Stop Iran War

Dear Ted,

Click here to watch our latest video blog!

Last Friday, Iranian military forces seized 15 British sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf. Some believe this is an act of aggression by Iran and should be met with a commensurate military response.

I do not.

I believe it shows that the Bush Administration's current policy with Iran is not working. For the sake of stability in the Middle East, it's time for direct diplomacy with Iran -- now more than ever.

Today, we're launching our third video blog for StopIranWar.com. I'm joined by Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org and Clark Community blogger Reg to discuss how President Bush's get tough policy with Iran is undermining the security of our most reliable ally in the region, Israel.

Watch today's video blog to understand why George Bush's policy of confronting Iran hurts the Israelis, our strongest allies in this volatile region.

We need to be shaping a new vision for the Middle East. Peace won't come through saber rattling and threats -- it will come through dialogue, negotiation and the hard work of diplomacy. While I would never rule out military action against Iran if necessary to preserve stability, protect Israel and defend America's national security, it just doesn't make sense in our current circumstances.

In fact, attacking Iran now would simply derail the Middle East peace process, further radicalize Israel's enemies, and put our friend and ally at risk. Years of diplomacy aimed at laying the groundwork for peace will be lost.

We must give the people of this region cause for hope -- not just the threat of the Sixth Fleet lurking off their shore. It's time to let the diplomats do their job.

Watch our new video blog today, and then sign our petition to President Bush asking him to pursue diplomacy with Iran -- not more military confrontation.

It's time for the United States to be a beacon of hope and the voice of reason in the Middle East. President Bush's policy of military confrontation has done enough harm. Please, help me change his course by inviting your friends and family to sign our petition at StopIranWar.com today.

Sincerely,

Wes Clark

Visit StopIranWar.com

Easter Egg Hunt

Check out this community project

I thought you'd be interested in this request at myhometownhelper.com to help fund a community project.

Sponsored by Hamburger Helper, MyHometownHelper.com is giving away up to $15,000 each month to help fund projects in hometowns all across the country. You can help by simply adding your comments - and support - to this request.

Thanks.

The Canadian National Newspaper: Impeachment mood against U.S. President Bush starts its wave in Vermont

The Canadian National Newspaper: Impeachment mood against U.S. President Bush starts its wave in Vermont
Impeachment mood against U.S. President Bush starts its wave in Vermont
Compiled by Paul Chen


CNN explores impeachment talk against U.S. President Bush.
Inspired by an Esquire magazine interview in which Republican Senator Chuck Hagel mentioned the possibility that some of President Bush's critics may push impeachment at some point, CNN's Wolf Blitzer devoted considerable time on a Monday The Situation Room to discussing the significance of Hagel's impeachment talk, remarking that "it's not good for President Bush, to put it bluntly." Blitzer characterized impeachment talk as "a little bit louder"
In Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to U.S. President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The Governor was not amused. As moderator of the annual meeting, he tried to suggest that the proposal to impeach -- along with another proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq -- could not be voted on.
But McKay, a program coordinator at Middlebury College, pressed her case. And it soon became evident that the crowd at the annual meeting shared her desire to hold the president to account.
So Douglas backed down.
"It became clear that no one was going home until they had the chance to discuss the resolutions and vote on them," explained David Rosenberg, a political science professor at Middlebury College. "And being a good politician, he allowed the vote to happen."
By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.

Click on the link at the top to read the entire article init's original context.

Looking forward to seeing Obama in Denison tomorow night.

As much as I'm loving his book and love the idea of someone who reads and can write and speak, unlike our current president, not to mention the fact that he's a Constitutional expert, also in stark contrast to our current president- I have to admit to having a great deal of residual loyalty to John Edwards left over from his last run, as well as a great interest in Clark, Richardson, and Gore. I could live with Hillary, but she's not my first, second, third, or even fourth choice. They're all better than McCain.

 

Maybe seeing/hearing will be believing. I kind of hope so. I heard civil rights veteran, Cong. John Lewis on NPR compare Obama to Bobbie Kennedy. That would have me, I tell ya what.

 

I'd like to see whoever wins appoint Patrick Fitzpatrick Attorney General, Richard Clarke Director of Homeland Security, and either Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey or Gen. Wes Clark Sec. of Defence.

 

You know who should be Secretary of State?

How about a DIPLOMAT!

 

Actually, as long as we're talking about going a starkly different direction than Bush, why not Joe Wilson. And just to add insult to revenge, maybe Valarie Plame could become CIA Director.

_______________________________
Pirate Prayers at:
http://malloryprayer.blogspot.com

Ted's cartoons, artworks, photos, and commentary at:
http://tmal.multiply.com

"The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." ~Garrison Keillor

Join Barack Obama for an Event in Denison!

Join Barack Obama for an Event in Denison!

When: Saturday, March 31 – Doors open at 5:00 PM

Where: Denison High School, Gymnasium, 819 N. 16th Street, Denison, IA

How: The event is free and open to the public.

Please RSVP HERE to obtain your ticket.

All the President's Men

Political Cartoon for April 5, 2007, Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and Schleswig Leader

They're all "bad-eggs." Whew! I think this whole process took almost two hours and was pieced together from four drawings. Would you believe my inspiration was Easter Eggs? WIth all that's going on between the U.S. Attorney firings, the Plame/Wilson leak, Libby trial, the Congressional battles over an Iraq exit deadline, and now the saber rattling with Iran, the Nixon-esque Humpty Dumpty/All the Presiden't Men analoy seemed appropriate.

‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. Mr. Mallory's cartoons have been apublished there since the summer of 2007.
If you’d like to see any of his editorial cartoons you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2

I love teaching, but if you know anyone with any clout at a syndicate, or a major metropolitan daily that actually wants to hire their own cartoonist in this day and age, tell them about me.

Obama to visit Denison

Barack Obama at Denison H.S.

Start:	Mar 31, '07 5:30p
Location:	Denison High School Gym

Doors open at 5:00, Obama speaks at 5:45.

Ted, you should have shown up at Cronk’s last night to talk to his campaigner. Doors open at 5:00, program begins at 5:45. If you would like to volunteer as usher, crowd control, security, etc. show up at 4 p.m. Admission is free, but we are handing out pretty red tickets as a way to gauge how many people are interested.

Here's some Post-Partisan Surrealism

I don't always get this guy's cartoons, but I appreciate that he's tired of how polarized we've become in this one.

Reader Appreciation Day

Reader Appreciation Day
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday,March 29, 2007 – Page 3

Five years ago when I began writing this column I decided that my mandate would be “Sex, Politics, and Religion… not necessarily in that order.” I figured that I didn’t know enough about sports, farming, or the weather to talk about any of them very well. I also hoped to provoke some thought and discussion once in a while, even if that risked rattling a few cages once in a while. Thank you for reading.

Obviously, I indulge in plenty of politics and religion. I’d like to think that my approach to both comes from the angle of a former history teacher; informative, analytical, perhaps even persuasive- rather than lecturing or preaching- but I know that I lapse into ranting pretty easily. As a polite neighbor I ought to apologize for doing that when it comes to politics because it seems like taking advantage of the having a forum to blow off steam without having a lot of consideration or empathy for those who would disagree. I ought to apologize, but I guess I’d rather rely on your understanding that I’m entitled to my opinions and so are you and have you either take me with a grain of salt, take my ideas under advisement, or take page three and use it to wrap a fish, line a litter box or start a fire, whichever you prefer. Thank you for still reading.

We can agree to disagree, I only hope that you appreciate that my intentions are sincere, I love my country and believe in the ideals embodied in it’s founding documents, including the Constitution and Bill of Rights. No doubt many of the people who most vehemently disagree with what I write feel the same way. I hope that you all know that I my love and respect for the hard working, God-and-country-loving, proud families of rural Iowa is deep and unwavering, even when I can’t begin to fathom why on Earth they can hold some of the harebrained opinions that they do. I’d like to think that such affection is not unrequited, even when I irritate you so much that you can’t see straight, but I’ve had at least one reader threaten to cancel their subscription, so I know that it may be that I’m far more enamored of you than you are of me. Thank you if you’re still reading.

By the way, as antagonistic as I may be toward the current administration, I’m still pretty much a moderate centrist by national standards. Anyone who really thinks that I’m outrageously liberal wouldn’t know one if they bit you in the posterior, and while we’re at it sociologists predict that the entire country is gradually shifting back to the left again after about a forty years of leaning the other way, so if you think I’m bad, you may as well try to get over it. And thank you for reading anyway.

As for religion, the late Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip would’ve argued that it is a cartoonist’s prerogative to sermonize. Since I’ve never received any feedback to indicate otherwise, I am under the impression that where we may differ on occasion politically, we must see more eye to eye theologically regardless of any of our denominational differences. Thank you for that.

I probably get the most responses when I write about the funny things my kids say and do or the trials and tribulations of parenting. Thank you for letting me know you enjoy it.
My wife is always trying to steer me away from the politics to the humor. I know she just wants people to like me and I have to admit that if I could, I’d love to be another Dave Berry or Erma Bombeck, but I have to tell you, even when you have kids for inspiration, it’s really hard to be funny. It’s actually a lot easier to be full of facts and fury. Still, I’ll admit that a secret ambition of mine is to be taped to a refrigerator, a work cubical or bulletin board, or a college professor’s office door and all of those things are far more likely if you’re funny and heartwarming than poignant or a blood pressure stimulant. That goes for cartoons too, Garfield and Family Circus make the front of the refrigerator a lot more than anything on the Op/Ed pages. Thanks for putting up with me, Honey.

By the way, one time our baby-sitter was laughing so much about something I wrote about our five year old daughter, Ellen, that her older sister Grace told her “Thanks a lot for embarrassing me, Ellie!”

All this introspection may make it sound like I’m leading up to an announcement that I’m quitting or something. Not at all, (sorry to that person who wanted to cancel their subscription). It just occurred to me how lucky I am to get to write here every week, I thought that you deserved to know that I appreciate it. Thank you for reading. Please don’t stop.


WEB EXCLUSIVE: By the way, the fact of the matter is that there is selfish motivation there too- not so much that I have some sinister agenda to proselytize every reader to Christianity or to Missouri-Synod Lutheranism, but when all is said and done, it’s in me and I have to let it out. They say that you learn the most by teaching and that love isn’t love until you pass it along, well what can I tell you, but I read the Bible or learn about God and I want to share it. It just happens that I write a weekly small-town newspaper column, so guess how it comes out. Thank you for reading when it does.

When I first started writing four years ago I’d only lived here for about a year, although I’d wanted to for at least ten. I’d also moved here from Los Angeles, the second largest metropolis in the U.S. and the most widely strip-mall infested, billboard laden and concrete-covered one. Consequently I was very enamored of living in the beautiful, sparsely populated, rolling prairie countryside. So as each new season came on, I’d wax poetic about how lucky we are to smell wet grass and cattle instead of smog or see green, yellow, brown or white instead of grey. I guess that’s something I don’t do so much anymore, sorry if you liked it. Thank you for not littering.

There’s at least one reader who’s asked me two or three times over the years why I don’t publish these columns in a book (and it wasn’t even my mother). As they used to say on the wine-cooler commercials, thank you for your support.

Unfortunately, the surest way for that to happen would be to self-publish and I just have to tell you that I haven’t got the time or the money. The traditional way for that to happen is to compile them, edit them more, print them out, copy them off, compose cover-letters and proceed to submit them to publisher after publisher until one of them miraculously would choose to buy them and put them out as a book. Humbly, I don’t know that I’m that good of a writer. Frankly, I don’t know that I have the time, energy, ambition, or attention-span enough to do it, And candidly, my ego is way to fragile for that much rejection. Getting cartoons syndicated is an even more brutal process that I won’t even get started on. Thanks for your pity.

I never have talked about sex much and I suppose that I’m better off not doing so, mostly it’s just not polite, and while I’d like to be frank and even a little personal with you, gentle reader, I’m afraid that we’d both agree that that would be a little too personal. You’re welcome.

Ted Mallory lives in Charter Oak and teaches at Boyer Valley Schools in Dunlap. ‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. If you’d like to see any of Ted’s editorial cartoons bigger and brighter, you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2

We agree with the Senate

Fifty-nine percent of Americans support the U.S. House measure which calls for most troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by September 2008, according to a new CBS News poll. President Bush has pledged to veto the bill.

Potent pictures

I didn't take these, one of my students who just returned from a school trip to Washington DC did. You know, when I was in high school and we were studying about the Vietnam war my best friend at the time (a girl named Dawn) and I went to see a movie in theatres called "Platoon" starring Charlie Sheen. We were both blown away, we were crying at how horrible and hellish war could be. (of course it may have been different if I'd seen it with a bunch of guys. One friend who was in ROTC thought it was a bitchin' cool fun action movie.) Dawn and I asked each other what we thought we would've done if we had been in high school or college during Vietnam. Would we support the Johnson and Nixon administrations, or would we have opposed the war. Would we have protested? What if I had been drafted?

Fortunately it was an abstract, academic exercise, since the most serious military involvement of the Reagan era was the invasion of a teensy, tiny island nation called Grenada. I really didn't know. I knew I'd be scared both to go and fight the Vietcong and to stay and fight the powers-that-be. I had two uncles who were great friends and could talk food and wine and local, municipal politics- but they never talked about the war. One went and served as a medic, the other went to Canada.

Frankly, I think that a lot of us kids of the eighties had unrealistic stereotypes of war opponents. We figured to stand up for peace would turn you into something like the fellow in the picture above, who, I was told, has been protesting for nuclear disarmament six hours a day since 1982. Well, today someone who's opposed to war, looks like a middle-aged, overweight, middle-class, Midwestern, white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant male. Married, father of three, active in his church. Laundered clothes, not too old or ragged. Showered and shaved, doesn't use drugs, has never even tried marijuana. It looks like someone who loves Jesus, loves his family, loves his country, appreciates civility and a certain amount of "law and order," and who does not hate, resent, or blame the troops who are fighting for us.

You can say that I'm lucky or spoiled that I never had to face a draft or that I'm not as much of a real man because I haven't served in the military voluntarily. And maybe you're right. Maybe as a Gen-Xer, I have it too easy. Maybe it's safer to be opposed to this war than it would've been to protest that last one. Frankly, we should all be thanking God that Iraq isn't tearing our families and society apart the way Iraq did. We may disagree, even vehemently, but we just change the subject or avoid the subject. No one is screaming in (or spitting) in faces.

But I guess that if I knew that the government lied and covered it up, if they were unclear or even obtuse about the causes and reasons for entering and staying in the war. If I heard that they were secretly invading and bombing Cambodia (practicing war games, hoping to provoke Iran)... yeah, I'd have a hard time sitting on the fence, even if it could get me in trouble.

Some say, "My country, love it or leave it!!! MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG!!!"
I say, more calmly and quietly, "My country, love it enough to tell it that it has a problem instead of enabling it. My country, when it's wrong, speak up and try to get it right."

Newspaper Student Photos

A Reflection shot taken by Kaylie Fouts

An awesome abstract photo with patterns and rhythm, also by Kaylie Fouts

A cool take on the reflection-shot by Bonnie Earlbacher

Thomas

Found an old etching of Jefferson, colorized it some in PhotoShop,
(I think it reminds me of a Peter Max painting) and finally I cropped it taking into consider the rule of thirds, trying to place his face on one of the four "hot-spots," and having him look into the negative space. It's kind of campy and cartoony, but then, so am I.
This all started because wanted to illustrate one of his quotes on my political blog http://tedscolumn.blogspot.com

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."
- Thomas Jefferson

Peace Out!

Duh....

"Hello, reality calling.... Hello? Can you hear me now?"

Just some random shots

Everybody loves a blue-eyed girl

Flexing my PhotoShop muscles with some shots of my 2 year old. She's such a ham. I usually hate posed pictures and prefer candids, she's such a "poser," but I love her anyway.

Reflection shot

So I've been trying to explain two concepts to my Newspaper students, a reflected shot, and a photo essay. Okay, here's a mini-essay that involves a reflected shot.Tight Shot

Wide shot, suprise- it wasn't what you thought

Look back over your shoulder, ta-da!

See also: abstract and back-lighting

The Big Triangle

The Big Triangle
In Chapter Two of Scott McLoud's 1993 book Understanding Comics, He devised a map of visual iconography (i.e., pictures, words, symbols) that took the shape of a triangle.

This is an awesome way of analyzing and categorizing artwork for whether it is realistic, abstract, symbolic, or completely non-objective. Read and learn...

What a political cartoon is supposed to do

I really don't enjoy this guys drawing style, but I have to say, this cartoon does precisely what an editorial cartoon is supposed to do, expose hypocrisy. I could hardly see straight when I heard President Bush accuse Congress of wanting "show trials," by putting the screws to Gonzales and Rove. Grrrr....

Hagel drops the I-Bomb!!!

I heard this news driving in to work this morning from "SRN" a conservative religious news service that provides feeds for Christian radio stations- I could hardly believe it. Sure, it's just one Republican Senator and he's probably running for President himself, but now that the dam has been breeched, how much longer until the flood?

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

The conversation beaches itself for a moment on that word -- impeachment -- spoken by a conservative Republican from a safe Senate seat in a reddish state. It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington, and it rings like a gong in the middle of the sentence, even though it flowed quite naturally out of the conversation he was having about how everybody had abandoned their responsibility to the country, and now there was a war going bad because of it.

"Congress abdicated its oversight responsibility," he says. "The press abdicated its responsibility, and the American people abdicated their responsibilities. Terror was on the minds of everyone, and nobody questioned anything, quite frankly."

He is developing, almost on the fly and without perceptible calculation, a vocabulary and a syntax through which to express the catastrophe of what followed after. Rough, and the furthest thing from glib, he's developing a voice that seems to be coming from somewhere else, distant and immediate all at once.

Listen to him calling out his fellow senators in committee.

"If you wanted a safe job," Hagel said memorably, "go sell shoes."

Read the entire article at Esquire.com

Sunday go ta Meetin'

Annamarie (2) and her big sister Grace (8) walking downtown on a Sunday in Spring in small town Iowa.

More Early Spring

Early Spring

Every once in a while, everyone should take a walk out in nature. That's just what I did last Friday afternoon. After a weekend of rain, things are a lot greener, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Newspaper Class; student photos

I can't get over how good these are. These are by Jamie, a Junior, of his little sister, Ali. Jamie & Ali's older sister was my yearbook editor a few years ago and is just graduating as a Graphic Designer.

A fox was protecting the hen house

A fox was protecting the hen house
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday,March 22, 2007 – Page 3

I was really starting to believe that the treasonous outing of CIA agent Valarie Plame in retaliation for her husband, career Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the Bush Administration lying us into the war in Iraq would be their undoing. Especially after Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was found guilty on four of five perjury and obstruction of justice charges relating to the leaking of Plane’s identity to conservative pundit Robert Novak and others. Extra especially when Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday he wants Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify before his committee about his investigation. There was even a chance that Waxman would eventually subpoena the vice president and senior adviser to the president Karl Rove.

But then another scandal broke. Boy, it’s amazing what the power of subpoena and proper congressional oversight of the executive branch can bring to light.
It seems that at least eight U.S. Attorneys were fired because they weren’t loyal enough to the Bush administration and weren’t aggressive enough in investigating Democratic candidates in the 2004 and 06 elections.

Some people compared the Libby decision to when Nixon aide Alexander Butterworth let it slip before a Senate committee that there was a secret tape recording system in the Oval Office. People are comparing the firing the of eight U.S. Attorneys to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973.

What happened that night is that President Nixon, sick of taking so much heat during the Watergate investigations, called Attorney general Elliot Richardson and asked him to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson let the President know that he was overstepping his Constitutional bounds, refused to fire Cox and resigned. Nixon then called Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus and told him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and Nixon fired him. That meant that the Solicitor general, Robert Bork became acting Attorney General, and loyalist that he was, he gave Cox the ax. Nixon then declared that there was no longer an independent prosecutor and all of the Watergate investigations would come under the responsibility of the Justice Department and it’s new boss, Bork. This was one of the high crimes and misdemeanors that were described in the articles of impeachment that were started against Nixon before he so graciously resigned.

According to ABC reports last Thursday, March 15, one e-mail from Kyle Sampson, who worked at the Justice Department to then-deputy White House Counsel David Leitch shows that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and then White House Counsel, now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were both thinking about firing all 93 U.S. attorneys as early as January 2005.
Gonzales first told a congressional committee that White House counsel Harriet Miers (who was later a Supreme Court nominee) had brought up the idea, but that both he and Rove rejected the idea out of hand. Then he changed his story and half-admitted that “mistakes were made.”
In one e-mail they discuss replacing “15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys,” because “80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc.”

Bush defenders argue that many Presidents have fired U.S. Attorneys, but what they fail to mention is that they do it as soon as they come into office and they replace people who their predecessors had appointed. This administration fired their own appointees because they obeyed the law rather than letting themselves be pressured into letting the White House abuse the Justice Department for political means.

Gonzales attempted to place limitations on the Freedom of Information Act by restricting access to the records of former presidents.

Gonzales authored a controversial memo in January of 2002 that concluded that the Geneva Conventions were “quaint” and outdated He wrote a Presidential Order allowing for secret prisons and torture. He’s also deported people to nations that allow torture.
He fought with Congress to keep Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy task force documents secret.

Gonzales was a major proponent of the USA PATRIOT Act. Things like secret wire tapping without warrants and opening U.S. citizen’s mail.

It’s ironic that someone with so little regard tor the Constitution should have been appointed top law enforcement officer of our Nation. Our only hope is that like with Nixon, our system still works. If it does, he will eventually be prosecuted under it.

Ted Mallory lives in Charter Oak and teaches at Boyer Valley Schools in Dunlap. ‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. If you’d like to see any of Ted’s editorial cartoons bigger and brighter, you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2

'No Child Left Behind' losing steam

GOP lawmakers are among the biggest critics of Bush's school reform program.

Read the whole article in the Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0321/p01s01-legn.html


Ted's reaction; HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!
_______________________________
Pirate Prayers at:
http://malloryprayer.blogspot.com

Ted's cartoons, artworks, photos, and commentary at:
http://tmal.multiply.com

"The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." ~Garrison Keillor

Happy 4th Anniversary

Scientist accuses White House of 'Nazi' tactics

Scientist accuses White House of 'Nazi' tactics

Source: LATimes

WASHINGTON -- A government scientist, under sharp questioning by a federal panel for his outspoken views on global warming, stood by his view today that the Bush administration's information policies smacked of Nazi Germany.

James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, took particular issue with the administration's rule that a government information officer listen in on his interviews with reporters and its refusal to allow him to be interviewed by National Public Radio.

"This is the United States," Hansen told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "We do have freedom of speech here."

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) said it was reasonable for Hansen's employer to ask him not to state views publicly that contradicted administration policy.

"I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching evolution and climate change," Issa said.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-c...

Have I not many a time equated the neocons with facism? Please read Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here."

Free Online Art Quiz | Impressionist | Surrealist | Pop Art | Personality Test | Kids | Teen

Free Online Art Quiz | Impressionist | Surrealist | Pop Art | Personality Test | Kids | Teen

You're art is as unique as you are but your general sense of style probably fits in with one artistic movement or another. Are you into funky pop art, dreamy surrealism or traditional neoclassicalism?

Take Kidzworld's What's Your Artistic Style quiz and find out what drives your artistic vision. Your artistic style says a lot about you, so check out what your doodles are saying!

Start the quiz!

Mallory's Milieu

I went through and organized my pictures so that they make more sense. There are tons of things to look at on this site- political cartoons, photography, paintings, graphic design, book reviews, songs, videos and links- and... all four of my blogs in one central location.

Mallory's Milieu

I went through and organized my pictures so that they make more sense. There are tons of things to look at on this site- political cartoons, photography, paintings, graphic design, book reviews, songs, videos and links- and... all four of my blogs in one central location.

[ HuffingtonPost.com ] Happy Birthday, Iraq War

Happy Birthday, Iraq War (9 comments )
READ MORE: Iraq, Harry Shearer- Huffington Post

My, you're all grown up now. You look so big. And you're so much more complex than we thought. You can do so many things--Shiite vs. Sunni, Shiite vs. Shiite, Shiite and Sunni vs. Americans--you're a little prodigy. Of course, raising you was a little more expensive than we imagined--I guess, like everybody else, we had stars in our eyes back then.
And we all love gathering around wondering what you're going to be--civil war, World War Three, or, like Uncle Dick continues to call you, a victory. Good times.