'Just Hiking', say Iranians Caught At Nuclear Power Plant Because everyone hikes through boulders surrounding nuclear power plants ... with their digital cameras. Article Here

College Bake Sale Shut Down For Charging Different Prices For Different Groups The Young Conservatives of Texas call it a protest of affirmative action. The university said it was creating an unsafe situation. A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks. I want to know why Asians didn't have to pay more. "This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created." It's never about free speech when it involves someone you disagree with. As for me, I would have shown up in black face just to get a cookie for a quarter. But I bet that would only have aggravated the problem. Article Here

Berkeley Feels So Strong About Insuring Racial Profiling They Break The Law To Defeat An Initiative Against It The student government could face "criminal sanctions for theft, misuse of university funds and fraud," for spending student funds to oppose Proposition 54, according to UC legal guidelines. Could they face sanctions for being a bunch of smelly whiners trapped in 1968? Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel said the funding is justified because Proposition 54 would limit graduate students' research. "The core mission of the GA is to advocate on the behalf of students for issues that expressly affect students," Quindel said. "We cannot afford to not advocate against Proposition 54." I'm not a college student so I have poor grasp of things I know nothing about, like logic, but why do college students at Berkeley think 'by any means' only applies to them? Article Here

Soldiers at Arlington Get Permission To Get Out of the Rain for the First Time -- But Decline At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given — for the first time ever — permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter while Hurrican Isabel raged, Superintendent John Metzler said. But they stood guard anyhow. Amen. Article Here

Real Freedom Fighters Take On Castro The American left wing loves Castro, for some reason. Europe has continually shown how unimportant it is, since they don't boycott Cuba and Cuba is still a wretched wreck of a place where the only people allowed to own computers are a few of Castro's party faithful. Yet real freedom fighters, people who have seen real oppression, and not just the white-washed kind that Hollywood ( typified by Oliver Stone and his ilk ) want to show you, know that Castro is not a good guy ... and they say it is time to do something. Two of them, Lech Walesa of Poland and Vaclav Havel of Czech Republic, are unimpeachable voices for freedom. Arpad G?ncz, Former President of Hungary, while never as public as the previous two, was nonetheless a voice against Soviet oppression in a time when saying such things could make you disappear ... as happens in Cuba today. They write, in a joint letter: "Earlier this year, Fidel Castro's regime imprisoned 75 representatives of the Cuban opposition. More than 40 co-ordinators of the Varela project - which draws on the current Cuban constitution and calls for the holding of a referendum on the freedom of speech and assembly, the release of political prisoners, free enterprise and free elections - and more than 20 journalists, together with other representatives of various pro-democracy movements, were sentenced in mock trials to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years, merely for daring to express an opinion other than the official one." and "It is time to put aside transatlantic disputes about the embargo of Cuba and to concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families. Europe ought to make it unambiguously clear that Castro is a dictator, and that for democratic countries a dictatorship cannot become a partner until it commences a process of political liberalisation." When these men speak, the entire world should sit up and listen. Article Here

Gray Davis Shows Why He's The New 'Governor MoonBeam' Asked to explain his vision for the state: "My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every, of people from every planet, of every country on earth," he said. Radical liberals, who love to ridicule the Yale-educated, Wharton-MBA'ed President Bush every time he mis-states a word, dismissed Davis' gaffe as him simply being exhausted from Clinton's visit, his campaign to hold his job ... everything except running the state, which is how he got in this trouble in the first place. Article Here

EU, Concerned About Votes They Don't Like, Want To Change The Constitution The European Commission called yesterday for the abolition of the national veto in all constitutional matters. The demand was in proposed changes to the draft European constitution unveiled yesterday by Romano Prodi, the commission's president, supposedly in the name of the entire body. As it stands, small countries in the EU are concerned that the French and Germans, and in some cases a larger country like Britain, can force through legislation beneficial to its country ... most of which has already happened. Their only protection in constitutional issues is that if their people disagree, they have a veto. EU career politician wanna-be's, happy to create a new ruling class in Europe, don't like common people having the power to vote. The demand was in proposed changes to the draft European constitution unveiled yesterday by Romano Prodi, the commission's president, supposedly in the name of the entire body. Dismissing the current text drafted by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, as "unworkable" and "absurd", Mr Prodi said member states retained far too much power to block decisions. It would inevitably lead to gridlock once the European Union expanded to 25 next year. Mr Prodi said the veto must be eliminated on all future changes to the constitution, saying it was unreasonable to let any one country block future amendments in perpetuity. Mr Prodi also called for an end to the veto in remaining policy areas, citing taxation, public health and even the fight against bio-terrorism. You can next expect that the EU will eliminate anything more than a majority of countries in favor of changes ... then just a majority of people. This will effectively wipe out the identity and sovereignty of small countries, who will have to rely on the whims of the much larger European centers of power. Article Here

Marin County People Discover They Really Are Better Than Everyone Else "Most people would say if this was anywhere but Marin, people would just shoot him," Dixie Goldsby said about the rodent that hopped into her Honda Insight in Utah and came back to California with her. Goldsby is factually incorrect but it doesn't matter if you're a Marin resident. Being haughty is what counts. John Kerry will likely get 95% of the vote there. What she doesn't realize, and most Americans do, is that no one would have bothered to shoot the little critter. 1) Any decent size bullet would obliterate the chipmunk so there would be no way to make a big trophy out of him and put him in the den with the lions and tigers and bears we all have mounted. Marin County people tell their kids scary bedtime stories about the rest of America and they all invariably involve evil people shooting helpless animals while driving SUVs that use all gasoline ... and smoking cigarettes in public bars. 2) There's not much meat on chipmunks ... for the $.65 I would waste on a shell I could get three times as much meat in a McDonald's hamburger. No, most Marin County voters actually believe that in other places the little thing would be dead. The most telling way you know it's Marin County? They want to fly the little guy back to Utah ... on a private plane ... and they want someone else to pay for it. The chipmunk could not be released in Marin legally or ethically because he is not native and because ecosystem balance is important, according to Melanie Piazza, director of animal care for WildCare: Terwilliger Nature Education and Wildlife Rehabilitation. The trip will require more than $300 for gas, along with food and overnight lodging for the humans. WildCare is hoping animal lovers will donate money to help pay for the mission. Piazza did not mention what wasting all of that gas and electricity would do for 'ecosystem balance.' "If we couldn't get him back he'd be euthanized, so I did have an investment in getting him back," said Goldsby, a clinical lab scientist. Huh??? Who was going to euthanize the little guy? Someone in Marin County? Or would they drive him east for that nasty job? Article Here

Democrats Seem Excited By The Chance That Their Own Macho Unilateralist Cowboy Might Run For President Not because of what he did ... what he did was fight an easy war on trumped up charges in Europe. He fought it entirely from the air, doing billions of dollars in destruction yet causing no American casualties while displacing hundreds of thousands. Yes, it's just the kind of war Democrats love. What they are excited about must be what Europeans said he WANTED to do: From "The Guardian", August 3, 1999: "No sooner are we told by Britain's top generals that the Russians played a crucial role in ending the west's war against Yugoslavia than we learn that if Nato's supreme commander, the American General Wesley Clark, had had his way, British paratroopers would have stormed Pristina airport threatening to unleash the most frightening crisis with Moscow since the end of the cold war. "I'm not going to start the third world war for you," General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of the international K-For peacekeeping force, is reported to have told Gen Clark when he refused to accept an order to send assault troops to prevent Russian troops from taking over the airfield of Kosovo's provincial capital. Hyperbole, perhaps. But, by all accounts, Jackson was deadly serious. Clark, as he himself observed, was frustrated after fighting a war with his hands tied behind his back, and was apparently willing to risk everything for the sake of amour-propre. " It never strikes Europeans as odd that they so casually disobey direct orders in their military, or that they have a penchant for exaggeration. Surely preventing the Russians from taking over an aiport, in a place where the people are deathly afraid of the Russians based on experience, would lead to the "third world war." What a load of rubbish. Yet some orders, especially if they involve doing nothing, are happily obeyed by Europeans. Like July 1995, for instance, when the French chose to turn the other way as Serbian troops stormed the U.N.-protected safe haven of Srebrenica. They were under orders not to protect the victims of the ensuing massacre because Chirac had brokered a deal with Milosevic for some hostages in return. Srebrenica was sacrificed: When Serbs took the town, they killed its entire male population of 7,000 men and boys and expelled the women on a long mountainous trek across Serb defense lines. For a party resentful of the kind of military people who act decisively, it's odd that the Democrats aren't criticizing Clark. Or maybe they were just happy that the British were there to settle him down. We could just elect Tony Blair, I suppose. If we can give California driver's licenses to people who aren't even citizens or supposed to be in this country, I guess we can give the Presidency to a European. Article Here

EU Tells the Greeks To Make Their Monasteries Admit Women Yes, it's really true so I'll write it again. The Euro-deputies call on the Greek government to make monasteries admit women. As if the crazed socialists weren't rabidly anti-religious, they have to prove they won't let anyone be sacred. What's next, demanding the monks perform abortions? The plenary session of the Euro-Parliament passed a proposal-report prepared by French Euro-deputy Fode Sylla concerning the EU Fundamental Rights situation for 2002 which includes, among others, a reference to the special status enjoyed by the monastic community of Mount Athos in northern Greece. In essence, the Euro-deputies call on the Greek government to proceed with the lifting of the entry ban to Mount Athos directed on women. After the vote, the head of PASOK’s Euro-deputies Mr. Katiforis submitted a written statement to the Euro-Parliament Presiding Board justifying their position. Among others, they mentioned that Mount Athos enjoys a special status, which was secured with a joint statement included in Greece’s EEC Accession Treaty It is also mentioned that in the Amsterdam Treaty Final Act annex there is a statement by Greece, which is a reminder of the Joint Statement on Mount Athos attached to the Final Act of Greece’s Accession Treaty. As the Irish can attest, the EU never let its own rules get in the way of something they wanted to happen. Watch and see how this changes by 2005. Orthodox monks won't be able to stand in the way of EU financial blackmail. Article Here

Missouri Becomes The 36th State With A "Shall Issue" Handgun Law This means they have objective criteria for issuing handgun permits, not simply a sheriff deciding he doesn't want anyone to have a gun. The governor had veto power and the 23-10 vote narrowly overrode his veto. The bill would require county sheriffs to issue a gun-carrying permit to someone who had passed a background check and completed safety training. Missouri joins Colorado, Minnesota, and New Mexico in enacting "shall issue" legislation this year. Such legislation is thought to have a reasonable chance of passing soon in Ohio and Wisconsin. California, of course, is one of the "may issue" states, in which sheriffs and police chiefs have nearly unlimited discretion in issuing permits. This does protect criminals, of course, but doesn't do much to protect honest citizens of the state. Vermont, very much a liberal state, also has the most relaxed gun-control laws in the nation, needing no permit of any kind to carry a concealed handgun ... and they have virtually no crime as a result. Article Here