The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night.

I truly hope the ivory-bill can survive, but I am not sanguine. This latest announcement is likely to bring out the contrarians of every stripe. You have perhaps heard right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh telling the tale that there is more forest today than 100 years ago? This will just encourage them. Of course, if you drive through the rural South you will see the forests he is talking about. For the most part they are nearly sterile, monoculture pine plantations with all the trees lined up like so many corn stalks, just waiting for the pulpwood cutters. This is not ivory-bill habitat.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

The ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, has been seen in a remote part of Arkansas 60 years after the last confirmed U.S. sighting, ornithologists said on Thursday.

Several experts have spotted and heard an ivory-billed woodpecker in a protected forest in eastern Arkansas near the last reliable sighting of the bird in 1944, and one was captured on video last year.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long suspected to be extinct, has been rediscovered in the 'Big Woods' region of eastern Arkansas," researchers wrote in the journal Science in an article hastily prepared for release.

[...]

The survival of ivory bills is closely tied to that of the deep, swampy forests it lived in. "Its disappearance coincided with systematic annihilation of virgin tall forests across southeastern United States between 1880 and the 1940s," the researchers wrote.

[...]

But the discovery may help get protection for a larger area of the Big Woods, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy said.

Fitzpatrick said some of the hardwood trees the birds depend on have grown back after logging in the early part of the 20th century. "The conditions are only going to get better," he said.

"In concept, at least, it is possible the worst for this bird has passed. Proper management could let it thrive again," [John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology] added.

Many parents in using the rod of correction on their child do so with an obvious lack of vigor and often stop short of the child's will being completely broken. Manifestation of this error is illustrated in countless homes as a child gets up from his session of correction still spouting rebellious words and giving willful looks at his discouraged parent. The parent has no one to blame but himself for this problem since he did not completely break the will of the child during the session of correction. A child who is still willing to resist the authority of his parent after having received the rod of correction is still in need of more of that same rod.

[...]

Do not be discouraged, dear parent, when it appears that your Godly efforts to chastise your child with the rod of correction meet with total resistance towards your authority. This simply means that you have started on the right course and you must now pursue your objective of a broken will with great vigor until your mission is finally accomplished. This may require a great deal of self-discipline on your part but you can do it, since God requires you to do so.

[...]

Again, these concepts cause horrible thoughts and evoke dramatic reaction in those not accustomed to principles of God. Such folks may say at the top of their lungs, "That is child abuse"! My response to their cries of horror is that their methods of correction in never using the rod and never trying to bring a child to repentance for his personal sin is a horrible, hateful, and unloving method of correction. They are the ones who really are the child abusers, the parents who neglect and leave their child to his own devices. These are the parents who allow their children to express their natural depravity and become increasingly wicked and more sophisticated in their rebellion toward their authority and toward God in their advancing age.

[...]

A child very quickly demonstrates his fallen, depraved nature and reveals himself to be a selfish little beast in manifold ways. As soon as the child begins to express his own self-will (and this occurs early in life) that child needs to receive correction. My wife and I have a general goal of making sure that each of our children has his will broken by the time he reaches the age of one year. To do this, a child must receive correction when he is a small infant. Every parent recognizes that this self-will begins early as he has witnessed his child stiffen his back and boldly demonstrate his rebellion and self-will even though he has been fed, diapered, and cared for in every other physical way.

On what occasions should a child be corrected? Whenever a child directly disobeys authority or shows disrespect and rebellion toward authority, that child should receive correction.

[...]

Every father and mother must recognize this all-important fact, that the very soul of their child is at stake in this matter of Godly correction with the rod. The immortal, undying portion of that child is in very real jeopardy if his will is not broken and he is not trained to respond to God's authority in his life.

As she led a pair of Bonney Lake police officers into her garage Thursday morning, Rachel Lambert called to someone inside.

“The police are here to help me deal with you!” she said.

On the floor sat a 10-year-old boy, his ankles bound by plastic wire, his hands tied behind his back. The wires on his feet attached to the lid of a garbage can, weighted down with boxes.

Layers of yellow masking tape covered the lower half of his face, starting just below the nose. The officer asked if he could breathe. The boy nodded.

The other officer pulled Lambert out of the garage and asked a question.

“What’s going on?”

Lambert pulled a box of wire ties from the top of the refrigerator and said something like, “My husband gave me these and told me when the children get out of control, use these.”

Officers soon found another child in the garage – a 9-year-old girl, bound at the ankles. Police arrested Lambert and her husband, Brad. They spent the night in the Pierce County Jail.

[...]

The boy said he had been bound with handcuffs. The girl said she spent Easter Day in the recycle bin.

Officers searched the bin and found more wire ties. They found more on the bedposts where the children slept. The beds had mattresses but no bedding. Officers said they found no toys.

Bonney Lake police said Rachel Lambert claimed the children's behavior had gotten progressively worse over the past month and that she disciplined the children by feeding them jalapeno peppers, the documents indicated.

The 10-year-old boy said "he had a hot pepper placed in his mouth and then had his mouth taped shut," the documents indicated. He told police "he swallowed the pepper so it would not be in his mouth anymore."

Police said another form of punishment Lambert used was to have the two children "stand in a tub of cold water and write out sentences."

"Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is a teaching tool by which harmful behavior is inhibited."

"Most (children) need to be spanked now and then."

"Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.'"

"When a youngster tries this kind of stiff-necked rebellion, you had better take it out of him, and pain is a marvelous purifier."

"Minor pain can...provide excellent motivation for the child... There is a muscle, lying snugly against the base of the neck... When firmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying, 'This hurts; avoid recurrence at all costs'."

"When a youngster tries this kind of stiff-necked rebellion, you had better take it out of him, and pain is a marvelous purifier."

"Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less, but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining... I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears."

"My father used Dobson's methodology as a license to strike. If you wish to die alone in a nursing home, I suggest you listen to those who worship hate and violence."

"Book should be entitled "Dare to Hit Your Child with Whatever is Handy". Dobsen extols (sic) virtues of his wife snapping their not yet two-year-old with a switch across the shins, can you imagine? He also attests that he received great benefit, as a child, by being spontaneously walloped by his mom's girdle, complete with buckles and straps."

"It seems to this reader that, at the core, Dr. Dobson has no trust in the abilities of children to learn, to reason, to develop as moral creatures from the example and gentle teaching of their parents. And, through the course of the discipline methods he advocates, he has no compunction about destroying a child's trust in his or her parents."

"His methods are mainly those of the schoolyard bully and seem to be contrived to raise kids who are afraid of you. Is that really the result you want?"

Hot sauce adds a kick to salsa, barbeque, falafel and hundreds of other foods. But some parents use it in a different recipe, one they think will yield better-behaved children: They put a drop of the fiery liquid on a child's tongue as punishment for lying, biting, hitting or other offenses.

"Hot saucing," or "hot tongue," has roots in Southern culture, according to some advocates of the controversial disciplinary method, but it has spread throughout the country. Nobody keeps track of how many parents do it, but most experts contacted for this story, including pediatricians, psychologists and child welfare professionals, were familiar with it.

[...]

The hot pepper technique's current popularity is due in part to Whelchel, a former Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer and actress who played the character Blair on the television series "The Facts of Life" in the 1980s.

In "Creative Correction," now in its fifth printing, the mother of three provides parents with a variety of tips.

For example, she suggests hiding something a child has failed to put away, to teach the lesson that things left out may disappear. She suggests telling a child who refuses to hold your hand while crossing a street, "I can either hold your hand or hold your hair."

In addition, Whelchel offers the following: "For lying or other offenses of the tongue, I 'spank' my kids' tongues. I put a tiny drop of hot sauce on the end of my finger and dab it onto my child's tongue. It stings for a while, but it abates. (It's the memory that lingers!)"

Whelchel's advice was repeated in an Internet chat in which she participated and then circulated on numerous parenting Web sites and discussion groups.

Kendrick says parents who use the technique are "at the very least . . . ill-informed." He pointed out that many parents are not aware that hot sauce can burn a child's esophagus and cause the tongue to swell -- a potential choking hazard.

"There are many different kinds of hot sauce on the market, and parents who say they know the dilution to use so it won't sting, or say they only use one drop, are wrong," Kendrick said. "It's done because it hurts. It stings. It burns. It makes you nauseous."

Capsaicin, the substance that makes peppers hot, inflames membranes in the eyes, nose and mouth. While many adults find this feeling pleasurable, capsaicin can cause negative reactions even in the third of the adult population that has no tolerance for ingesting it, according to Joel Gregory, publisher of Chile Pepper magazine.

There are additional risks for children. Giorgio Kulp, a pediatrician in Montgomery County, said that the risk of swelling as well as the possibility of unknown allergies make the use of hot sauce on children dangerous.

Someone on a political thread somewhere in the lefty blogosphere used this structure: "When we get back in control..." in talking about what might happen after the wingnuts have been defeated.

This sentence scrap kept echoing in my head afterwards and wouldn't leave me alone until I agreed to attend to it. Here's the attending:

I will never be in control. I have never been in control and expect never to gain control over anything much. This I know for a fact. Why, then, can someone else so trustingly expect to have control over the political situation? What is it that makes me feel as if I have really very little say on this planet? ...

This is all totally trivial. Or is it? Why do I feel as if my voice is inaudible in this world? Because it is? Because all our voices are inaudible in a world where only money and guns and gods can speak? Or is this a woman-thing? Something to do with the new pope, perhaps, with the celebration and glorification of a man who would not listen to women? Who would not listen to anyone with values like mine?

Cardinal Ratzinger has been head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition - since 1981.

One of his first campaigns was against liberation theology, which had gained ground among priests in Latin America and elsewhere as a means of involving the Church in social activism and human rights issues.

He has described homosexuality as a "tendency" towards an "intrinsic moral evil". During the US election campaign, he called for pro-choice politicians to be denied Communion.

He has also argued that Turkey should not be admitted into the European Union.

Way down South
they have a name
for cops and dogs and law.
Bubba's a cop,
'Ol Blue's a dog,
and they call the law Shariah.
Shariah, Shariah, and they call the law Shariah.

People who are working in support of DeLay's position said the next several days would be critical, as leaders wait to see whether any other House Republicans call for his resignation. Last weekend, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who has long feuded with the majority leader, called for DeLay to step down.

[...]

House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) said members are standing by DeLay. "We know we're under attack," he said. "It's a scorched-earth policy."

DeLay's defenders continued to galvanize national conservative groups on the outside while blaming Democrats on the inside. Allies coordinated appearances on talk radio stations, and supporters were given talking points detailing the number of trips taken by Democrats.

Hundreds of readers responded to last week's column about airport security. These were letters from Americans who fit no terrorist profile -- airline pilots, mothers traveling with children, disabled people, elderly and other law-abiding Americans -- and yet were frisked, groped and hassled. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) behaves as if all passengers and all baggage pose an equal security threat, and that's stupid...,

Asking the question whether every passenger is a security threat is similar to a munitions manufacturer asking whether every hand grenade is good. A munitions manufacturer wouldn't pull the pin on every hand grenade to see if it was a dud. He'd devise a test, otherwise he'd bear huge costs by assuming each hand grenade had the equal probability of being a dud. Similarly, the TSA should devise a test to determine which passenger poses the higher probability of being a security threat. A good start might be to establish passenger characteristics of previous terrorist attacks.

North and South Korea have arranged for an exchange of zoo animals, including Siberian weasels, near their hugely militarized border to bolster animal stocks in both states, zoo officials said Wednesday.

[...]

The North was to send 16 animals, including Asiatic black bears, lynx, coyotes, African ponies and Siberian weasels, zoo officials said.

The South would send 10, including hippopotamuses, red kangaroos, wallabies, guanacos and llamas, they added.

• Hilarius - (last used 461-68) Isn't that a happy sounding name? Wouldn't you want to watch a Hiarius news conference?
  
• Hyginus - (136-140) Because cleanliness is next to Godliness.
  
• Simplicius - (468-83) This was the successor to Hilarius. Those sound like pleasant times (unless you know anything about Roman history).
  
• Zephyrinus - (199-217) Maybe not; he sounds like an old wind-bag.
  
• Vitalian - (657-72) Has the added benefit of sounding like a cure for baldness or impotence.

• George-Ringo - for symmetry’s sake and just because.
  
• Henry - Look at it as an ecumenical outreach to the Anglicans.
  
• Spike or Butch - Something tough to let the world know this is not a Pope to be trifled with.
  
• He could follow the American tradition of familiarity and go for something like Pope Chuck.
  
• Since the bishop of Nigeria is considered to be in the running, maybe we could have something traditionally African and completely unpronounceable to western newscasters.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A Chinese food delivery man was found trapped in a broken elevator Tuesday, more than three days after he was reported missing, police said.

Ming Kung Chen, 35, who worked for the Happy Dragon restaurant in the Bronx, was reported missing late Friday when he did not return an hour after setting out on a delivery.

Three hotels, including the Rogue Regency, the Red Lion and the Jacksonville Inn, report they have been waiting almost six months for bills generated mostly by the U.S. Secret Service during President Bush's whirlwind tour through Jackson County, according to an article by the Mail Tribune newspaper.

Owed $3,332.72, the Red Lion Hotel in Medford sent a letter on March 28 to the president at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The letter written by the hotel's accountant Kirsten Yunuba Stephens, said: "My question to you: Is this how you help balance the budget at the White House by ripping off retailers in the towns you visit? If that is the case please do not come back to the Rogue Valley."

[...]

At the Red Lion, Stephens said that a member of the Secret Service asked last week for a $400 refund on the bill because he believed his agents hadn't used a particular briefing room. She said she pointed out that a refund wasn't possible because the rest of the bill had not been paid.

• The Vatican City has the lowest birthrate on earth (no births per 1000).
  
• Consequently, it has the highest ratio of immigrants to native-born in its population (100:00).
  
• Though many have criticized the pontiff's sexual policies, they have resulted in the lowest level of teenage pregnancies on earth (none).
  
• The last statistic is especially amazing in light of the fact that citizens of the Vatican City almost never get married!
  
• Citizens of the Vatican City have one of the highest standards of living on the planet. Everyone lives in a palace and homelessness is completely unknown.
  
• The Vatican City has universal healthcare, total employment, and a budget for arts and architectural preservation that exceeds their military budget.

You people make me sick to my stomach. Your group alone is responsible for the decline in morality in America.

Your group took advantage of the system, twisted it to suit the needs of every sick, perverted, & depraved person in America under the guise of "civil liberties"...

...& "freedom 'from' religion". When the Bible was removed from our public school systems, a moral decline started in America like a snow ball rolling down a hill. There is so much moral depravity in America because of that.

Put women in the workforce ... look at what that got you. A man can't get a good paying job ... it's called supply and demand. Give a woman a job for half the price and boot the man out. That is what "Corporate America" does & the government is forced to uphold that because you whiners sneak in with your "loop holes" & screwed America until it was morally bankrupt.

God will judge your kind ... the Bible tells us where you're going, and I feel so sad for your soul. Please pray for God's guidance in your life because you need it.