For anyone having difficulty with the links to the texts of the resolutions, try these:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-847
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-888

H. Res. 847 was the "Christmas Bill" which was ALREADY passed in December 2007. It resolves "that the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world."

Remember, this is not about the Religious vs. the Non-Relgious, this about the violation of the American Constitution and the core American principles therein. It affects everyone who does not prescribe to the specific brand of Christianity being peddled here. Even if you think you're Christian, the folks pushing this agenda could very well find you "not Christian Enough."

And if you're Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc... or for heaven's sake Atheist... well, let's just say you're not invited to the "I still have my freedoms" party.

These Fundamentalist-Christian-Bill-Pushers are organized. It's time the rest of us get that way too!

that was a *quality link. please post it in the sifttalk section (under politics)

In reply to this comment by entr0py:
The thing that upsets me most is that the majority of the congress is complicit in allowing this to pass. We have to expect this sort of thing from Bush, but why are the Democrats helping him? The law "being rushed through" isn't an excuse for it so easily passing in a democratic congress. I see it as a failure by those who voted for it and didn't understand it, and a betrayal by those those who voted for knowing it's contents.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=main&bill=s110-1927

The thing that upsets me most is that the majority of the congress is complicit in allowing this to pass. We have to expect this sort of thing from Bush, but why are the Democrats helping him? The law "being rushed through" isn't an excuse for it so easily passing in a democratic congress. I see it as a failure by those who voted for it and didn't understand it, and a betrayal by those those who voted for knowing it's contents.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=main&bill=s110-1927

Gunrock,

When Miss America claims the desire for world peace, it is hollow, as Miss America has little power to achieve such things. As part of the US Congress, Kucinich can (and does) actually make a difference. As president (which, like Ron Paul, won't happen) he could make much more.

He is dead on when he talks about the need for effective communication. The clumsy and often willfully offensive attempts at communication by our current government has set us back decades. The immature games we have played in regards to Venezuela and Iran are particularly troubling as it seems we are actively trying to sabotage their efforts to democratize.

Beyond that, have we become so cynical in this country that we can no longer tolerate the mere mention of the word peace without feeling shame?

A lofty goal? Fuck yeah, but if it's not on the to do list, then we'd might as well pack in and go home.

I learned recently that the bill also contains legislation requiring open access to journal articles produced from research using NIH funding... which has been long, long overdue.

some other HR 3043 points here; http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3043&tab=summary

The quotation that follows is excerpted from this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/31/usnews

_________________________________________

Warren Buffett, the famous investor known as the "Sage of Omaha", has complained that he pays a lower rate of tax than any of his staff - including his receptionist. Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52bn (£25bn), said: "The taxation system has tilted towards the rich and away from the middle class in the last 10 years. It's dramatic; I don't think it's appreciated and I think it should be addressed."

During an interview with NBC television, Mr Buffett brandished an informal survey of 15 of his 18 office staff at his Berkshire Hathaway empire. The billionaire said he was paying 17.7% payroll and income tax, compared with an average in the office of 32.9%.

"There wasn't anyone in the office, from the receptionist up, who paid as low a tax rate and I have no tax planning; I don't have an accountant or use tax shelters. I just follow what the US Congress tells me to do," he said.

Mr Buffett also took a pot shot at hedge fund managers. He said: "Hedge fund operators have spent a record amount lobbying in the last few months - they give money to the political campaigns. Who represents the cleaning lady?"

_________________________________________

Please understand one thing.

At 1:05, the discussion turns to Pollution Permits. This is not explored or explained fully. The fact is that we cannot force companies to stop polluting without attaching a market incentive to it. This doesn't mean that we sell off the entire world to corporations or private interests as the documentary states. The personal interests could be the American people just as well, keeping certain areas free of corporate development as part of say the US congress program on the preservation of American locales.

What it means is that we apply market principles to the Pollution, so pollution has a cost that can reflect on the company. This is important, as long as externalities are not accounted in the calculations of it's profits and revenues, nothing will be done about pollution. Because now, it's considered a external cost not considered within the company structure. Reducing pollution has to have a monetary benefit for the company and social benefit in the wider community with respect to company. Because the less the company pollutes the more it is allowed to trade it's pollution permits for profit, companies who don't go down this path only increase their costs to the point of being unprofitable every year. At the highest levels thus the need for minimizing pollution arises.

Remember that the public can always ascertain it's demands via it's politicians. By making certain issues central in the political climate and not just be receptive to the issues that politicians push on the people. Such as Bush's plan for Social Security. It was shot down because the people did not agree with it and the politicians reflected that, because if they didn't they wouldn't have been reelected the next year.

And this doesn't stop at pollution permits, this also applies to corporate taxes in the US that allow companies to have unreasonably high profits at the expense of loss of the tax base, and passing on these on to the middle class base which is rapidly diminishing.

That is why it's important to know these issues.

Great post!

I have friends who helped with their legal fight for return. The case really exposed a very nasty, cruel and uncaring side of the British government.

Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger 10/11/04 - 'The Guardian'

"There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." "


Finally in 2006 Lord Justice Hooper and Mr Justice Cresswell ruled that orders made under the royal prerogative to prevent the return of the Chagos islanders to their homes were unlawful. They described as "repugnant" the action to exile the population of the islands. "The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an order in council, exile a whole population from a British overseas territory and claim that he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the territory is, to us, repugnant," the judges said.

But the government are appealing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6333223.stm) and the right of return is still being denied!

(sorry for long post - but this one really gets to me!)

“I hate arguing on the internet. I'm going to hazard a guess that NOBODY here is a climatologist or an ecologist of sorts.”

As someone who started some of this discussion I should admit that I am an ecologist who does research and teaches at a US university. It is laughable that someone would suggest that the grant funding I receive is a function of my research results. The US congress appropriates money to fund the National Science Foundation (which funds climate research) without the ability to dictate the use of this money. So, there is no link between scientific finding and grant money appropriation. So, the argument that there is some vested self-interest in scientists claiming a fact to influence their individual research agendas has no support. It is an argument of the ignorant.

I am buoyed at the fact that I started some of this discussion by citing concrete data (no published study has called into question the assumption that human impact is changing the climate), yet all the rebuttals don't cite any FACTS [their emphasis, not mine].

Now on to this consensus issue. Scientific Consensus is the major mechanism though which we achieve understanding of our world. Scientific Consensus is real and by definition apolitical - its never voted on, lobbied for, and never declared defacto. Instead Scientific Consensus is a emergent property of how science is undertaken. When the evidence for one concept overwhelms the evidence for alternatives, then you stop seeing alternatives discussed and Scientific Consensus emerges.

Scientific Consensus is not FACT, that is correct. Concluding that Consensus isn't Science because it itself is not a FACT is a classic logical fallacy. The fact that Consensus isn't a FACT is its strength, and is exactly why Scientists Consensus is so powerful in generating understanding. Data and studies are FACTS, scientists individually interpret those data to reach concussions, and those conclusions taken together become Consensus. Scientists therefore leave that Consensus open to reinterpretation if new data becomes available.

So, the greatest scientists never ‘broke’ with Consensus. They produced new data that called the Scientific Consensus into question. When the Scientists of the time saw these new data, they did not vilify these scientists but they praised them. I suggest you read Kuhn’s Scientific Revolution for a great treatise on history on this subject.

It is clear that if you think Scientific Consensus is crap because you do not actually understand it. It is also clear that you do not ‘believe’ in human’s impact on climate because you have never studied the data.

wow, where is the must-see video button? This is a great video that I haven't seen. At what is scary is the Bill passed by Senate yesterday makes all of this LEGAL! retoractively. They dated it 9/11/2001 and all the sexual abuse in this video is now legal according to your US Congress. (anything just short of penetration of anus or vagina is no longer considered torture)

Im horrified anyone could say "Parliament could use a few more like him". He's an self serving ego-maniac. Where was he when Parliament was debating and voting on an issue directly relating to his constituency? He was in the big brother house dancing about in lycra outfits, and crawling around on the floor pretending to be a pussy cat. Also his ass-kissing to Saddam pre-war was very cringeworthy.

As much as I dislike him though, his hearing was brilliant to watch. He is a great orator and years of debate in the British Parliament will only sharpen those skills, and coming up against a Senator used to the US congress, there was only going to be one winner. Also I was and remain against the Iraq war, so find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with his points.