According to this NY Times article, a law to prohibit sexual activity among teenagers under the age of 16 in the state of Kansas is going to trial. How are they going to enforce this law? By requiring health care workers report any sexually active teens under the age of 16 to authorities. The [...]

If anyone is wondering how it came to be that the Republicans have control of the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court, read this article from the NY Times.
Click here for the article
In some ways, the Republicans deserve to have all that control. They’ve been working and planning for decades, [...]

From Yahoo News:
“Exxon Mobil Corp. posted record profits for any U.S. company on Monday — $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year… Exxon’s profit for the year was also the largest annual reported net income in U.S. history.”
Click here for the full article
No comment.
- Jean Chen

Photos taken this week from the West Bank show Hamas members waving large green flags proudly, after party members took 76 of 132 votes in a preliminary election for Palestinian legislative elections.
Crowds of Hamas supporters crowded streets in celebration, signifying the probable end of 40 years of rule under Yasser Arafat’s Fatah leadership party. The [...]

I like Kanye West’s music; I think he’s a talented producer as well as a decent emcee, and I think he’s definitely one of the few positive role models in mainstream hip hop — he doesn’t pretend to be a thug, drug-dealer, or gangster and he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a suburban backpacking [...]

Best selling author James Frey has gotten busted for wildly exaggerating portions of his memoir, “A Million Little Pieces.”
Click here for the article
At the same time, it was discovered that JT Leroy, who wrote a memoir about being a teenage male hooker, is actually a middle aged woman with middle class roots.
Click here for [...]

From the NY Times:
“Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday in his first encyclical that the Roman Catholic Church has no desire to govern states or set public policy, but can’t remain silent when its charity is needed to ease suffering around the world…
In the encyclical, Benedict said the church’s work caring for widows, the sick and [...]

Check this out… you can place bets on how many times Bush will say, “Space Terrorism” during his State of the Union address. You can also bet on how many times he will say, “nuclear” and on how long Jack Abramoff will be sentenced to prison:
Click here for the site.
- Jean Chen

The couple who was convicted of planting a finger in a bowl of chili at Wendy’s just got sentenced to nine years in jail. Nine years! Sure, it was a bad thing to do, but nine years is a long, long time.
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I wonder how much jail time Tom DeLay will get.
- [...]

Stanley “Tookie” Willaims, who was convicted of multiple murders, was executed last month. Seventy-six-year-old Clarence Ray Allen, a Choctaw indian who was convicted for orchestrating four murders, three of which he ordered while in prison, will be executed on Monday, January 16. The wheelchair-bound, blind, and nearly deaf deathrow inmate hasn’t received nearly half the [...]

Heh heh, check out these spoofs:
From Mad TV (Memoirs of a Geisha)
From SNL (Chronicles of Narnia)

From Yahoo News:
“British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that Western countries were likely to seek economic sanctions against Iran after Tehran restarted its nuclear program but Iranian leaders said they would not curtail the research even in the face of sanctions.”
Click here for the full article
How do folks feel about this? Sometimes I wonder [...]

Check out this clip of Bill O’Reilly on David Letterman. He gets ripped to shreds, which is pretty funny.
Watch the clip.
It’s long (about 12 minutes) but worth it. What I find interesting is that two years ago, there’s no way someone as mainstream as David Letterman would be talking about how being in Iraq is [...]

A billboard in Los Angeles, CA for Howard Stern’s new radio program depicts a black fist with the words “Let Freedom Ring and let it be Rung by Strippers,” putting a play on Martin Luther King Jr.’s words: “Let freedom ring” and upsetting memebers of the African-American community who view the ad as a spit [...]

As a kid in the 80s, I grew up thinking nuclear war would wipe us all out. Movies like “The Day After” didn’t help assuage the fear much.
Well, the fear is back, compliments of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy and power interests abroad among smaller nations.
For a while now, North Korea’s been spearheading the latest [...]