Schapelle was sentenced to a shocking 20 YEARS in an Indonesian prison cell. The uproar in Australia eventually died down, partly thanks to a less than helpful media. She is still there: she will never have kids and assuming she actually survives, will lose the best years of her life. A human victim of a cultural cusp and international/national politics.

Read more about Schapelle's nightmare here: Schapelle.Net

Can you just walk by? We couldn't.

Climate scientists, with the aid of diving robots probing the world's warming seas, have found the heat exchange between Earth and space is seriously out of balance -- what the researchers called a "smoking gun" discovery that validates forecasts of global warming.

They said the findings confirm that computer models of climate change are on target and that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degree Celsius) this century, even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control," especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the NASA-led scientists said.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest to report growing certainty about global-warming projections.

... Think Progress doing live debunking.

"Legislating from the Bench" -- Matthew Yglesias.

LIMBAUGH: I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country.

And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, "This is right and that is wrong."

DeLay bit:

DeLay, R-Texas, was admonished by the committee on three matters last year.

Early in the day, he was clearly annoyed as he emerged from a closed Republican meeting and found himself in a mob of reporters.

"You guys better get out of my way," he said. "Where's our security?"

This fight is not about responding to a crisis. It is about the desire of the administration and the Senate leadership to stifle debate in order to get what they want when they want it. What is involved here is a power grab -- pure and simple.

And what makes it so dangerous for our country is their willingness to do serious damage to our American democracy in order to satisfy their lust for total one-party domination of all three branches of government. They seek nothing less than absolute power. Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image. They envision a total breakdown of the separation of powers. And in its place they want to establish a system in which power is unified in the service of a narrow ideology serving a narrow set of interests.

Their coalition of supporters includes both right-wing religious extremists and exceptionally greedy economic special interests. Both groups are seeking more and more power for their own separate purposes. If they were to achieve their ambition -- and exercise the power they seek -- America would face the twin dangers of an economic blueprint that eliminated most all of the safeguards and protections established for middle class families throughout the 20th century and a complete revision of the historic insulation of the rule of law from sectarian dogma. One of the first casualties would be the civil liberties that Americans have come to take for granted.

Indeed, the first nominee they've sent to the on-deck circle has argued throughout her legal career that America's self-government is the root of all social evil. Her radical view of the Social Security system, which she believes to be unconstitutional, is that it has created a situation where, in her words: "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren."

Some GOP legislators are upset that they were forced to back down on the ethics rules, handing House Democrats a huge political victory. Others, including Hastert, believed that keeping the rules in place would have inflicted significant, long-term damage on House Republicans.

“They’re angry about it,” Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said as he walked out of the meeting.

One lawmaker, citing reports of alleged ethical transgressions filed by several Democratic lawmakers and aides, predicted that the ethics panel would begin probes of them once it was allowed to organize.

Expectations that Republicans will use the ethics committee, officially called the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, to retaliate against Democrats for — as Republicans see it — politicizing the House ethics rules raises the specter that an ethics committee will result in a partisan ethics war ... Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said of the prospect of an ethics war between Republicans and Democrats: “It’s inevitable. Don’t think its not going to happen.”
A third Republican lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed.

As you can see, scrapping the new ethics rules intended to block an investigation into Tom DeLay is not a retreat.

Just a change in strategy. They’re tired of playing defense for DeLay. So now they’re gearing up to play some offense ... Now, this is very much a high-risk strategy for the GOP.

A steady stream of “everybody does it” stories can create an anti-incumbent “Throw The Bums Out” dynamic, as the House Bank scandal did in 1992 (43 congresspeople were defeated, another 52 retired.)

While the GOP margin in the House has been fairly slim for several years, Dems have never been given much change to regain control, because incumbency re-elections rates have been so high. A Throw The Bums Out dynamic, while possibly stinging some Dems, may well be the party’s best chance in 2006.

The Democratic Party is solidly behind the iconoclastic Vermont Independent with the Brooklyn accent. Both Howard Dean and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called him to express their support. The skids are greased.

The only one who could possibly derail the Senator Sanders train is Republican Gov. Jim Douglas.

The only question is, does he have the guts to go head-to-head with Bernie?

In the 2002 election, both won handily. But Sanders polled 25,000 more votes statewide in his Congressional race than Douglas got for governor.

Certainly the Bush White House and the Republican Party will promise him the sun, moon and stars to run, but Gov. Scissorhands gets flustered when challenged, and Bernie will be challenging him -- loud and clear -- on a daily basis.

Besides, every time we try to raise the issue with Jim Barnett, Douglas' number one hit-man, he changes the subject.

A junior at Carnegie Mellon University had his Web site satire of Wal-Mart shut down after the $285 billion retailing behemoth sent a letter to his Internet service provider to close access to the site.
"We have to protect our company name, and that's what those copyrights hold for us," Kevin Thornton, a spokesman for the company in Bentonville, Ark., said Tuesday. "When you pretend to be someone that you're not, that could lead to a problem."

Daniel Papasian, 20, of West Hartford, Conn., launched the Web site on April 16 for an arts class he is taking on using the media for social and political commentary.

"I chose Wal-Mart because, as the world's largest retailer, there are countless labor, environmental and discrimination issues throughout Wal-Mart," the political science major said.

Happy ending? The irony that follows when corporations try to squash free speech protected comedy (e.g. Franken v. Fox):

Papasian said he received only 300 to 400 hits on his site in the first three or four days before it was shut down. In the two days since he relaunched it, the site has gotten 700 or 800 visitors.