincial governors office in Mosul, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding four more. One of several mortar attacks by insurgents in the city.

A woman’s body has been found that may be that of Margaret Hassan, believed killed by her captors. One of the biggest mysteries of her case is who took her, why and why they killed her.

Explainer details the counting of casualties in Iraq.

Israel/Palestine

Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to crack down on armed groups operating in Palestinian areas to smooth the way to elections on Jan 9th. I believe he’ll try, but does he have the manpower to enforce such a crackdown? Or does he plan more diplomatic means? He’s also urged Israel to halt it’s offensives to help him, which I hope they’ll do. The less Israel stirs the pot, the les likely they’ll counter any effort Abbas makes. Time for them to step back and watch their own border.

Israel has released Hassan Yusef after two years in prison, the man a leader for Hamas in the West Bank. An odd thing considering he emerges saying he’ll continue to work for Hamas and encourages them to continue the fight against Israel, noting release of all Palestinian prisoners as a condition for any truce. Apparently, Isreal could find no evidence to connect him to any Hamas attack.

Israel apologizes for the deaths of three Egyptian policemen at the Gaza-Egypt border. Apparently a tank mistook them for Palestinian militants.

The Israeli army is investigating allegations of soldiers posing to be photographed with the bodies of several Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza.

Colin Powell shows a positive face, praising both sides already. Positive reinforcement isn’t a bad way to train people. Yeah, I said it. It had to be said.

The Palestinian leadership will be looking to Paris for a cause of death for Arafat, among lingering belief that Israel might have poisoned him. They’ve done such things before, though I don’t know if they did in this case.

Iran

US intelligence is now suggesting Iran is seeking tech to mount nukes on its missiles. I wonder what this evidence is that may show this.

Russia

Away from the unknown, we know that Russia is planning to develop new nuclear weapon systems including missiles that can defeat the US missile defense shield. Are our officials at all worried about that? Not that I’ve seen.

General

New vulnerabilities discovered in IE. They exist on a fully patched system, so you should take a gander and be aware until MS pops out a new patch for them.

As part of future DVD advances, a new scratch resistant coating has been developed. Especially good news for the reliable used DVD business.

Today’s Papers has the FDA knowing in 2003 about the contamination of the flu vaccine, a warning about planned reduction of troops in Falluja, K-Mart and Sears teaming up to combine their crap selling powers and more in the one page news.

Amusements

Mr. Rich fakes break-in so he can hock fiancee’s engagement ring

Hollywood is out of ideas: Jennifer Love Hewitt to star in TV show with standard premise #2 (single woman working a media job in the big city.)

The Amazing Kreskin volunteers to help NJ’s new governor cut corruption by mentally “out those who come to government with ulterior motives”

Desperate eBay sellers trying to unload all sorts of useless junk, including used gum using “virgin mary cheese” somewhere in the description

Fark Photoshop Challenge: Photoshop these jousting elephants

Fark Photoshop Challenge: Photoshop this hungry catterpiller. Difficulty: No sneakers

Fark Photoshop Challenge: Photoshop this awkward moment in German culture