Live from the Nuke Free Zone

Judge Gets in Swipe at Bush Administration
… U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists, but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.
”We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as […]

I enjoy The Daily Show, and watch it regularly. Just tonight I saw an episode that dismayed me: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came on and promulgated one of the more popular theories in quack medicine today, namely that thimerosal in vaccines caused autism. His primary argument for the connection was a contemporaneous increase […]

Or, Telephone as played by History.
May 11, 2005: Georgia’s security chief said Wednesday that the grenade that was found near the site where President Bush made a speech in Tbilisi was inactive. …
Bezhuashvili said, however, that it was not thrown but “found.” … “None of us in the press corps noticed any unusual activity and […]

Several of the questions raised by my brief analysis of the NAEP data in yesterday’s post wondered why high school advancement wasn’t reflecting gains in elementary school. I suggested that more challenging curriculum would help: as American high schools currently stand, there is plenty of room for higher expectations.
Turns out students agree. So […]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, traditionally known as “the nation’s report card,” recently made its latest results available. These are from the 2004 round of testing, the latest since 1999. Some of the information is good; for example, reading scores for 9-year-olds have improved significantly over 1999 and African-American students decreased the […]

Right Wing News has a feature article going around called Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq. Having just glanced at the first few lacks of argument, it’s pretty pathetic — these people are morons and so is anyone who links to it approvingly. However, I’ve seen it pointed (and laughed) at twice […]

Although life-saving equipment and techniques have kept the death rate low in Iraq, there are a number of severely wounded who are not in the newspapers. Many are permanently disabled, and a few truly unfortunates will need to be cared for for the rest of their lives. Riggsveta@corrente cites a Harper’s article reporting that the […]

In case you hadn’t heard,
there was
a coordinated terrorist bombing on the London tube system this morning,
killing over 30.
Insomnia
has a collection of personal reports from LiveJournal users.
He calls Britain “a country where Al Qaeda *didn’t even exist* until
after we invaded”, but having heard a lot about the
Finsbury Park mosque,
I’d take issue with that particular statement. Right […]

The Zone is not in the habit of shilling for products — we don’t even have ads yet, except for the technological infrastructure that brings you our scintillating observations — but I just finished George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant! , and wanted to note my reaction:
Ho. Lee. Cow.
This is a […]

Looks like political junkies itching for a scrum in the post-Presidential doldrums have been blessed with a Supreme Court nomination. Game on.
I’d like to take a moment to read the tea leaves in President Bush’s speech to a hastily-assembled news conference today. It was clear that no one had pre-written an O’Connor retirement […]