A Catholic school in California has upset parents by allowing the two adopted children of a gay couple to attend school. Of course, the parents of other children are up in arms. Oddly enough, the voice of reason comes from the Catholic school itself.

The Rev. Gerald M. Horan, superintendent of diocese schools, said that if Catholic beliefs were strictly adhered to, then children whose parents divorced, used birth control or married outside the church would also have to be banned.

Take that hypocrits!

The FCC is considering cell phone use in airplanes. This sucks. I’m going to hate being the person sitting in between some person talking about their gas and another person talking about how cute their kids are on the plane. The last place on earth I can sit in peace amongst strangers without being annoyed by cell phone users is about to disappear.

I guess I’ll have to retaliate by watching R-rated movies while in flight on my huge ass 15 inch laptop screen. How’s that for being rude in public? Maybe I’ll even watch it without headphones on so everyone can hear f-bombs every few minutes.

The amazing Jeopardy phenom, Ken Jennings, has finally lost. Ken Jennings lost today to Nancy Zerg from California. I never watched him work, but I heard he was simply amazing. Here are a few stats for your amusement.

1. Jennings’ average daily haul was $34,063.51.
2. He toyed with the previous daily record of $52,000 — tying it four times — before shattering it with a $75,000 win in Game 38.
3. He gave more than 2,700 correct responses.

Holy crap.

Almost half of Americans believe God created humans 10,000 years ago [via]. My favorite quote from this little survey is the following.

Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

Hey, all you “biblical literalists” I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I don’t even have to comment on an article titled ‘Enemy Contact. Kill ’em, Kill ’em.’

“The first time I shot someone, it was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever felt.”

…

“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,” Hall says. “It’s like it pounds at my brain. I’ll figure out how to deal with it when I get home.”

…

“I enjoy killing Iraqis,” says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30, who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in Iraq. “I just feel rage, hate when I’m out there. I feel like I carry it all the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way.”

Just your daily message to remind you that war sucks brought to you by the young men fighting said war.

The latest “it” within intelligence and military circles seems to be the use of civilian contractors for interrogating prisoners. I don’t like this at all and neither should you.

These men are usually trained by the CIA/military or former CIA/military agents. Despite what the term “contractor” might imply these are simply fulltime 1099 employees of the CIA/military. When’s the last time you hired a contractor to interrogate someone (the police surely don’t do this). This is an extremely gray area. I would assume, like any other contractor, the CIA has contracts with these individuals stating that the CIA is not culpable for what these contractors do while working for them. The light bulb goes off.

The same happens in real life. If I do a job for a company (say Ford) which directly results in you getting overcharged on your next Ford car statement I’m the one who pays, not Ford. The CIA and military are, in a word, “privatizing” the grayest part of what these government agencies do: extract information from uncooperative people.

This means, simply, that if a civilian contractor kills someone the civilian contractor is responsible and not the CIA or military. It’s genius! This means the CIA can simply say “I’ll pay you $X do get Y information” and leave the “details” up to the contractors. When things get out of hands the CIA denies any wrong doing.

You want to know what is so crazy about all of this? Civilian contractors where exempt from prosecution for crimes committed abroad until Congress passed a bill in 2000 that allows the MP’s to ship you back to face felony charges at home. That’s right! The CIA could hire a civilian contractor, who could intern do whatever they wanted to abroad without fear of prosecution back home. Luckily, things have changed. But, the problem still remains that the true culprits are getting away scott free: the CIA and military personnel who circumvent international treaties and US law by using scape goats they’ve personally trained and paid for thanks to a loop hole in the current law.

We should ban civilian contractors from working with and for the CIA and military. If our government can’t work within established laws and treaties we have bigger problems than terrorists.

And don’t give me that crap about “terrorists don’t work inside the laws or treaties so why should we?” You know why? Because we’re better than them and we hold ourselves to higher standards.

I’m getting a little worried about the current blips coming out of Iraq concerning WMD. I truly think Saddam was, in limited form, producing WMD. The concern I have, however, is that the government announces “finds” before they have confirmed the validity of the data.

So far every “find” has turned out to be pesticides or stuff we already knew about. Of course there are minor retractions, but the damage, as far as public knowledge goes, has already been done.

Finally! Evidence that a school administration is thinking with their brains and not their egos. A school in northern Michigan is requiring breathalizers before getting into prom this year.

This makes so much sense it hurts, which is why I’m surprised to see it coming from the US’s secondary educational system. I didn’t drink a drop until I graduated from high school, something I’m very proud of. I don’t think high schoolers are very smart when it comes to drinking: getting smashed in the middle of a field and driving home isn’t a smart thing. On the other hand, at college, getting smashed at a local bar and walking two blocks home is usually pretty safe. I can only hope more schools do this.

In an amazing trade the US has given a whopping $27 million USD to an al Qaeda foot soldier for the recent capture of one of the big wigs.

I think it’s fine that we give large sums of money to people who provide evidence to arrest those “higher up the food chain”, but what bothers me is that this asshole not only gets the money, but he gets to walk away a free man.

The best part about this whole story is that he’s moving to Britain with his family. I find it funny that this idiot terrorists, whom we’re all so scared of, are perfectly willing to trade in their rhetoric for a few bucks. Hell, for $27 million I’d give a donkey head.

Recently, on the O’Reilly Factor Bill O’Reilly referred to Mexican border jumpers as “wetbacks”. I guess no one told him one of his guests was a latino Congressmen.

We’d save lives because Mexican wetbacks, whatever you want to call them, the coyotes — they’re not going to do what they’re doing now, so people aren’t going to die in the desert.

Evidently, some guy has been contacting latino and Mexican organizations in regards to Bill’s comments. I’d *have* to believe this doesn’t go unnoticed.