"The Supreme Court said yesterday it will decide whether the president may order the indefinite detention of suspects living lawfully in the United States, one of the broadest claims of executive power the Bush administration has asserted in the nation's anti-terrorism efforts.
"The court said it will review the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national studying in Illinois when he was seized in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and held in a Navy brig for more than five years without formal charges...
"The Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration four times on cases that involve the assertion of executive power with limited judicial review. Most recently, the court ruled 5 to 4 that terrorism suspects held at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court...
"The constitutional scope of the administration's unilateral detention powers," said Robert Chesney, a national security expert at the Wake Forest University law school, "is the question we've all been waiting for an answer to."
from the Washington Post
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Food Stamp Recipient Numbers Reach All-Time High
A record was set in September of one in ten Americans receiving benefits. The number of people receiving assistance has jumped 17% from last year.
Hunger in America
Hunger in America
Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
Swedish researchers create illusion of having a different body. It's true:
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers using closed-circuit televisions to create an illusion have made volunteers virtually swap bodies, even making women believe they were in a man's body and vice-versa.
"The experiment, reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE on Tuesday, shows it is possible to manipulate the human mind to create the perception of having another body, the Swedish researchers said....
"They set up a series of experiments aimed at fooling their volunteers, each an extension of a common illusion in which people can be fooled into thinking a rubber hand is their own.
For the illusion, the volunteer's real hand is concealed and stroked at the same time the visible rubber hand is. The brain will often trick the volunteer into truly feeling as if the rubber hand is his or her own hand.
Petkova and Ehrsson went further, using a closed-circuit camera to fool their volunteers into believing a rubber mannequin was in fact their own body -- and eventually, that another human being was..."
"Masquerade
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers using closed-circuit televisions to create an illusion have made volunteers virtually swap bodies, even making women believe they were in a man's body and vice-versa.
"The experiment, reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE on Tuesday, shows it is possible to manipulate the human mind to create the perception of having another body, the Swedish researchers said....
"They set up a series of experiments aimed at fooling their volunteers, each an extension of a common illusion in which people can be fooled into thinking a rubber hand is their own.
For the illusion, the volunteer's real hand is concealed and stroked at the same time the visible rubber hand is. The brain will often trick the volunteer into truly feeling as if the rubber hand is his or her own hand.
Petkova and Ehrsson went further, using a closed-circuit camera to fool their volunteers into believing a rubber mannequin was in fact their own body -- and eventually, that another human being was..."
"Masquerade
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Folk Legend Odetta Dies
passing of a legend
"First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.
An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.
"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.
"She is a keening Irishwoman in `Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in `Take This Hammer,' a deserted lover in `Lass from the Low Country,'" Time wrote.
Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the American Negro" and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, "Odetta's great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times wrote..."
From the Associated Press
"First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.
An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.
"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.
"She is a keening Irishwoman in `Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in `Take This Hammer,' a deserted lover in `Lass from the Low Country,'" Time wrote.
Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the American Negro" and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, "Odetta's great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times wrote..."
From the Associated Press
Obama Names New Mexico Gov. Richardson to Commerce Post
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122831764720775873.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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