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"In a fundraising plea to his mailing list this past week, Marc Multy, the President of the anti-gay marriage Group Stand for Marriage Maine, described his opponents as having "amassed a war chest from the homosexual political elite from nearly every corner of the country to impose their will on Mainers like us." Indeed, the pro-gay marriage group No on 1 Protect Maine Equality has raised more than $2.30 million in itemized contributions from outside the state of Maine; this is more than the $1.82 million that Stand for Marriage Maine has raised from out-of-state." - David from Bookmarklet

"The third sign of trouble was when one clicked on the link that Leeden provided as support and found the word "satire."" - David from Bookmarklet

"McCain's bill, the Internet Freedom Act, seeks to do the opposite of what its name implies by ensuring that broadband and wireless providers can discriminate and throttle certain traffic while giving preferential treatment to other traffic. Basically, those in power or those who pay more will have better access. Apparently we have different definitions of ‘freedom'." - David from Bookmarklet

"6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law) States: “If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.” Named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net. Danth’s Law was most famously declared in “The Lenski Affair”, between microbiologist Richard Lenski and the editor of Conservapedia.com, Andrew Schlafly, who cast doubt upon Prof Lenski’s elegant experimental demonstration of evolution. After what is widely held to be one of the greatest and most comprehensive put-downs in scientific argument from Prof Lenski, Mr Schlafly declared himself the winner." - David from Bookmarklet

"She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate". The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"" - David from Bookmarklet

"His persistence and truth telling have paid off, and he's found a role for himself. On Afghanistan in particular, the vice president's once lonesome position now has high-level support. The president himself seems to be looking for a middle way—not pulling out of Afghanistan, but at the same time not sending in the more than 40,000 troops requested by the U.S. ground commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Biden has also played the gadfly on health care. He hasn't advocated a particular course of action, but rather has challenged the assumptions of others. "He says the things that others at the table don't want to talk about, or which they find uncomfortable," says White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel." - David from Bookmarklet

Amazon.com: Emotionalism: The Avett Brothers: MP3 Downloads - David

"I think this is a very astute point that cuts to the heart of the problem on the right. The libertarians often prop up Hayek as their hero while we traditionalist conservatives like to trot out Edmund Burke. But the truth is the vast majority of the right subscribes to a form of libertarian populism inflected with social conservative attachments—an unholy hybrid of Ayn Rand, William Jennings Bryan, and Morton Downey, Jr." - David from Bookmarklet

"You have probably heard the horror stories about President Barack Obama's health-care proposals leading to rationed care and bankrupt businesses and governments. Those claims are flat wrong. The real horror story is not what health-care reform will bring. It's what's already happening." - David from Bookmarklet

"Sen. Edward Kennedy, the patriarch of the first family of Democratic politics, died Tuesday night at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after a lengthy battle with brain cancer. He was 77." - David from Bookmarklet

"Steele promised that under the Republican health-care plan, runaway Medicare spending would continue untreated and unabated. Not only would that mean no cuts in benefits, but it would ensure that reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals and drug companies would continue to rise faster than inflation, regardless of how much they earn or how unnecessary or wasteful the services they provide. Any effort to contain future spending growth, Republicans now believe, is nothing more than a "raid" on Medicare, the government-run health plan that Republicans were against before they were for it." - David from Bookmarklet

A Democratic member of the "Gang of Six" senators charged with finding a bipartisan solution to health care reform said at a town hall Monday that he would support using the budget reconciliation process to push a bill through the Senate if necessary. Reconciliation is a parliamentary procedure that would allow Democrats to pass health care reform with 51 votes, meaning the party could do it without any Republican support. - David

"Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over." - David from Bookmarklet

"Yet these words appeared in a dissenting opinion issued by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on Monday. Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted, after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive), these two justices would tell him, in effect: “Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent.”" - David from Bookmarklet

About f'ing time. - David from Bookmarklet

"The health economists and independent legal experts who study the issue, however, don’t believe that’s true. They say that malpractice liability costs are a small fraction of the spiraling costs of the U.S. health care system, and that the medical errors that malpractice liability tries to prevent are themselves a huge cost– both to the injured patients and to the health care system as a whole." - David from Bookmarklet

"Ernest Hancock, the online radio host who staged an interview with an assault rifle-wielding cohort at the Obama event in Arizona yesterday -- and was himself armed with a 9 millimeter pistol -- was a vocal supporter and friend of right-wing anti-government militia members who were convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s." - David from Bookmarklet

"Once a bit player, JavaScript increasingly takes center stage. Its footprint—the space it takes up on our servers and in our development schedules—continues to grow. So how can we make our JavaScript more reusable and easier to maintain? Perhaps MVC will offer some clues." - David from Bookmarklet

"The decision by Judge Sam Sparks strongly upheld the admissions policies at the University of Texas at Austin as consistent with the Supreme Court ruling -- and rejected the argument that Texas had failed to meet the tests set out by the Supreme Court. In so doing, Judge Sparks shut down (for now) one strategy of those who oppose affirmative action -- namely trying to say that colleges' policies go beyond what the Supreme Court permitted. But the legal group that brought the case vowed Monday night to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, if necessary, to the Supreme Court." - David from Bookmarklet

As Twitter and its 140 character limit has skyrocketed to popularity, another type of service rode grew exponentially as well: URL shorteners. From - David

Dim sum without carts? - David

"I was very much impressed. They're a bit of a hike from the UT Tower in this summer heat though. *Sweat*" - David

Steve Porter remix - David

Why Does Obama's Teleprompter Hate America? - The Huffington Post - David

Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account - David

Walt D's Plurk profile. Name: Walt D. About: Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.. - David

Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account - David

The modern conservative movement is built upon a paradox. Indeed, both Parties in the United States system - and there are functionally only two - have long preached basically the same message. - David

If this article is correct, then CNBC has staged the news, not just a single incident, but a whole string of discussions and programs that have been at the center of CNBC's programming since Santelli's staged rant. - David

More at cnbc.comFebruary 20, 2009Dude Needs DecafIf you've been out of pocket since yesterday and missed CNBC's Rick Santelli going off on the Obama foreclos... - David