Animation of the structure of a section of DNA. The bases lie horizontally between the two spiraling strands.
The Florida legislature has passed a bill to prevent condemned killers from spending decades on death row. Supporters claim that letting them hang on for years, filing appeal after appeal, does injustice to the families of victims. Opponents claim that it's more likely to lead to execution of innocent people, citing exoneration from DNA evidence while ignoring the fact that such exonerations occurred when people were tried and found guilty before the advent of DNA evidence. DNA is now standard; greatly reducing the likelihood of erroneous prosecutions.
"Only God can judge," Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, said last week during House debate. "But we sure can set up the meeting."
In response to a completely justified question at a press conference today, Barky commented that maybe he should just pack up and go home - and many of us would volunteer to help him in that regard.
Due to the annoyance of autoplay, the video has been removed from this post.
He went on to note that "we're in a divided government right now. Republicans control the House. In the Senate, this habit of requiring 60 votes for even the most modest piece of legislation has gummed up the works there...".
Habit of requiring 60 votes? There's a reason for that, Your Majesty.
The Oregon state Senate yesterday voted to keep taxpayers off the hook by requiring companies playing around with wave energy along our coast to pay for any cleanup costs, equipment removal, and associated expenses relating to their installations. This is long overdue, and the same rules should apply to solar and wind companies. Oddly, Oregon Democratics passed this bill.
In Washington, Republicans from the Vancouver area fighting the new I-5 bridge with its crime train component were handed fresh ammunition when KGW television in Portland inexplicably decided to dig through then fine print of CRC documents and the reports generated by a forensic accountant and discovered north of $85 million in pork - which proponents of the CRC project hotly deny is pork, of course. Among the KGW findings:
$51M for a new TriMet maintenance facility in Gresham--located some 10 miles east of the CRC project
$2.7M for a TriMet administrative facility in South Portland
$10M for a "curation facility"
$15M for a restoration project at Lewis River, about 22 miles north of the project
Nearly $344,000 for upgrades to Portland's Steel Bridge, six miles south of the project
$6.9M for Hood River Channel Restoration, located 60 miles east of the project
Tri-Met figures it needs 20 new crime-cabs to service the new 7.3-mile light rail extension into Clackamas County, a line which County residents have repeatedly demonstrated that they don't want. They also figure they'll need 19 new crime-cabs to run on the line between Portland Expo Center into downtown Vancouver, also a line that Clark County residents have repeatedly indicated that they don't want. Really? Tri-Met needs 39 more crime-cabs to cover less than ten miles of new rail? Well, that's what they're claiming.
And so they really, really need a $51 million place to park those things. And naturally, they'll need to build a brand-new set of administrative orifices for their vitally important administrators, to the tune of another $3 million or so.
And although Fort Vancouver already has a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled "museum" holding some two million "artifacts", they can always use another $10 million facility because, hey - somebody might find another musket ball, or maybe an arrowhead.
And the Steel Bridge, which already carries trains, cound use half a million dollars in "upgrades".
And really, is it too much to ask to drop another $22 million on "restoration projects" for the Lewis River in Washington and the Hood River in Oregon - even though both are dozens of miles away from the CRC bridge itself?
This ain't pork; they're "green, sustainable, clean" and vitally important to the overall success of a low-clearance bridge project over the Columbia River that would, if built, impede maritime traffic. Oddly, none of this sort of stuff needed to be packed into the funding package for the I-205 bridge (which was designed, constructed, and opened for less money and in less time than has been wasted on merely "planning" the CRC).
“I can’t figure out why this is the most expensive light rail project in light rail history,” Herrera Beutler said.
It's a start - in two days, some 33,000 people volunteered to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars. We're gonna need a bigger rocket.
The mission to live on Mars permanently is open to people around the world who are healthy and over the age of 18.
Try this one on: instead of sending volunteers, why not send death row inmates? If we run out of them, we could start sending professional environmeddlists; let them Save The Planet™ there, rather than mucking up our lives here. If we run out of them, there's always union thugs.
Supporters of Planned Parenthood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A new poll indicates that over half of Americans don't know that Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider, much less that it's the largest such mill in the USA; performing some 27% of all fetal executions. Today's Americans truly are low-info folks.
By enacting "in-state tuition" legislation for illegal aliens, Oregon Democratics are dissing one of their great heroes and the first black President in the history of the country - Bill Clinton - as well as directly violating federal law:
In 1996, Congress passed—and President Bill Clinton signed into law—the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). [i] Section 1623 of this federal statute prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State” unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States.
If students from Washington or California paying out-of-state tuition rates at Oregon universities get wind of this, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see a class-action lawsuit. And Oregon would definitely lose, which means that once again, the feel-good policies enacted by Oregon Democratics will have put Oregon taxpayers on the hook.
Types--Vocational School. Location: Buffalo, New York (State) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well, that's what the Democratics say, and that's usually the assumption behind public school programs. But increasingly, more kids today are going for vocational schools. And unlike your hipster with a degree in art appreciation, vocational school students are likely to find a job as soon as they graduate - and without emerging from school mired in debt.
In Massachusetts, where the school is located, the average starting salary in manufacturing is about $45,000. “I can make as much money as someone going to college, coming straight out of high school, and I don't have to pay for college loans or anything like that,” Adams said.
These aren't the woodworking and welding shop classes we used to find in high school; most offer programming, coding, and design training, which makes them increasingly popular not only among students - but the employers who need those skills. As discussed on this site on a number of occasions over the years, the days when a college degree virtually guaranteed access to a good career have been over for a while. Most any barista in Portland can attest to that.
Always on the cutting edge of societal evolution, a California Assembly Committee has passed a rule that would impose a statewide ban on lead bullets,which is certain to exert no negative impacts on the economy of the debt-ridden state. Since most all of the politicians there are Democratics, expect this feel-good bill to sail through.
Lawmakers in California are considering the first statewide ban against hunting with lead bullets, after health and environmental groups raised concerns over the effects of lead on both humans and animals.
Well, duh! That's kind of the point, isn't it? About 95% of ammunition uses lead in the bullets, so in essence, this is just another roundabout effort to outlaw guns in the state. And gun laws work so spectacularly well; as seen in Colorado:
I am an Executive Producer for OUTDOOR CHANNEL (OC) . I currently have four series in production, including GUNSTORIES, the top show on OC, with several additional series in development. My series focus on guns, hunting, shooting and the outdoors.
The producer, Michael Bane, in a letter to Colorado state Senator King, mentions that as a result of the new Colorado legislation, his shows - which have been produced in Colorado - are moving out of state, to the tune of a loss in revenue to the state in excess of a million dollars. Further, he notes, another producer is moving his series to Arizona, costing the state another million dollars in revenue. Finally, sporting and hunting groups are pulling out of the state, which will cost Colorado about another million dollars annually - even as Colorado Department of Wildlife runs ads seeking to bring more out-of-state hunters in.
So in addition to losing a cool $3 million annually, Outdoor Channel and hunting groups are now discouraging people from going to Colorado for hunting and other shooting activities. Of course, that won't happen in California, because they're "green" and hip.
"We may see three to four golden eagles a year with lead poisoning. We see a fair number of turkey vultures with lead poisoning," veterinarian Vicki Joseph of the The Bird and Pet Clinic in Roseville, Calif., told ABC News 10. "Usually, it's by eating prey species that have lead shot in them."
Of course, wind turbines in the state kill many times more eagles and other birds through direct blade strikes each year, and thousands of beneficial bats are killed because their lungs explode when they fly into the sudden low-pressure zones created by the spinning blades. But that's okay; turbines are "green" and cool.
Never mind that the companies running the windmills consistently apply for exemptions to the Endangered Species Act provisions governing the taking of eagles and other avian species (and are routinely granted the exceptions); you've got to break a few eggs to Save The Planet™. Just ask any professional "environmentalist".
Immigrant rights march for amnesty in downtown Los Angeles, California on May Day, 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wednesday is the long-celebrated Communist holiday known as May Day, and all of the usual suspects are gearing up for demonstrations and "protests". Look for heavy turnouts in New York City and around California in particular; in NYC, occutards plan to kick things off with a "solidarity march" in support of the Transport Workers Union, followed by an illegal alien "immigrant justice tour" and other activities. California can look forward to numerous demonstrations across the state by occutards and illegal aliens:
In California, large protests are expected because some undocumented immigrants and their supporters view this as their best chance in many years for immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Meanwhile, as the "reform bill" pushed by the Gang of Eight continues to shuffle along toward passage, some interesting provisions have emerged; specifically, while it requires illegal aliens to pay a small fee, the businesses that have been employing them get a free pass:
Employers who have allowed illegal immigrants to work off the books can come forward safely and provide their work history without fear of prosecution, and businesses that knowingly employed someone using a bogus or stolen Social Security number likewise would get a pass, according to an analysis of the bill by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that wants a crackdown on immigration.
And Nanny Pelosi has come out with a new "next pillar of government" (another entitlement): "free" childcare for all.
“I need your help on this because we talked about - Social Security a pillar of economic stability for America’s families,” Pelosi said at the City Club of Cleveland on April 15. “Medicare and Medicaid another pillar of health security. Affordable Care Act -another pillar, we put it in that league as making a difference. “
“What we have to do and not necessarily as, shall we say, as transformative as Social Security and Medicare and the Affordable Care Act for everybody– but I think very important to our country is to have affordable quality childcare for all of America’s children. If we are going to unleash all that women have to offer we have to really get to this point.”
She's absolutely convinced that we're never going to run out of other peoples' money to spend on entitlements and kickbacks. The fun just never stops. Suddenly, just about everything (except guns) are fundamental civil and human rights. Just ask Eric Holder.
There's got to be something behind this, but what it might be isn't immediately apparent. For some reason, Daily Caller's running a series of clips this week of an "exclusive interview" with the Mouth of the Columbia, Lars Larson. Love him or hate him, it must be admitted that he's done remarkably well; having gone from a daily four-hour stint as a local talk show host in Portland to building out a statewide network of affiliate stations that push his program into parts of all of the states surrounding Oregon - and gaining a nationwide audience as well.
It's down to a lot of hard work; few people are willing to put in the 12 or so hours every day it takes to accomplish something like that.
Still, it seems kind of weird for the DC to be pushing their interview with him as they are.
Animation of the structure of a section of DNA. The bases lie horizontally between the two spiraling strands. 
