Dowbrigade

Latest
to appear in the crosshairs of John Ashcroft in his ongoing campaign
to strike fear in the hearts of civil libertarians and eco-weenies everywhere is John Passacantando, executive director
of Greenpeace in the United States. 15 months after two Greenpeace
activists spent a weekend in jail for boarding a cargo ship they said
was loaded with illegal mahogony, the Dept. of Justice has indicted
the ORGANIZATION itself for the same incident, using a 1890′s law enacted
to thwart "sailor-mongers" who would board ships with liquor, drugs
and loose women to lure about-to-be-paid sailors to disreputable boarding
houses.

"The heart of Greenpeace’s mission," prosecutors wrote, "is
the violation of the law."

For his part, Passacantando,
whose last name loosely means, if my Spanish serves me, "Goes-around-singing",
stays cool. "The federal government
is using 9/11 to come down harder on an action like this, which was a
good and dignified and peaceful action."

from
The New York Times

A
‘Cosmic Jerk’ That Reversed the Universe

CLEVELAND,
Oct. 10 Astronomers said on Friday that they had determined the time
in cosmic history when a mysterious force, "dark energy," began
to wrench the universe apart. Five billion years ago, said Dr. Adam Riess,
an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore,
the universe experienced a "cosmic
jerk."

Always knew we were the second coming of SOMETHING

from
The New York Times

As
reported
in this space earlier, Rush Limbaugh has checked himself into
rehab after being caught red-handed popping pills he obtained from multiple
sources, including celebrity groupie doctors and his own maid. I
always wondered why they called him "Rush"….

"The nation’s top-rated talk-radio host said his experience with painkillers
– which reportedly included the prescription drug OxyContin, known as "hillbilly
heroin" – began six years ago, when his doctor prescribed them following
spinal surgery."

from
The New York Post

Women who perform the act of fellatio on a regular basis, one
to two times a week, may reduce their risk of breast cancer by up to
40 percent, a North Carolina State University study found. Doctors had never
suspected a link between the act of fellatio and breast cancer, but new
research being performed at North Carolina State University suggests
that there could be an important link between the two.

Who knew? Who knows? Judge for yourself…

from
CNM Health

LIMA,
Peru, Oct 9 (Reuters) – With someone, somewhere in the world killed every
minute by guns, lobby groups on Thursday launched a campaign for a global
treaty to curb what they called an out-of-control international weapons
trade. "Small arms are … the new threat of mass destruction," said
Rebecca Peters, head of the International Action Network on Small Arms,
grouping
550 organizations in 100 countries. The network, along with Amnesty
International and the aid group Oxfam launched the campaign in Lima,
Nairobi and London.

Light weapons kill half a million people a year, Peters said, and there
are 650 million such firearms in circulation — one for every 10 people
on earth

from
Reuters