It's Craptastic!

President Bush said on Wednesday he would not choose his Supreme Court candidate based on their position on specific issues such as abortion or gay marriage.

"There will be no litmus test," he said, repeating his position during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.

In Washington, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, doubted Bush's pledge not to give candidates a litmus test on abortion.

"This president has no credibility -- to date, he has appointed more than 200 judges to the federal courts -- not one of whom supported a woman's right to choose," she said.

But Democrats and interest groups on the left promise a fight to block any nominee they view as too conservative.

Republicans in Congress have launched a new effort to speed up executions in the United States by limiting the ability of those sentenced to death to appeal to federal courts.

The "Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005," introduced into the House of Representatives by California Rep. Dan Lungren and in the Senate by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record), would limit the ability of defendants facing the death sentence to have their cases reviewed by federal courts in what are known as habeas corpus appeals.
...
A study headed by Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman of all 5,826 death sentences imposed in the United States between 1973 and 1995 found that 68 per cent were reversed on appeal.

The most common reasons were "egregiously incompetent lawyering, prosecutorial misconduct or suppression of evidence, misintruction of jurors or biased judges or jurors," said the study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

Federal courts examining habeas corpus appeals overturned 40 percent of the cases that had previously been upheld by state appeals courts -- a fact the authors called worrisome.

The money was spent in the name of improving security at the nation's airports:

· $526.95 for one phone call from the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago to Iowa City.

· $1,180 for 20 gallons of Starbucks Coffee -- $3.69 a cup -- at the Santa Clara Marriott in California.

· $1,540 to rent 14 extension cords at $5 each per day for three weeks at the Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa in Telluride, Colo.

· $8,100 for elevator operators at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.

I didn't pick out those little clips but if you noticed I was being abused and zinged. And I felt watching that a little bit like St. Stephen. He was the -- like I, he was a Jewish Christian and he was the first Christian martyr, he was stoned because of his views. And he was attacked and died and so I've had a good time but I think I've really been abused by my colleagues.

The saint spoke about Jesus, showing that He is the Savior, God had promised to send. He scolded his enemies for not having believed in Jesus. At that, they rose up in great anger and shouted at him. But Stephen looked up to Heaven and said that he saw the heavens opening and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

His hearers plugged their ears and refused to listen to another word. They dragged St. Stephen outside the city of Jerusalem and stoned him to death. The saint prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" Then he fell to his knees and begged God not to punish his enemies for killing him.

After such an expression of love, the holy martyr went to his heavenly reward.

We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe from Berlin to Thailand are people whose well being rests in part on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave [Iraq] to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America'’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, even wide war.

We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a minute that retreat from [Iraq] would bring an end to the conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in [the Middle East]--as we did in Europe--in the words of the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further."

Our objective is the independence of [Iraq], and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves-only that the people of [Iraq] be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

We will do everything necessary to reach that objective.

To prohibit the use of funds by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to accept, consider, or rely on third-party intentional dosing human studies for pesticides or to conduct intentional dosing human studies for pesticides.

Bush said he understands the public concerns about a war that has killed over 1,740 Americans and 12,000 Iraqi civilians and cost $200 billion. "Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed," he said. "Every picture is horrifying and the suffering is real."
...
"Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it and it is vital to the security of our country," Bush told a nation increasingly doubtful about the toll of the 27-month-old war.

A new Web site aims to make widely available to the public certain government reports about topics from terrorism to Social Security that congressional researchers prepare and distribute now only to lawmakers.

The site www.opencrs.com links more than a half-dozen existing collections of nearly 8,000 reports from the Congressional Research Service and centrally indexes them so visitors can find reports containing specific terms or phrases.
...
"This initiative ought to embarrass the Congress into changing its policy and making these documents universally available," said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.

Deaths from unprovoked shark attacks are rare, according to statistics compiled by the International Shark Attack File.