Judge Rejects Georgia School Board Evolution Stand

A US judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the US Constitution.The stickers read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered". The Georgia school board, which introduced the stickers at the behest of hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, contended that the stickers only advised students to keep an open mind.The judge then ordered school officials to place a new sticker in place of the old one to read "Marriage between a man and a women is a theory, not a fact, regarding the relationship between two adult individuals. Gay marriage should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.It is not okay to have sex with your first cousin".

Bush abandons hunt for Saddam's WMD

The fruitless hunt for Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has come to an end, the White House confirmed today. Officials with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the body established to find the very weapons which justified the war, have reported that no weapons have been found.However, members of ISG should not expect to be returning home anytime soon. According to White House officials, President Bush now intends to deploy the group to the Scottish Highlands in order to "smoke out" the Loch Ness Monster.

Canada confirms new mad cow case

Canadian regulators announced Tuesday that a 7 year old Alberta cow had tested positive for mad-cow. Government officials are particularly worried since this case comes less than two weeks after news of another cow's diagnosis had emerged. In an exclusive interview with Daily Buzz correspondent Kevin Crosby, the unidentified cow said that she had recently become mad after learning that she was food. According to "Bessie Doe", there are many more Canadian cows that are "mad as hell" and "not gonna take it anymore".

Yanukovych camp vows to challenge Yushchenko's Ukraine election ..

The loser of Ukraine's presidential election said Tuesday he would file massive complaints in court challenging the win by Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko, a move that could prolong the political tensions that have dominated the presidential election. In an effort to assuage fears that further political fragmentation could lead to civil war, Yanukovych went on to assure his countrymen that he would abide by the decision of the Supreme Court, adding "Worst case scenario, we kill the judges".

Farenheit 9/11 Big Winner at People's Choice Awards

Michael Moore’s film, “Fahrenheit 9/11” struck gold on Sunday night at the People’s Choice Awards when it was honored as Favorite Movie. Upon accepting the award, Moore said “This country is still all of ours, not right, or left or Democrat or Republican”. Moore then ate the award.

Blair Pushes For Revival of Road Map to Peace in Middle East

British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he hopes that a conference in London early next year will be a bridge back to the stalled road map to Middle East peace. No word yet on who will build the bridge, where it will be located, how long it will be, or the whereabouts of the Road Map. The Latest rumour out of the Middle East has it that Ariel Sharon accidently left the Road Map it in a taxi cab with a driver named Abba (no relation to the Swedish group) while on his way back from his favorite falafel stand. Israeli Officals deny this report, stating that Sharon is on "Atkins" and thus would not be eating at a falafel stand. More information as it comes in.

Ukraine's Top Security Service Denies Involvement with Poisoning of Yushchenko.

Ukraine's top security service has denied that it had anything to do with the dioxin poisoning that disfigured the face of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. On another note, the makers of Retin-A have offered Yushchenko a lifetime supply in exchange for becoming their official spokesman for the product. According to Yushchenko's agent, negotiations with Neutrogena are progressing rapidly and the first infomercial should be broadcast by the end of March.

Public Displays of Christmas and the Culture War

After more than a year of he said/she said self righteous political cockfighting, the elections have passed and we Americans now find ourselves knee deep in the annual battle over the role of government as it pertains to the celebration of Christmas. Make no mistake my fellow lemmings, this issue is merely one of the many that make up America's ongoing Culture War. The deeper, end of the day issue at hand revolves around the meaning of the freedom of religion clause contained within the First Amendment. As Christmas is now just days away, be forewarned, any fits of reason that have animated the individual independent mind will once again be cast against the fan, with bellicosity filled rhetoric now making up the verbal oxygen in the public forum. Media pundits, pukes, and parrots from both sides of the partisan peanut gallery are taking up armchairs as we speak.

In one corner, we have the On Loan from God Right and its zeal to wrap the the freedom of religion clause so far around the First Amendment axle that the electorate (that's us) may actually think that forcing school-aged, I miss my mommy children to talk and walk like a windup Jesus doll (no batteries included) is a good idea. In the other corner, we see the Loony Tune Left, and its demands for governmental support for teaching evolution to fetuses in the nude while singing campfire songs and smoking weed (for medicinal purposes only).

There is no doubt that the First Amendment establishes a line in the sand between Church and State. A seismic shift away from the trendy Eurotrash combo deal supported by taxes and thrown down by edict, the question remains, where is that line? There are no definite answers, but I think it possible to gauge a notion by looking to the purpose of Church/State seperation itself. While many a knucklehead may disagree, a person with a brain (this includes me) and in touch with his (or her, See: Suffrage Movement) rational faculties can infer that the purpose of this seperation was to protect the right to dissent in matters of religion: to make certain that individualst would never be forced by government to profess or support a religious idea that he does not agree with. Government officals may handle snakes and talk to the dead (BTW, a new reality show on FOX) all they want, on their own, but they may not use the government's carrot or stick to promote these ideas. In the U.S.A, government promotion of ideas inevitably leads to government imposed psuedo-agreement where the majority rules and minorities are more tolerated than protected. It gets interesting, like here, when the majority is split.

The On Loan from God Right seeks to demand religious agreement by the power of government, ultimately "agreement" by AK-47, when it squawks up and down like a headless chicken with its support of nativity scenes placed on government property by government officals or its fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, a political invention implemented in 1954 by Congress as a rhetorical tool in the fight against those silly commies. At the same time, the Loony Tune Left, who have correctly fought against the righteous righties on this issue, are equally guilty in their high pitched cackles for more funding for such secular staples as public funding of the arts. These Loony Tune Lefties do not seem to give a hoot whether you or I in fact agree with or approve of the particular splotch of paint or cow dung that the liberal purse snatchers hold so dear. In the end, the Right attempts to destroy individual thought by imposing religious dogma while the Left performs a shakedown with a smile.

Whether it is the use of the public moola to endorse religious ideas or the advocacy of public dough for the artsy fartsy idea of the month, its politics by the kettle calling the pot black. While each side smacks each other, they have their hands in our pockets and their bullhorns in our ears.The bottom line is that only an individual can hold the spoon to the oatmeal inside his own head. To force a man to adhere to any particular doctrine or to fork over greenbacks to push some idea perpetuated by some depressed French guy is to paralyze the very idea of agreement, the fulcrum of our Democracy. At its core, it disables his ability to seperate truth from fairy tale.

In the end, this Culture War will be decided by truth, not by the political mercenaries and talking heads on the polyspectrum and there tug of war over who gets to control defensless little Tommy's mind while funding the effort by taxing Tommy's parents. Its about time we look a little closer at the First Amendment while at the same time getting the government out of the Meme distribution business. For the people and by the people was not articulated during a burp.

Oh by the way, Merry Christmas.

Save Scott Peterson Fund

Apparently in a plea to the public to help "free the man we know is innocent," Scott Peterson's attorney is seeking donations to continue the investigation into the murders of Peterson's wife and the fetus she carried. No word just yet on rumours of a merger with the O.J. Simpson "Find the Real Killer" fund

Peterson Verdict In, Another Media Circus Winds Down

Clear away the ceaseless media rigmarole of the past 5 months, and the State of California v. Scott Peterson is nothing more than your run of the mill domestic homicide case prosecuted on circumstantial evidence. However, as your friendly neighborhood media jackals at CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and COURTTV have succeeded in bringing to town a circus that would have made proud papas of both Barnum and Bailey, digital rubbernecks across this nation have continuously and hypnotically cleared brush on the path to their own mental obesity, consuming one fast food sound nugget after another, digesting each episode of the battle of the network talking heads, and of course, eagerly awaiting each bombshell du jour. To be fair, there was somewhat of a prisoner’s dilemma for journalists. One the one hand, the trappings of a highly rated Lifetime movie did exist. Sex, infidelity, murder, you name it. On the other hand, for all the Shakespearean notions, much of the day-to-day trial was more like a day spent in an elevator minus the Muzak. Such is inherently bad for advertising dollars. In this Darwinian age of digitized obsolescence, the 24-hour news networks lust for sticky eyeballs is insatiable. The problem is that the trial, like any other criminal jury trial, often produced nothing more than cold logic, mundane details, and abstract rules. So, as a trial sets forth one piece of dispassionate minutia after another, each media outlet must take these morsels and reconstitute them in a fashion more suitable for tomorrow’s water cooler analysis. In turn, the competition amongst the media players drives a hyperbolic freak show that leads to a critical mass of distortion and oversimplification that has become the mainstay for our deep fried media culture. In this case, if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that a pregnant woman and her unborn child were actually and savagely murdered, we could simply justify the hype and glitz as mere entertainment. Good television. But we cannot and should not because the tragedy is real. The pain and suffering for the friends and family members is also real and it does not go away with a click of the remote. It remains forever. We, the general public are also damaged, surreptitiously, as a bedrock institution of our society erodes one highly publicized trial at a time. The effectiveness of the American criminal justice system depends upon its legitimacy in the eyes of the public. It depends upon the public's trust and belief that a trial is ultimately and simply, a search for the truth. When the media treats it like the bearded lady, the public loses confidence in our courts as a serious and solemn place where real justice is really done. At the same time, you can be sure that if we didn’t like candy apples and cotton candy, those items would not be sold a