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BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Lebanese minister says the Cabinet has reversed measures against Hezbollah militants that triggered the worst violence since the country's 15-year civil war. Hezbollah has demanded the government reverse the decisions last week to sack an airport security chief for alleged ties to the Shiite group and to declare the militants' private telephone network illegal. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the moves amounted to a declaration of war and shortly after, he unleashed his fighters on the streets of Beirut. The clashes left 54 dead. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the Cabinet revoked the decisions "in view...

Doctor Who? Are Patients Making Clinical Decisions? ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2008) — Doctors are adjusting their bedside manner as better informed patients make ever-increasing demands and expect to be listened to, and fully involved, in clinical decisions that directly affect their care. In a study just published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Dr. J. Bohannon Mason of the Orthocarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte, NC, USA, looks at the changes in society, the population and technology that are influencing the way patients view their orthopaedic surgeons. As patients gain knowledge, their attitude to medicine changes: They no longer...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2008 – The number of troops needed in Iraq, the length of the tours for those troops, the kinds of troops they need to be, and other such decisions rely on the conditions on the ground in Iraq, Defense Department officials said today. Officials in Iraq, at U.S. Central Command and at the Joint Staff are working to assess conditions in Iraq and to plan troop deployments and redeployments for the future, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference here. This time last year, conditions in Iraq were terrible. Al Qaeda was growing,...

This is the title of an article in the current issue of Forbes. It is written by John J. Parris: Jesuit Priest and Professor of Bioethics at Boston College. The article starts with a problem. In 1999 a patient was admitted with Lou Gehrig's disease. The patient indicated she should be kept alive until she could no longer enjoy her family. She eventually became unresponsive. Her daughter refused the hospital's wish to terminate life support. A lengthy (10 month) court battle ensued. The daughter opposed but eventually was faced with the hospital taking the position (Court approved) that the daughter...

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2007 – Legislators serving in the Iraqi Council of Representatives have accomplished much in the body’s first year of existence, but additional important and difficult decisions still need to be made, according to a Multinational Force Iraq statement. “The council’s most important work lies ahead of it,” officials said in a statement the command released yesterday. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command of the Baghdad-based command on Feb. 10, is the architect of the current surge of U.S. and Iraq forces into Baghdad and parts of western Iraq to tamp down insurgent violence and...

In courtrooms across the nation an extraordinary thing has happened: In a spate of decisions, judges have deferred to important policy judgments rendered by democratically elected legislatures or by the people themselves in referenda. It obviously hasn’t been easy for judges to give up their self-appointed role as super legislators, fit to rewrite any laws based on the whimsy of the hour. They have done it only reluctantly and by narrow margins. But, for now, the popular will on the issue at hand in these decisions — same-sex marriage — seems safe from arbitrary judicial override. At least until the...

AS liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the “realist” foreign policy school. That school’s most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality. Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and...

George W. Bush is the first president with an MBA (from Harvard Business School, no less), but it's not clear that being a master of business administration has made him a better chief executive.[...] Business schools are a relatively new institution. The MBA was invented in the Progressive era as a way to abort future generations of robber barons. The idea was to train a class of business administrators (the ethos was anti-entrepreneurial) who would expiate capitalism's sins by managing their corporations in keeping with higher morality. The higher morality was whatever the spirit of the age revealed to professors...

by Ken Concannon Other Articles by Ken Concannon Roe v. Wade: A Not-So-Super Precedent 04/20/06 On the second day of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in September 2005, pro-choice Republican committee chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania introduced the subject of stare decisis, a Latin term meaning "to stand by that which is decided.” In This Article...A Grim AttachmentIf the Print Is Small Enough They Won’t NoticePlease Don’t Confuse Us With the Facts A Grim Attachment It’s a maxim that abortion supporters, like Specter, cling to dearly because most constitutional scholars are well aware that the Roe decision...

Close window Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-9 Why you should go with your gutStudy says unconscious consideration yields most satisfying decisions.Helen Pearson Which would you choose? Studies say you should list the pros and cons, then sleep on it.© Punchstock The best way to make a tough decision is to put your feet up and think about something else. So says an investigation of people shopping for cars, clothes and furniture. Many people assume that the best way to tackle a difficult choice is to list the pros and cons and ponder them deeply. Others believe we...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2005 – The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission wrapped up four days of deliberations in final actions Aug. 26 and 27 by voting to turn Pope Air Force Base, N.C., into an Army airfield and recommending sweeping recommendations to revamp the Air National Guard and consolidate its operations. The nine-member commission deviated significantly from the Pentagon's proposed plan to realign the Air Guard, passing a recommendation that would ensure every state with an existing Air Guard unit would retain at least some Guard aircraft. Specific details of the plan, including charts used in the deliberation, are...

WASHINGTON - Thousands of pages of newly released documents from John Roberts' first government job show a highly intelligent, politically savvy young man, wrestling with charged legal and political issues on behalf of the deeply conservative Reagan administration. As a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in 1981 and 1982, Roberts advocated positions and drafted memos on issues from judicial restraint to voting rights to affirmative action, which were as controversial then as they are now that Roberts is no longer a twenty-something aide but a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court. Roberts generally took strongly...

Senate Democrats are preparing to play to the cameras once more while raking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts over the coals, but the fight may not be as fierce as some Liberals want. There's bound to be some huffing and puffing during the confirmation hearings, as many of the radical groups controlling the Democrats demand they fight a battle that cannot be won. Though Democrats will probably use the "we need more documents" dodge to avoid an outright filibuster, Roberts will surely be confirmed in the end. One almost has to feel sorry for the Democrats, pushed into this fight...

Thoughtful Democrats — the rarest birds on the endangered species list — might want to ponder this: "Another hanging chad has dropped. His name is John G. Roberts Jr., and he undoubtedly will turn out to be opposed to abortion rights, affirmative action, an expansive view of federal powers and a reading of the Constitution that takes a properly suspicious view of the state's embrace of religion. You hang enough chads, and you get to change the Supreme Court." That's not moveon.org, or the wilder shores of the Internet. That's Richard Cohen, big-time columnist in that bastion of mainstream media,...

Would you let you child go fishing alone with a known child molester? Why not? The answer is simple enough: because patterns of behavior are called “patterns of behavior” for a reason, and once someone does something once, they are likely to do it again. Evil people do evil things over and over. Over the last 50 years, the radical left has established a pattern of winning minor precedents from an activist judiciary system then slowly building on those precedents to warp the interpretation of the law and erode the fundamental foundations of our society. The original Supreme Court decisions...

Let's not beat around the bush. Since 1973, Roe v. Wade has been the "settled" law of the land. John Roberts can help reverse that decision. That is why the Conservative movement is holding its collective breath. Likewise, that is why activists on the left are doing their best Howard Dean impersonations. A historical moment is at hand. Assuming Roberts is confirmed, he will take the place of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- a "conservative" justice who voted to reaffirm the "central principle" of Roe in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Not that you need reminding, but...

President George W. Bush makes one of the most important decisions defining his legacy by uttering a name. If that name for Supreme Court justice is a constant conservative to the end of the life-time term, then the Bush presidency defines the start of an era. The momentum for change, like a glacier, will creak forward. Anything less, including a scheme of one conservative for two open seats means enough conservative Christians stay home, even if Hillary runs, and liberals win the 2008 election. The U.S. Culture War widens, deepens, and threatens because the judges will get worse. A conservative...

The Democrats' orgy over retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is just one fraudulent component of their grand con game in preparation for war over her successor. Oh, sure, they approve of O'Connor's steadfast protection of the Court's pro-abortion precedent. And they appreciate other positions she took in furtherance of their policy agenda, but she's hardly their ideal jurist. After all, she sided with the majority in "selecting" George W. Bush president. Their recent, unified celebration of O'Connor is part of their cynical calculation to position themselves as mainstream and Republicans as extremists. They see this as an essential...

Ronald Reagan, like all presidents, made a few mistakes while he was in office, and one of his more regrettable blunders was nominating a judge by the name of Sandra Day O'Connor for a position on the highest court in the land. Although many people in the left-wing media like to refer to her as a "moderate" jurist, that characterization only proves that they have no idea what a judge's job actually is. Using the word ''moderate'' to describe a judge is like using the word Jewish to describe a cat. The term simply does not apply. It is a...

In the board game Jenga, a tower of wooden blocks is erected. Players remove one block at a time from the tower, and then stack it on top. As each successive block is removed, the tower becomes increasingly precarious. The game ends when the tower's foundation can no longer bear the weight of the structure built on top of it, and the tower falls. The Supreme Court's recent decisions in the Ten Commandments cases are a form of constitutional Jenga. Think of our system of government and the liberties it grants as a Jenga tower. In our analogy, the blocks...

I was hoping they would have come up with an easy call to keep the Ten Commandments after the deliberations seemed to lean that way. But since it has taken to the last day and with last Thursday's rewrite of the 5th Amendment I am scared to death we will see a 5-4 vote against us.

It's correct that there is political commotion mounting in opposition to the Iraq war. It is important to distinguish between two kinds. One, which is gaining attention, centers on misrepresentations. The so-called Downing Street Memo is cited. This records an exchange at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002, at which, it is said, the representatives of Mr. Bush made it clear that the president had resolved to proceed against Iraq irrespective of what the United Nations might do. Rejecting that account, the Bush people have said that the invasion was not finally planned until after the appeal to the...

Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, liberals have used judicial activism as a substitute for political persuasion. But we shouldn't ask judges to make laws. It is difficult to imagine a more fundamental assault on the separation of power than this spring's shameless attacks on the judicial appointments process. With their threats to end the right of filibuster and to measure judicial nominees by political standards, Republicans like Rep. Tom DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn brought partisan warfare and violation of basic principles to a new low. Either they do not understand the essentials of our constitutional system, or...

The recent release of Justice Harry A. Blackmun's private Supreme Court case files has starkly illuminated an embarrassing problem that previously was discussed only in whispers among court insiders and aficionados: the degree to which young law clerks, most of them just two years out of law school, make extensive, highly substantive and arguably inappropriate contributions to the decisions issued in their bosses' names. Even Roe vs. Wade, Blackmun's most famous decision, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, owed lots of its language and much of its breadth to his clerks and the clerks of other justices. A decade later,...

How radical Muslims masquerading as "moderates" are infiltrating our government, our military, our prisons, our schools -- and even the Department of Homeland Security Infiltration by Paul Sperry The most dangerous Muslim radicals won't be sneaking through our borders from the Middle East -- they're already here. That's the alarming message of Washington-based investigative reporter Paul Sperry's new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. Using access to classified documents as well as exclusive interviews with FBI agents, Customs officers, and military intelligence officials, Sperry reveals how the top levels of our government, armed forces and intelligence...

For 200 years the Senate carefully considered the professional track record of any judge nominated for the federal bench. That changed five years ago when ranking Democrats decided to turn the Senate Judiciary Committee into their own personal meat grinder. Despite having nearly 100 federal judgeships to fill, these Democrats resolved to torpedo most of President Bush's nominations. This partisan blood oath – as opposed to careful consideration of each jurist's record – now decides who presides over our federal courts. At least one major implication is that the dearth of federal judges (one-eighth of all federal judgeships still remain...

He wasn't President Reagan's first choice for the U.S. Supreme Court - or his second choice for that matter - and plenty of conservatives have never let him forget it. Seventeen years and a handful of decisions later, Justice Anthony Kennedy - a conservative by background but a swing vote on social issues - has become the poster boy, on the part of those calling for President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees to confirmed by the U.S. Senate, for why the president should get to install judges he really wants rather than capitulate to liberals and moderates. Pressure on Republicans...

WASHINGTON, April 26 - When Gary Small walked into a sports store in his hometown of Delmont, Pa., to buy a pistol, he probably did not see himself as the central figure in a Supreme Court case. But that is what he became. Before walking out of the store with his 9-millimeter pistol on June 2, 1998, he filled out the mandatory federal form. It asked whether he had ever been convicted "in any court" of a crime punishable by a year or more in prison. Fatefully, he answered "no." In fact, Mr. Small had never been convicted of any...

First, let us understand what the Terri Schiavo matter was not about: Despite ideological diatribes from David Corn at The Nation, this was not "an ugly big-government attempt to intervene in a family conflict" designed to appease "religious right crusaders." Despite ranting from Robert Scheer, also at The Nation, this was not "egregious political opportunism and shameless trafficking in human misery," and the citation of dubious polls won't validate Scheer's hope that the majority of Americans want to see a helpless woman starved to death by judicial order. And despite hysteria from the Los Angeles Times, this was not "a...

WASHINGTON, March 30 - The Supreme Court ruled today that older workers can, in some circumstances, recover damages from their employers for harm caused by age discrimination even if the harm was not deliberate. The court, ruling 5 to 3 in a case closely watched by business interests, held that the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act does allow such lawsuits. But the court also made clear that the estimated 75 million people covered by the law - workers over age 40 - must clear a high threshold of evidence to prevail. Justice John Paul Stevens and the four other...

Every once in a while I stumble across an opinion article that's so irrational, hate-filled and hypocritical that I feel compelled to comment on it, and New York Times writer Paul Krugman's most recent column is no exception. Titled "What's Going On?", this rambling op-ed is filled with more unprovoked attacks on religious minded people than any other I have had the misfortune to read, and I've read more than I care to remember. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/opinion/29krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman Mr. Krugman begins his piece by attempting to impress upon his readers the dangers of extremism in democratic countries, quickly focussing his attention on the...

What could happen if the current liberal activist Supreme Court was replaced with an activist conservative court - a Supreme Court filled with conservatives who would do what Leftists have done for years, and use that aristocratic body to impose their will on the nation? The Supreme Court, invoking the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that no person shall be denied by a state government equal protection of the laws, might strike down all progressive state income tax laws, holding that discriminating against a person on the grounds of income violates the Equal Protection Clause. This...

A Yemeni cleric who once said Osama bin Laden called him his sheik was convicted of terrorism-financing charges today in a federal court in New York City. The victory for the Justice Department came in one of the government's most visible terrorism-financing prosecutions, which had for a time appeared uncertain after the F.B.I.'s star informer drew attention by setting himself on fire outside the White House in November. The sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a prominent Yemeni who once held a government post in his homeland, was convicted after a five-week trial that federal prosecutors portrayed today as providing "an...

Environmentalists are raising a stink about changes to the state's waste management board, which governs California's garbage collection and recycling system. Michael Paparian, a veteran Sierra Club leader in Sacramento, is out. Reportedly in is Scott Harvey, a one-time San Diego city councilman and former executive director of the San Diego County Disposal Association, a lobbying and education group funded by the region's trash haulers. "These decisions really tilted the balance of the board toward the industry and away from the environment," said Bill Magavern, legislative representative for the California Sierra Club in Sacramento. The Sierra Club yesterday issued a...

I have been inundated with requests from readers to speak out on this topic, sign and forward a petition, one supporting her parent’s wishes, another allegedly supporting her wishes, as communicated by her husband and legal guardian Michael Schiavo. Until today, I have declined to inject my personal thoughts into this discussion. There is little in this world more difficult or personal than the decisions facing the Schiavo family today. My knowledge on this matter is limited to press reports in which, as a general rule, I have no confidence at all today. Unlike anyone else with whom I have...

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said Sunday that Israel has some "hard decisions" to make as it moves toward peace with the Palestinians and the creation of a neighboring democracy. On her first trip to the Middle East since taking over at the State Department, Rice also urged both sides to live up to their promises. "This is a hopeful time, but it is a time also of great responsibility for all of us to make certain that we act on the words that we speak," Rice said before meeting with Israel's prime minister,...

In the second ecclesiastical trial in less than a year of a gay Methodist minister, a jury of 13 clergy in eastern Pennsylvania convicted a fellow pastor today of violating church law by living in a lesbian relationship and ordered her defrocked. The ruling is evidence of the United Methodist Church's efforts this summer to tighten rules banning "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from the ministry, a step that gained greater urgency after the jury in a trial in Bothell, Wash., in March cleared another lesbian minister of breaking church law. At the trial in Pughtown, Pa., the jury voted 12 to...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles Say that an I.R.S. agent leaks a politician's income tax return to a newspaper reporter, an act that is a federal felony. The newspaper may have a First Amendment right to publish the information, especially since it bears on a matter of public interest. The government, meanwhile, is entitled to punish the agent, to protect citizens' privacy and ensure a fair and efficient tax system. To punish the agent, prosecutors may need to get the leaker's name from the reporter; but if the reporter refuses to testify because of a "journalist's privilege" to protect confidential...

The case was familiar, if disturbing. A Bronx man had been accused of punching and threatening his girlfriend. But the woman refused to testify. Prosecutors, though, soon got a break. A Bronx Criminal Court judge appeared to stake out some novel legal ground just weeks after a United States Supreme Court decision. He ruled that prosecutors could use 911 recordings of the woman's anguished call for help as evidence, even though she would not testify. Within weeks, prosecutors and judges around the country seized on the March 25 decision, by Judge Ethan Greenberg, citing it as important precedent as they...

Who are these schlubs? A new poll commissioned by GQ magazine reveals that one in five American men has turned down hot, steamy sex to watch sports on TV. That's 200 of the 1,000 men between the ages of 25 and 55 across the country whom pollsters talked with this summer. Veteran sex researcher Ed Laumann of the University of Chicago said that while this statistic may dismay many women, "There's another way of looking at it." "It means that 80% of the men turned off their televisions," Laumann said. "And when you consider that the average encounter in an...

SAN FRANCISCO - When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week that he had selected a Democratic labor leader, Pat Henning, to run the state's Employment Development Department, it was the just the latest move to confound observers seeking a window into the Republican governor's political soul. In his first year in office, Schwarzenegger has largely kept his promise to toe a conservative line on fiscal matters while veering left on social issues like gay rights and the environment. The unorthodox approach has perplexed hardcore partisans of both parties while winning praise from voters, with polls showing some 65 percent approve...

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 - A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals. The ruling by Judge James Robertson of United States District Court in Washington brought an abrupt halt to the trial here of one detainee, one of hundreds being held at Guantánamo as enemy combatants. It threw into doubt the future of the first set of United States military commission trials since the end of World War...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces decisions on bills that would create a Sierra Nevada conservancy, require economic impact reports before local governments approve Wal-Mart-like superstores and promote recycling of cell phones. Also headed to his desk are measures that would bar kids under 14 from using tanning salons without a doctor's approval, require schools to notify parents when they serve students irradiated food and give consumers at least 30 days to claim rebates. California lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to dozens of bills as they rushed to wrap up their 2004 session by Friday. The Sierra Nevada bill,...

Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything about that night in late 2001 when he killed his grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that screamed as he drove away from their rural South Carolina home after setting it on fire. "Something kept telling me to do it," he later told a forensic psychiatrist. Now, Christopher, who was 12 years old at the time of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder. The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an adult could send him to prison for life. While prosecutors...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary June 12, 2004 President Bush Salutes Remembers President Reagan in Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week, America mourned the passing of President Ronald Reagan. We remembered a gentle, decent man, and one of the greatest leaders our nation has known. He was a courageous patriot whose leadership transformed the country and the world he leaves behind. In this time of sadness, we think especially of Nancy Reagan, a loyal, loving wife of 52 years; and the President's three children, and the rest of the Reagan family.  Radio Address...

America In the Balance by Vernon E. Lawrence Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; and to Isaac...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, has arrived in Washington and is expected to meet soon with top officials at the White House for what is likely to be a decision-making session, a U.S. official said on Tuesday. "When decisions need to be made, Bremer comes. Some decisions need to be made," the official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no expectation Bremer would be leaving his post. There was no immediate comment from the White House. Bremer's return for what officials called "consultations" comes amid growing frustration in Washington with...

The Justice Department is ordering federal prosecutors here and elsewhere to report federal judges who impose lighter sentences than recommended — which a leading Minnesota jurist and other critics say will have a devastating impact on judicial independence. "This will have a chilling and intimidating effect on judges, and this is why I no longer draw criminal cases,'' said Paul Magnuson, a senior federal trial judge in Minnesota who now handles mostly civil cases. "I predict that the number of departures by federal judges from sentencing mandates will fall to virtually zero.'' The July 28 memo from Attorney General John...

WAYLAND -- Photographs of Wayland youths apparently binge drinking, smoking marijuana and partying in private homes are posted on the Internet and common knowledge to a number of local teenagers -- and police. Many of the teenagers who appear in the photographs, according to one Wayland High School student, run in the same crowd as William Senne, 18, who last weekend crashed into a state trooper while allegedly driving drunk. State Police Trooper Ellen E. Engelhardt remained in critical condition at Boston Medical Center yesterday, according to a hospital spokesman. The pictures, uploaded by students to private Web sites and...

Invercargill's James Hargest High School board of trustees yesterday stood by its decision to allow four boys to remain at school for indecent assault, while kicking out another student for smoking cannabis. Chairman Murray Frost broke his three-day silence after the board reversed an earlier decision not to talk to media. The high school has been publicly criticised this week, for the apparent disparity in punishments it meted out to students involved in two separate incidents. The first, in May, involved an indecent assault on a 13-year-old third form girl during school time. Her mother said the girl was tackled...