I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We should forget about Sadam for a few minutes and focus on N. Korea. Today CIA Director George Tenet announced that N. Korea has missles that could hit the west coast. Furthermore, it has been recognized that they probably have at least two nuclear bombs. Great.

The leader of N. Korea said any sanctions would be treated as a declaration of war. If this guy is as crazy as he comes across who knows what he’ll do with nuculear weapons. Bush are you listening to me?!?

I was reading a great thread at Kuro5hin. It was about The Patriot Act Part II. I’m not sure of the specifics, but any extension of the first draft scares me. The evidence supporting a move to Canada grows stringer every day.

I loved how Bush’s state of the Union address was about everything but the Union. Maybe he noticed that his little war is killing an already weak economy. Maybe it would be a better idea to focus on America for once.

I agree that Sadam is a bad person. I think it’s rather universal that he’s a total lunatic. I agree that he should be disarmed. I also agree that the only way we can do that is through military action. But I don’t agree that now is the time. I don’t agree that we should shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot, by weakening the economy with war, to disarm him.

I still stand firm that the more alarming threat is N. Korea. Here is a country that we know for certain has nuclear capabilities, is outwardly hostile to countries in its part of the world, and openly defies the U.N. N. Korea shoots missles over Japanese airspace for shits and giggles, at least Iraq pretends it’s playing ball.

There’s an interesting story at CNN.com where US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia proclaims there is too much separation of church and stat in the US today.

I’m not religious. I’ve never particularily liked organized religion. I can understand the comfort people take in religion, but I’m a strong supporter of separation of church and state. This aside, I think Justice Scalia has some interesting points. Most notably this one:

The Constitution says the government cannot “establish” or promote religion, but Scalia said the framers did not intend for God to be stripped from public life.

I agree that our founders didn’t want to abolish religion, rather they want to make sure the government didn’t have any part in religion.

Where I differ from Justice Scalia is in him saying that “one nation, under God” should not have been stripped from the Pledge of Allegance. There are two things to note here: 1.) the “under God” part was only recently added to the Pledge this century and 2.) the Constitution plainly states “cannot promote”, which “under God” is doing in the Pledge.

Many may not agree with my analysis, which is fine, but you have to agree that putting “In God We Trust” on every coin minted in the US is some sort of promotion. The thing that makes me so angry about the religious right is their inability to recognize the founders want to allow everyone to practice their own religion of choice. What if I wanted to pray to the almighty god of “Joe” before basketball games? Why isn’t “In Allah We Trust” on a coin? I’m willing to bet these actions would be met with widespread outcry. Hypocrisy anyone?

There are a few interesting cases that will be brought before the US Supreme Court in the coming months. They include patents on Mickey Mouse, a decision on the U of M affirmitive action case, and whether or not states can fine gays and lesbians for sex acts that the state deems abnormal even if they occur in the privacy of your own home.

The two that us Internet users should pay close attention to are the Mickey Mouse patent case, which revolves around how long a patent should be valid for. Currently it’s only supposed to be 20 years I believe, but they can be extended on a case by case basis. The other involves filters in libraries. I’m torn on this issue. Sure a kid could browse to a porn site while visiting the library, but how many actually would? I, personally, would not browse explicit sites and if I did I would think a librarian should be close by to tell me to stop it.

In other news I’m moving. I’m finally getting out of this hell hole of an apartment and moving into a nicer one a few blocks away. We should know if we were approved by the end of today.

Colin Powell, in an amazing display of arrogance, has attempted to tell the nation that the nuclear fiasco in N. Korea is not a crisis.

How this can’t be a crisis I don’t know. Here is an extremely hostile country, who has been caught red handed proliferating arms, that could have a few nuclear warheads within a year or two.

Something interesting that the article points out is that China isn’t happy about this either. Pissing off your biggest ally isn’t usually the best political move.

Maybe I’m not the only one worried about North Korea. There is a story running on CNN about North Korea violating the DMZ between North and South Korea. The story also briefly covers Nor th Korea’s recent decision to boot the UN nuclea watchdogs and restart its nuclear program

This brings me to my main point: Who else is worried about North Korea? At least Iraq is letting us send in inspectors, though he may be giving us a smoke screen again. On the other hand North Korea is basically saying “We want nukes, and when we get them we are going to use them as bargaining power”, which is a dangerous proposition with the current U.S. leader.

All I have to say is thank the lawd. Did he really think that after such a remark and the backlash he could keep his job? I’m surprised he is keeping his Senate position.

There has been a lot of controversy lately about Lott’s remarks about how the US would have been a better place if Thurman had been president. I’ve avoided writing up a story on this because it’s such a hot topic in today’s news. Personally, I don’t think Lott should be in a leadership position, but we have to realize that an entire state liked him enough to keep him in office all of these years.

Lott’s history of racism is long and well documented. From his college days trying to keep blacks out of his fraternity to most recently voting against the Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act. The country can complain all they want, but the reality of it all is Lott is where he is today because of the population of Mississippi.

In other racial news, David Duke pledges to become Bubba’s new dance partner. Evidently, misleading the IRS is a bad thing to do. Here is another wakeup call to people who think the race issue is over: David Duke was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives after having been head of the KKK.

Utterly amazing. Apparently, Americans think the right to free speech is too far reaching. Among other numbers in the survey it was also revealed that support for newspapers’ rights were down along with numbers rising for those in favor of monitoring religous groups even if it meant treading on their rights. Just one more point in the argument to move to Canada.