Only closed minds wanted

Hat tip to JackLewis.net for bringing to our attention that in Government schools the motto apparently is Only closed minds wanted.


An Atlanta judge has ruled that open mindedness, careful study and critical consideration are religious practices and therefore have no place in taxpayer funded schools.

Judge Clarence Cooper ruled against the Cobb County School District in January, ordering the immediate removal of all stickers. However, the school district appealed the decision, seeking a hold on the removal until the appeal is heard. Judge Cooper’s latest ruling will allow the stickers to remain throughout the school term, minimizing the disruption of classes.

While Judge Cooper acknowledged that the stickers clearly served a ‘secular purpose’, an “observer may interpret the sticker to convey a message of endorsement of religion.”

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on the appeal by the end of the year.

CNN said "Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life," Cooper wrote in his ruling.

Cooper said he was ruling on the "narrow issue" of the case, brought against the Cobb County School District and Board of Education by four parents of district students, was whether the district's stickers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

His conclusion, he said, "is not that the school board should not have called evolution a theory or that the school board should have called evolution a fact."

"Rather, the distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards to make in the most recent anti-evolution movement, and that was exactly what parents in Cobb County did in this case," he wrote.

"By adopting this specific language, even if at the direction of counsel, the Cobb County School Board appears to have sided with these religiously motivated individuals."

The sticker, he said, sends "a message that the school board agrees with the beliefs of Christian fundamentalists and creationists."

"The school board has effectively improperly entangled itself with religion by appearing to take a position," Cooper wrote. "Therefore, the sticker must be removed from all of the textbooks into which it has been placed." .....

According to the AP, the schools placed the stickers after more than 2,000 parents complained the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life.

What? The First Amendment provides Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

It does not say "Government can't appear to take a position indicating it agrees with religiously motivated individuals."

There were many different stickers, and the one used depended on what was said in the textbook to which it was attached. See this page to see the stickers.

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Student suspended for telling the truth

As reported in Zero Intelligence Addison Ryan, a 10th grade student at North Mecklenburg High School in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District was suspended for telling the truth. Deb Ryan, Addison's mother, reports that on December 17th there was a "Code Green" fire drill at the school. A classmate asked what a Code Green was.

My son replied, "It's a bomb threat", speculating on the cause of the drill believing that to be the case. A teacher overheard his response and filled out a disciplinary referral form from which he was charged with making a False Warning and immediately dismissed from school.

He was immediately suspended from school pending a disciplinary hearing. Punishment for giving a false alarm is a minimum of long term suspension and a maximum of expulsion. This occurred during exam preparation time. The disciplinary hearing could take up to three days, encompassing not only the review but the exams themselves.

The Ryans got help from the Children's Law Center, a non-profit firm in Charlotte. Their lawyers were able to make a plea deal with the school to return Addison to class after a two day suspension for "disruptive behavior" (of an earlier incident that had not been severe enough for discipline when it happened but now that they needed an excuse it was big enough to warrant a two day suspension.

Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence.

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The Other Side of the FEC

Redstate indicated that the problem reported in The coming crackdown on blogging MAY not be as serious as we all thought.

Trevor Potter, a former attorney in the Reagan Justice Department and former Chairman of the FEC, issued a response tonight to Brad Smith.

Commissioner Smith's interview does a good job at providing misinformation on the subject of the Internet and the FEC, as it was obviously intended to......

After a Federal judge threw out these Smith-supported exclusions for paid advertising on the Internet, the FEC was ordered to open a rulemaking on the question of advertising on the Internet. The Commission has NOT yet even put out any options for consideration--when they do so there will be opportunity for lots of public comment. The Commission will have plenty of opportunity in the course of the rulemaking to distinguish between political candidate or party Internet expenditures (which should be subject to federal campaign finance law like any other expenditure they make, or which is coordinated with them), and completely unregulated activity by bloggers, Internet news services, and citizens acting on their own.

There is NO REASON AT ALL that this FEC rulemaking should attempt to regulate bloggers, Internet-based news entities, or average citizens sitting at their PCs, and I have great faith it will not.......

For more information on the history of FEC regulation and deregulation of the Internet, see my Chapter in the Brookings Institution's New Campaign Finance Sourcebook here at Chapter Nine.

Update:

See Michelle Malkin for further information

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Texas Radio Stands With Blogosphere

I reported earlier about The coming crackdown on blogging

CQ reports the Lone Star Times, the blog for independently owned Houston, TX talk-radio station KSEV 700 AM indicates we believe that we enjoy the "broadcast exemption" that prohibits the federal government from regulating our speech in the manner they are proposing for "mere" citizen bloggers.

While we still need to talk to some sharp lawyers and nail down the details, if these restrictions come to pass, KSEV and LST are committed to working out a legally sound way in which individual bloggers– of every ideological persuasion and partisan affiliation– can somehow register with us and be credentialed as a press representative of KSEV and LST.

Like Raoul Wallenberg handing out passports, we will start issuing press credentials to any blogger that asks for one.

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Pentium 4 to be replaced by dual core processors

Xinhua said Intel will start rolling out Pentium D & Extreme Edition processors to replace Pentium 4 processor, the move seeking to give Intel a lion's share of the dual core processor market.

Now that Intel has almost reached the economic limit of technology in terms of increasing core speeds, the only way for it to deliver increased performance at an acceptable cost is to increase the number of cores per processor package.

Dual-core chips offer two cores on a single silicon die, offering users more performance without significantly ramping up energy consumption or heat gneeration. In his keynote speech, outgoing CEO Craig Barrett said dual-core technology offered Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., a way of continuing Moore' Law without having to increase the chip's frequency.

Pentium D & Extreme Edition are the first in line of nearly 15 dual- and multicore projects under way at Intel's R & D. The difference between the two is that the Pentium D's twin cores don't have Hyperthreading enabled, so a Pentium D will appear to the operating system as two processors. Pentium Extreme Edition, however, does have Hyperthreading and so will appear as four processors. The new Extreme Edition will appear in the second quarter of this year.

The Pentium 4 will move to 65nm fabrication in 2006 when it will be used as the basis for the 'Presler' multi-chip package. Intel said that the processor would continue to be available in its present form for the next two years. Intel expects Multicore products to eventually permeate its entire range, from notebook CPUs to the Itanium server chip.

John Dvorak said Intel nearly put all its eggs in a new architectural basket some years back when it announced the roadmap for the Itanium processor and nearly lost control of the industry it invented. This time it's not trying to reinvent the wheel in such a drastic manner. It simply decided to make a better wheel, not a newer wheel.

What makes it so important at this juncture is that clock speeds have peaked and until now increasing clock speeds has been the primary methodology for improving performance. Despite the fact that the chip makers would promote all sorts of important design changes, it was always clock speed that seemed to matter. If you could double the clock speed you'd make everything inside the chip do things at double speed thus doubling the performance. It was that simple.

Dual core changes the model for doubling the performance. You keep the clock speed the same and double the CPU itself. Put two of them within the chip. This will, of course, become four then eight in the years ahead.

Information Week said Intel anticipates about three-quarters of all its shipments by the end of 2006 will be dual-core versions.

Intel has more than 15 dual and multicore projects under way.

Slashdot said Tom's Hardware reports that AMD is planning to release both it's dual-core desktop and mobile chips at the same time.

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GOP drive to woo blacks alarms Brazile

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile is alarmed by GOP efforts to lure black voters into the party.

She says "It won't take much for the GOP to garner 12 percent to 15 percent of the black vote in future elections, as some blacks are starting to believe the community is not well-served when one party takes their votes for granted and the other party doesn't work to earn them"

She is right. The black community is not well-surved by the Democrats taking their votes for granted, and she is worried about the Republicans working to earn them.

And Bush's "Ownership Society" has appeal.

The Dems are also worried about younger voters liking Bush's proposal for allowing some of Social Security taxes to be directed into personal accounts.

Gee, are the Republicans being unfair to the Democrats? Too bad.

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The coming crackdown on blogging

CNET News reports that Bradley Smith (one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission) says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over. In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Captain's Quarters reports In order for me to operate under those conditions, I will need to hire a lawyer and an accountant to guide me through the election laws and calculate my in-kind donations on almost an hourly basis. How many bloggers will put up with that kind of hassle just to speak their minds about candidates and issues? John McCain and Russ Feingold have effectively created an American bureaucracy dedicated to stamping out independent political speech, and the courts have abdicated all reason in declaring it constitutional.

Please contact your representative or Senator in Congress to get this terrible infringement on free political speech reversed. When the American government threatens to prosecute people for simply speaking their minds, we have truly lost our way.

Michelle Malkin reports Joshua Claybourn of In the Agora analyzes the campaign finance law absurdities and First Amendment infringements on bloggers here and Winfield Myers is on the same wavelength and discusses it here.

Professor Bainbridge says the oddity of campaign finance regulation is that we have ended up in a place in which pornographers apparently have greater constitutional protection than political bloggers. It's like we live in the First Amendment's Bizzaro World.

You can email John McCain here and Russ Feingold here. Please let them know that some of us still believe in free speech.

Reader Gary at RightWingNutHouse wonders if this could backfire Or it might be wedge that begins the reverse some of the ridiculous campaign finance laws. The internet is too dynamic to regulate this way.

Cut on the bias said I called my US Senators as soon as I learned of this, and I'll be calling my representative soon. I encourage all of you to do the same. In fact, I encourage each of you to contact your Senators, find out who on their staff handles these issues, and talk to them immediately. Follow it up with an email or letter with more details. If you do track them down, and you have a blog, list the name of the contact on your blog and let me know (biasblog -at- hotmail.com) - I'll link you here so we have a central resource to find out who to contact. and lists Alabama contacts for Senators and Representatives.

I hope everyone is wrong about this being a significant problem, but the MSM certainly is upset at bloggers, so they may be pushing it.

Update:

CQ has posted a An Open Letter To The United States Senate that I urge readers to check out, and use as a start for a letter you write to your Senators and Congressmen.

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Dems wonder "What if Bush was right"

Mark Noonan learned from the Wednesday, March 2 posting by Tom Elia on The New Editor identifying a very interesting item on the left wing FunctionalAmbivalent entitled Bush, Greatness and the End of the Liberalism which raises the question So here's something I've been thinking about lately: What if President Bush ends up being remembered by history as a great President?

What if the Neocons were right about the Middle East, that it was at a tipping point just waiting for someone to give it a shove toward the modern world? What if Iraq really was the key?

He goes on to identify a number of additional "what if" dominoes, and then asks the question What do we do if President Bush was right? What do we do if the Mideastern dominoes start falling and President Bush goes down in history as Winston Churchill, while we go down as Neville Chamberlain, howling weakly that diplomacy works and military force is no longer necessary? What if our most conservative President goes down in history as a great contributor to the liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance, while we Democrats -- we liberals -- go down as cold-hearted and fearful, unconcerned about the suffering of our fellows while we sit contentedly in our affluence? If that happens, are we even liberals any more?

There are some very interesting comments and trackbacks to his interesting post. Some are the normal "angry left" sort of responses one usually finds on Daily Kos or Atrios but there are some that seem to indicate that Tom (the poster of the question) may not be the only Democrat that can think and reason.


I believe that Bush was right, and that the dominos are falling, and when they finish falling I hope that the loud Bush Haters will be so stunned that reasonable Democratic voices like Tom's will be able to be heard.

To answer Tom's question, yes you will still be liberals, but hopefully once the dominos have fallen, and the loud Bush Haters are stunned into silence, I hope that we can have some reasonable discussions, because there are a number of things that need to be accomplished on a bi-partisan level, that just can't be accomplished with the Bush Haters screaming so loudly.

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Google AutoLink Questioned

The Google Toolbar is a useful addition to Internet Explorer. It will not work with other browsers, although there is an independently developed Googlebar that Firefix and Mozilla can use.

Google just recently came out with Toolbar 3.0 beta with support for AutoLink that adds hyperlinks Google deems useful to the Web pages you visit. The idea is to automate the process of jumping from a street address to, say, a map, sparing users having to retype or copy the address.

An article in the Washington Post points out that there is a controversy about whether Google has the right to add links to pages authored by others. For now, AutoLink works in only four categories: street addresses (whisking you to Google Maps by default, but you can switch to MapQuest or Yahoo Maps); ISBN numbers (linking to Amazon.com book pages); package tracking numbers (pointing to DHL, FedEx, United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service); and vehicle identification numbers (jumping to car history reports at CarFax.com), but what would be the case if Google started selling ads for keywords, and whenever that keyword appeared in a page you authored, and if they suddenly converted that keyword into a hot link to the page of the person who bought the ad. Generally a web page designer likes to decide what hot links to include in his page, and where they should link to, and most web page designer would not be happy to know that Google was going to "modify their work" and add links to some page of someone that paid Google money to have their page linked to.


See JackLewis for links to more Blogs discussing this.

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Voter Apathy

As the AP reported:

If no one votes in a referendum, does the measure pass or fail? That was the question facing local officials after no one voted in Tuesday's local option sales tax election in Jesup. A small part of the town is in Black Hawk County. The rest is in Buchanan County.

Voters everywhere else in Black Hawk County voted to extend the tax another five years.

But in Jesup, officials were wondering if it passed or failed since none of the 27 registered votes who live on the Black Hawk County side voted.

Phyllis Peters, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Secretary of State's Office, said Wednesday the measure failed.

"Unless there are more votes for 'yes' than 'no', it's doesn't pass," Peters said.

Revenues from the 1-cent local option sales tax would have been used for water and sewer services in Jesup.

Jesup officials declined comment.

Your vote counts

Jesup residents lucked out this time, but just think about it.

If you like lower taxes, ifone person had voted for the tax, all 27 residents would have had to pay for it.

If you wanted to see the water and sewer services improved, if one person had voted for the tax, it would have passed.

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Tulsa is among the best at saving cardiac victims

Yahoo! News reports Tulsa is among the USA's best at saving cardiac victims

I am not sure where to find the 2003 study, but in 2001 this shows both Tulsa and Oklahoma City were in the first tier.

This indicated Tulsa had a 26% survival rate; average call-to-shock: 8 minutes, 48 seconds. Oklahoma City had a 27% rate; average call-to-shock: 7 minutes, 36 seconds, and Seattle had a 45% survival rate, highest among the nation's 50 biggest cities. On average, Seattle's emergency crews took 8 minutes 46 seconds to shock victims of sudden cardiac arrest. That time includes 90 seconds of CPR, in accordance with city protocol.

In late 2003 USA Today said Other cities — including Milwaukee, Tulsa, San Francisco, Houston and Kansas City — save more than twice the national average by following the same steps and closely measuring performance.

And another article indicated Tom Wagner, chief operating officer of Oklahoma City and Tulsa's Emergency Medical Services Authority, which provides care for 1.1 million residents in Oklahoma. "We looked at the top two and said, 'What do they do?' " (Ok City was 3rd in that study) and Today, Oklahoma is pouring money and manpower into two key areas that the top cities — Seattle and Boston — view as priorities.

Yesterday USA Today reported Tulsa stands on the opposite side of this great theoretical divide from Oklahoma City, which is increasing its paramedics corps.

The two cities, 100 miles apart, save about the same percentage of cardiac arrest victims — 26% in Tulsa and 27% in Oklahoma City. But their fire departments have different views on how many paramedics they need.

In Tulsa, each resident spends $3.29 per year in taxes for 128 paramedics. In Oklahoma City, residents each pay $11.40 for 226 paramedics.

In Tulsa, five of 30 fire engines have paramedics. In Oklahoma City, almost half of its fire engines have paramedics — 17 of 35.

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FOX Is Killing Them

Dirty Harry at Stranded On Blue Islands pointed out that these ratings (PDF file) shows Not only is FOX winning primetime handily but it's non-primetime shows are beating ALL the other's primetime shows. In other words FOX's morning and afternoon shows are beating Paula Zahn, Aaron Brown, Lou Dobbs, and Chris Matthews. Yeah, Linda Vester gets better ratings than Paula Zahn. The sole exception is Larry King. Unbelievable.

Actually Fox's Hannity & Colmes is on opposite CNN's Larry King and if we compare them:

HH	HH	P2+	A25-54	A18-34	A18-49
COV AA%	AA (000)	AA (000)	AA (000)	AA (000)	AA (000)	#Tlc
1.4	1,222	1,617	442	134	366	19
1.0	864	1,017	265	58	208	20

We see that Hannity & Colmes beat Larry King in every category except Tic (whatever that is).

And if you check a comparison of Feb 04 and 05 ratings we see Hannity & Colmes came up 19% and Larry King Live went down 23%:

4 to 5pm: FNC, Your World, +3% vs CNN, Inside Politics/Crossfire, -19% and MSNBC, Lester Holt Live, -39%

5 to 6pm: FNC, The Big Story, +12% vs CNN, Wolf Blitzer Reports, -17% and MSNBC, Connected Coast to Coast, -19%

6 to 7pm: FNC, Special Report, +20% vs CNN, Lou Dobbs Tonight, -17% and MSNBC, Abrams Report, -28%

7 to 8pm: FNC, The Fox Report, +2% vs CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, 2% and MSNBC, Hardball, -20%

8 to 9pm: FNC, The O'Reilly Factor, +9% vs CNN, Paula Zahn Now, -17% and MSNBC, Countdown, -22%

9 to 10pm: FNC, Hannity & Colmes, +19% vs CNN, Larry King Live, -23% and MSNBC, Investigates/Reports, +6%

10 to 11pm: FNC, On the Record, +37% vs CNN, NewsNight, -26% and MSNBC, Scarborough Country, -17%

Variety says CNN flops in February as Fox News surges   FNC only cable news network to see gains in primetime

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Bait and Switch Salazar

Senator Ken Salazar urged President Bush yesterday to "withdraw all of his renominated judicial candidates"

Matt at BlogsForBush said Meyers has as many as 58 votes according to Arlen Specter, and as Matt said today If Salazar thinks Bush should withdraw the nomination of someone who not only has enough votes to be confirmed but is also near-filibuster proof, then there was never any hope for Salazar... he's just a freshmen obstructionist who thinks President Bush's nominees should be held hostage by the minority party in the Senate. Salazar must be insane if he thinks re-nominating judicial candidates who would be confirmed if they were given the chance to have up-or-down votes makes Bush the divisive one.

Captain's Quarters said Salazar appears to have perfected the bait-and-switch so common to those who want to appeal to the center during a general election and then suck up to the money the rest of the time. (See Hillary Clinton as another example.) The Coloradans who voted for Salazar over the GOP's Pete Coors figured that the two didn't have much difference in policy and that Salazar had more experience. Perhaps they should have checked into Salazar's character a little more closely instead.

As Dirty Harry at Stranded On Blue Islands said Just when you think you've found a reasonable Democrat he exposes himself to be another lying, backstabbing, smarmy, snake oil salesman willing to do or say anything to get elected..

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Phishing Bill

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy introduced the "Anti-Phishing Act of 2005" to impose fines of up to $250,000 and jail terms of up to five years against anyone convicted of creating fake corporate Web sites and fraudulent e-mail messages designed to fleece consumers. The legislation would prevent online parodies and political speech from being prosecuted as phishing.

I could not find the full text of this bill, but last year he introduced a similar bill, and its text is here. Related (but not identical) legislation is the Internet Spyware (I-SPY) Prevention Act of 2004 (Passed by the house and received in Senate from House)[H.R.4661.RDS]

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Blogs, vlogs, and moblogs

As the The New York Times indicated blogging (online text journals) are expanding, and now there are video blogs, or vlogs, which incorporate moving images, and camera cell phones are being used to create mobile blogs, or moblogs.

As the article indicated, Some vloggers are further blurring the lines between journalism and blogging by producing news reports of local interest. Steve Garfield of Boston, a self-described citizen reporter, took a video camera to investigate, among other things, whether election campaign workers were following the law by staying 150 feet from polling stations. He posted his report here.

Warning: I tried viewing his video, and my computer locked up. I suspect it is a conflict between Real Player and something else on my system, so it will probably work for you, but just to be safe make sure to save any open documents before you try it.

As the article indicated Dozens of free Web-based services, including Blogger.com (owned by Google and host of this blog), Microsoft's MSN Spaces, LiveJournal.com and Blog-City.com, enable people to create a blog within minutes.

Most free services provide only basic features, like posting text, and limit the photos, audio and video that users can upload. But these sites typically offer premium services for $2.50 to $5 a month that provide far richer features.

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Not Sir Bill

MacCentral: Bill Gates picks up honorary knighthood from Queen Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will receive an honorary Knighthood from the U.K.'s Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday.

Gates has been awarded the title KBE, or Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for his contribution to enterprise, employment, education and the voluntary sector in the U.K., and for his efforts to reduce poverty in the developing world, including parts of the British Commonwealth.

As part of the ceremony to present the decoration, Gates will kneel before the monarch, who will tap him on the shoulder with a sword. The motto of the order of chivalry is "For God and the Empire."

Under a system established in 1917, Gates cannot use the title "Sir" because he is not a U.K. or Commonwealth citizen, but he can write the letters KBE after his name."

Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Rudolph Giuliani, Gen. Tommy Franks, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Bob Hope, and Steven Spielberg have received the KBE.

Once Bill Gages receives this "free upgrade", I wonder if he will be equally generous with upgrades from Microsoft.

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Call for freedom

Telegraph reports Arab world squirms at impact of Bush's call for freedom. In the few weeks since President George W Bush declared in his inaugural speech that America would defend itself by promoting "the expansion of freedom in all the world", his speech appears to be having a revolutionary impact on the Middle East.

Iraqis have defied the bombers to go to the polls, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has announced multi-party presidential elections, Palestinians will unveil a democratic reform package in London today and, last night, Lebanon's prime minister resigned in the face of "people power" on Beirut's streets.

They left out the democratic election in Afganistan and the revote in the Ukranian elections, but maybe the Arab world did not notice them.

But I guarantee you that the rest of the world noticed all of it, including the oppressed majority in Iran, and the "Arab Street" in many other countries.

God Bless President Bush, and may God be with the people in all of the Islamic countries, both Arab and non-Arab.

Hat tip to Paul at Blogs for Bush

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Best and Worst Governors

The Club For Growth announced their list of Best and Worst Governors for 2004. First place went to Arnold Schwarzenegger with a score of 84 and a grade of A. Oklahoma's Brad Henry (D) got a score of 65 and a grade of C, which put him in 16th place.

4 governors (all Republicans) received a grade of A, 11 governors (7 Republicans, 4 Democrats) recieved a grade of B, 11 governors (7 Republicans, 4 Democrats) received a grade of C, 12 governors (4 Republicans, 8 Democrats) received a grade of D, and 4 governors (1 Republican, 3 Democrats) received a grade of F.

The grades of the governors of some of America’s most populous states are Jeb Bush of Florida, B; George Pataki of New York, B; Rick Perry of Texas, B; and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, D.

Oklahoma ranked 8th in Real per Capita Spending Increases,1991 –2002 (99% increase), Henry got a 78 Soending Score and a grade of B with -3.4% for Average Annual Recommended Change in Real per Capita General Fund Spending through 2005, and -2.9% Average Annual Change in General Fund Spending per $1,000 Personal Income 2002 – 2005. He got a 60 Tax Score and a grade of C with 2.1% Average Annual Recommended Tax Changes as % of Prior Year’s Spending through 2005, -0.2% Average Annual Recommended Change in General Fund Revenue per $1,000 Personal Income through 2005, and 0.2% Average Annual Change in Real per Capita General Fund Revenue 2002 –2005, 0.0 Change in Top Corporate Income Tax Rate (%point), 0.0 Change in Top Personal Income Tax Rate (%point), 13.0 2004 Combined Top Income Tax Rates (personal plus corporate), 0.0 Change in Sales Tax Rate (%point), 0.0 Change in Gas Tax Rate (cents per gallon), 77.0 Change in Cigarette Tax Rate (cents per pack).

The report says Governor Brad Henry scored an upset electoral victory over conservative favorite Steve Largent by a narrow margin. Compared with Largent, Henry looked like a status quo candidate: the GOP contender had proposed eliminating the state income tax, while Henry sang the praises of his plan to institute a state lottery. The idea of eliminating the income tax was promoted vigorously by outgoing Republican governor Frank Keating, and it’s a testament to his leadership on tax cuts that gubernatorial candidates of all political stripes—including Henry’s primary opponent and the independent candidate—endorsed some version of that idea. All except Brad Henry, that is. But to his credit, in 2003 Henry refused to endorse a 1-cent sales tax increase strongly supported by the teachers’ unions. His FY04 budget included no broad-based tax increases but did include a cigarette tax increase. Henry’s main strength on this report card is spending control, at which Keating did a terrible job. Henry’s budgets have grown substantially more slowly than population plus inflation. Henry’s best tax proposals were a freeze in the top income tax rate at 6.65 percent and the elimination of the capital gains tax for Oklahoma-based property held for five years or more. Both of those represent strong supply-side tax policy that Henry should be encouraging. More of that could earn him a higher grade in 2006.

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Supreme Court Bars Death Penalty for Juvenile Killers

As the The New York Times reported the Supreme Court Bars Death Penalty for Juvenile Killers.

Missouri resident Christopher Simmons was 17 years old when kidnapped a neighbor, hog tied her, and threw her off a bridge, killing her. Simmons was sentenced to death for the crime.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled that juveniles may not be sentenced to death. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and noted that the trend among states was to abolish the practice of imposing the death penalty on juvenile criminals and said, "Our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal."

The decision is available (in PDF format) here and here

As Mark Noonan with BlogsForBush indicated Justice Scalia disagreed with the decision, "arguing that there has been no clear trend of declining juvenile executions to justify a growing consensus against the practice."

On GOPbloggers Mark indicated As an opponent of the death penalty I find the ruling bizarre - if its cruel and unusual to execute a 17 year old murderer, then its cruel and unusual to execute an 18 year old murderer. Thing is, the death penalty is never, ever cruel and unusual - it is, in my view, just not the most effective way to punish, with the additional problem of the possibility of executing the innocent. Rather than death, I'd sentence our worst criminals to a very, very hard life term.

Morons.org has some additional information

PowerLineBlog noted that Justice Kennedy relied on international law and practice to "confirm" his view that the juvenile death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He also cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. signed only subject to the reservation of its right to impose the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.

In NRO's The Corner Shannen Coffin noted that SCOTUS cited an unratified treaty as reasoning for it's decision. No one, however, has directly addressed the implications of Scalia's comment that (paraphrasing) "the court now joins and ratifies treaties."

Opinio Juris noted I am not sad to see the juvenile death penalty go away, but I do think it is odd that treaties to which the U.S. government specifically reserved the question at issue (the international legality of the juvenile death penalty) are being used as evidence of what the U.S. Constitution requires.

Personally I am not sure I understand the difference between being killed by a 17 year old and an 18 year old; it seems one is just as dead, and some very bad crimes are being committed by people under 18.

But the thing that disturbs me the most about this decision is that an unratified treaty was used to make the decision.

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Firefox Still Gaining on IE

Technology News reports Firefox Still Gaining on IE But Uptake Slowing, indicating For Internet Explorer, the 90 percent market share level was expected by some analysts to be a tipping point of sorts. However, the current usage is just one-hundredth of a point below that level and when only Windows-based browsers are considered, IE's share rises to around 93 percent.

p2pnet.net News reports he pace is slackening off with its market share growing just 15% in the five weeks leading up to February 18. In the six weeks prior, it grew at 22%.

Gee they both seem respectible levels, and you can't always maintain extremely high levels.

HTML Fixit notes Recently both Websidestory and Onestat released their findings that although Firefox usage was still growing, it’s uptake was slowing down a little. I don’t believe that is the full story and I’m about to tell you why. The first thing to keep in mind, is that Onestat collect their statistics from users of their various online counter offerings. Websidestory apparently get their statistics from several big sites like Disney, Sony, Best Buy and Liz Claiborne.

The problem is is that both of these methods miss a crucial (vast) and growing Internet population, namely the power users. In the case of Onestat with their online counter systems, the problem is that generally only two types of clients use this type of service, newbies and occasionally businesses. In the case of Websidestory, the big sites they monitor are not those likely to be those visited by power Internet users, if you are one yourself, do you remember the last time you visited Disney or Liz Clairborne?

That skips a vast portion of the Internet’s users, namely the techies and power users. These guys know what they want online, they know where to go, and a vastly higher number of them use the Firefox web browser.

As one of those power users I think one reason power users are moving to Firefox are because of its LiveBookmark support for RSS feeds, as I covered in January and the Tabbed Browsing I covered in February

DigitalHomeCanada reports The Mozilla Foundation, which recently made Firefox 1.0.1 available, says there have been 25 million downloads of the Firefox browser in the first 100 days since its release.

As Software Journal noted They came, they conquered, than they created a mess and now it is the time to clean up the mess. Microsoft released their Internet Explorer browser free in the times when Netscape ruled the World Wide Web with their Netscape Navigator. They hit the competition so hard when they integrated Internet Explorer with Windows 98 that Netscape had to give away their browser application for free. However, it was a step taken too late as Internet Explorer dominated the computers all around the world and reached a stage where it touched the market share of more than 90%.

However, recent days have seen Firefox hitting Microsoft in the same market where Microsoft practically killed all sort of competition. Firefox gave the web users an alternative, which was free, secure and worked nicely. Moreover, people are embracing it with open hands.

If you have not tried Firefox yet, why not give it a try

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