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Cause of 9/11 Collapse Study Backs Up Feds' Theory...

Study Backs Up Feds' Theory of Why World Trade Center Collapsed on Sept. 11

INDIANAPOLIS -- A computer simulation of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks supports a federal agency's findings that the initial impact from the hijacked airplanes stripped away crucial fireproofing material and that the weakened towers collapsed under their own weight.

Fox News.com ~ Associated Press ** Study Backs Up Feds' Theory of Why World Trade Center Collapsed on Sept. 11

This computer model is sure to be considered invalid by libtards, unless of course we're talking about Global Warming. Then the computer models are flawless and unassailable.

Posted by yaahoo_ at 4:49 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 26 June 2007 7:28 AM EDT

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Now Prepare for 'Dangerous Global Cooling'

Read the sunspots

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

View Larger Image
Most Sunspots in 8,000 Years
(See hardcopy for Chart/Graph) >>>>>
Andrew Barr, National Post

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.

Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.
Financial Post ~ R. Timothy Paterson ** Read the sunspots

The Deniers: The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science.
The National Post is a Canadian national newspaper. Here is the series so far:
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
Gore's guru disagreed -- The Deniers XX
The ice-core man -- The Deniers XXI
Some restraint in Rome -- The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic -- The Deniers XXIII
Dire forecasts aren't new -- The Deniers XXIV
They call this a consensus? - Part XXV
NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced - Part XXVI
Forget warming - beware the new ice age - Part XXVII

Posted by yaahoo_ at 4:00 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 22 June 2007 4:45 AM EDT

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Iraqi politicians agree deal on sharing oil, says Kurd minister

Iraq's Kurdish leaders said last night they had struck an important deal with the central government in Baghdad over a law to divide up Iraq's oil revenues, which is seen by the Bush administration as one of the benchmarks in attempts to foster national reconciliation.

Ashti Hawrami, the minister for natural resources in the Kurdistan regional government, told the Guardian the text had been finalised late last night after 48 hours of "tough bargaining" with Baghdad. The deal represented "a genuine revenue sharing agreement" that was transparent and would benefit all the people of Iraq and help pull the country together, he said.

Iraq's oil revenue accounted for 93% of the federal budget last year. Iraq sells about 1.6m barrels a day.

Mr Hawrami said the law provided for the setting up of two "regulated and monitored" accounts into which external and internal revenues would be deposited. The external account would include items such as oil export earnings and foreign donor money, while the internal fund would consist largely of customs and taxes. The federal government in Baghdad would take what it needed, and the rest would be automatically distributed to the Kurdistan regional government, which would get 17%, and to Iraq's governorates "according to their entitlement". Revenues would be distributed monthly, he said.

Mr Hawrami said the system would better enable Iraqis to track how and where the oil funds were being spent. The Kurds, for example, have complained that remittances to their self-rule region have been being held back by up to six months in Baghdad. Iraq's Sunni Arabs had also expressed concerns that they might miss out on their share.

Iraq's finance minister, Bayan Jabr, and the oil minister, Hussein Sharistani, were accompanying the president, Jalal Talabani, on a state a visit to China and could not be contacted for comment.

The new deal came days after a visit to Iraq by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, during which he rebuked politicians for failing to reach consensus on sharing oil revenues. The US sees the deal as a benchmark of progress toward reconciliation.

A western diplomat in Baghdad said last night: "Fair-sharing of Iraq's oil revenue is important to finding a sustainable political solution in Iraq. But on its own it will not halt the sectarianism."

UK Guardian ~ Michael Howard in Sulaymaniya ** Iraqi politicians agree deal on sharing oil, says Kurd minister

Posted by yaahoo_ at 3:51 AM EDT

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House Republicans introduce their own immigration bill

(would bar amnesty for illegal immigrants)

The measure, a rebuke to Bush, would bar amnesty for illegal immigrants and require legal-status checks for all workers.

WASHINGTON -- In a sharp rebuke to President Bush, House Republicans unveiled legislation Tuesday that would bar illegal immigrants from gaining legal status in the U.S., require tamper-proof birth certificates for Americans and make English the nation's official language.

The measure's core principles include gaining control of the border and enforcing existing immigration laws -- it does not provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants as the Bush plan does.

The House bill stands virtually no chance of becoming law, or even advancing, in the Democratic-controlled Congress. Still, it casts in bold relief the split between Bush and many fellow Republicans in the immigration debate.

The bill surfaced one day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., working with the White House, resurrected efforts to pass the broader legislation Bush wants.

The authors of the House bill also are pushing for a congressional resolution detailing ways in which they believe the federal government has failed to enforce immigration law and made it easier for illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S.

"The current illegal immigration crisis is a direct result of this and previous Administrations failing to enforce or adequately enforce at least eight immigration laws," the resolution said.

The bill's authors, Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said it was meant to challenge the immigration bill the Senate plans to return to later this week.

That measure, King said, goes "against the wishes of the American people."

In another sign of GOP restiveness over the immigration issue, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., introduced a resolution Tuesday calling on Bush to enforce existing immigration laws in order to halt "the lawlessness at our borders."

Sessions has been a vocal critic of the Bush approach to revamping immigration laws. The president, however, travels to Alabama later this week to headline a fundraiser for the senator.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel rejected the criticism that the administration has been lax in border enforcement. As one example, he cited a sharp rise in funding under Bush for stricter border control.

In 2001, enforcement funding totaled $4.6 billion; that has increased significantly and in his latest budget request, Bush is seeking $11.8 billion.

Stanzel also noted that the Senate bill includes goals for border security that would have to be achieved before other aspects of the overhaul could proceed.

Reid wants the Senate to decide the fate of the immigration bill before Congress breaks for its July 4 recess. But even if the measure passes the chamber, it faces an uncertain fate in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has told administration officials that she will not take up the bill unless about 70 Republicans are brought on board to help pass it.

The bill unveiled Tuesday is the equivalent of a warning flag that conservatives intend to fight for those Republican votes.

"It seems a formal way of putting proponents on notice that there will be resistance from those quarters in the House," said Roberto Suro, director of the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center.

He added that the number of co-sponsors the bill attracted could act as "an indication of how many votes there are to oppose something that resembles the Senate bill or ... includes the legalization program."

The measure would require that 18,000 border patrol agents be deployed by Dec. 31, 2008. Currently, the force totals about 12,000.

It would also require the full implementation of US-VISIT, a program that is meant to track entries and exits at all ports-of-entry but has fallen short of that goal.

U.S. citizens would be affected by many of the changes proposed for work site enforcement, including mandatory checks of all employees' eligibility and a nationwide electronic system for tracking birth and death records.

LA Times ~ Nicole Gaouette **
House Republicans introduce their own immigration bill
Related: This Blog *** House rejects security fence at the border
This Blog *** Rare Tactic May Allow Immigration Votes

Looks alot better than the bill the Senate is trying to cram down our throats.

Just waiting for the libtards and their buddies in the press to call this bill racist... 5...4...3...2...1

Posted by yaahoo_ at 1:27 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 20 June 2007 1:34 AM EDT

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Rare Tactic May Allow Immigration Votes

WASHINGTON -- Only in the arcane world of the U.S. Senate could a quirky gambit known as a "clay pigeon" make the difference between passage of an important immigration measure and its death at the hands of opponents.

Democratic leaders hope the complex maneuver - which makes use of the Senate's labyrinthine rules to insist on votes on amendments - will frustrate conservatives' attempts to derail the embattled immigration bill, instead putting it on a fast track to passage next week.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would revive the bill to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants late this week. To do so, though, he needs backing from 60 senators, and a way to guarantee votes on a tentative list of 22 Republican and Democratic amendments whose consideration is seen as vital to satisfying key waverers.

The so-called clay pigeon is how he's expected to do it, under a strategy that was still taking shape Monday.

The tactic gets its name from the target used in skeet shooting, which explodes into bits as it is hit. In the Senate, an amendment is the target, and any one senator can demand that it be divided into separate fragments to be voted on piecemeal.

Under the tentative plan, Reid as early as Friday would launch his target - an amendment encompassing all 22 proposals - and shoot it into its component pieces. The Senate would then vote on ending debate on the immigration measure, which would take 60 votes and limit discussion of the bill to 30 more hours. After that interval, all 22 amendments would have to be voted on, with little opportunity for foes to interfere.

Ironically, the move is usually used by mavericks - not leaders - to slow down legislation, not free it from a procedural thicket.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., used it last year to protest a bill he complained included excessive spending. By offering and then dividing an amendment that targeted 19 items he deemed offensive, Coburn was able to insist on votes on individual projects.

"It's a brilliant way to gum up the works," said Robert B. Dove, a Senate rules expert who was the chamber's referee for 36 years.

The maneuver appears to be a relatively modern innovation; Dove said he first became aware of it in the early 1970s, when then-Sen. Jim Allen, D-Ala., a master of parliamentary procedures, used it against a bill pushed by the then- majority leader, Sen. Mike Mansfield, D-Mont.

"I remember people being dazzled when he did this," Dove said.

Reid's plan has its risks, chief among them further inflaming the vocal conservative opponents who have vowed to do whatever they can to kill the immigration measure.

"I've seen ideas like this really backfire. You pay a price for this kind of thing," Dove said, noting that the Senate functions almost entirely on consensus. "It can be done - I've seen it done - but it's a difficult maneuver."

My Way News ~ AP - Julie Hirschfeld Davis ** Rare Tactic May Allow Immigration Votes
Related: This Blog *** House rejects security fence at the border

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:06 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 June 2007 2:26 AM EDT

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French conservatives win parliamentary majority

PARIS -- The conservative party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy has won a clear parliamentary majority in elections. That's seen as crucial to his vision for opening up the French economy.

Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement will face little resistance to the rash of measures he plans to introduce within weeks to make France's sluggish economy more competitive and less protective.

But today's legislative runoff suggests that voters in France also wanted to send the hard-driving, U-S-friendly president a message that his powers are not absolute.

Sarkozy's party and its allies won 346 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, which was fewer than the 359 seats the U-M-P used to have. Led by the Socialists, the opposition left took a better-than-expected 226 seats -- a considerable improvement over their 149 in the last parliament.

KGAN.com ~ CBS 2 News - Assoc Press ** French conservatives win parliamentary majority

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:46 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 June 2007 2:20 AM EDT

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House rejects security fence at the border

By Mike Sunnucks

The U.S. House of Representatives shot down a proposal Friday by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz, that would have built an 854-mile, double layered security fences along the Mexican border.

Franks noted that only 13 miles of a Mexican border fence approved last year have been built and that the fencing is needed to improve border security.

"With over 4,000 people crossing our southern border illegally every day, our border remains one of our country's most critical national security vulnerabilities. In order to carry out an act of terrorism, a militant Islamist simply needs a porous border and a dangerous weapon," said Franks in a statement.

Franks represents Glendale, Peoria, Sun City and Kingman.

The fence plan failed by 272 to 149 votes. Most Democrats (including Arizona congressional members Harry Mitchell, Gabrielle Giffords , Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva) voted against the border fence plan.

Most Republicans (including Franks and fellow Arizona Reps. Rick Renzi and John Shadegg) voted for the comprehensive fence plan.

Mesa GOP Congressman Jeff Flake crossed party lines and vote against the border fence bill.

The House did approve an overall homeland and border security appropriations bill Friday. Mitchell said he backed that bill because it allocates federal money to hire more Border Patrol Agents and resources to deport violent illegal immigrant criminals.

"Deporting those illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes is absolutely imperative to keeping our communities safe," Mitchell said in a statement. Mitchell represents Tempe and Scottsdale.

The state's four Democratic representatives and Renzi voted for the final bill. Flake, Franks and Shadegg opposed.

The votes could be a precursor to a big political fight over immigration reforms, a guest worker program and how to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

Business Journal of Phoenix ~ Mike Sunnucks ** House rejects security fence at the border

...Proof positive that the demented-crats aren't going to address border security at all in any real way, despite what they and their shills have been saying on TV lately.

Well, now the embattled Republicans in congress who are still holding their ground against the shamnesty bill can point this out as proof that they were right all along.

Related: This Blog *** Rare Tactic May Allow Immigration Votes

Posted by yaahoo_ at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 June 2007 2:13 AM EDT

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China slave scandal, 1000 kids in brick jail

Up to a thousand children were sold into a brutal life of slave work in a labour "prison" in China, police have revealed as the shocking racket was exposed today.

The victims endured maiming and brutality in primitive brick kilns, Chinese media have reported amid an expanding scandal about official neglect.

The owners ran the prison-like kilns with fierce dogs and thugs who beat the children at will, state television said. One accidentally killed a child with a shovel and buried the body at night, it said.

An army of 35,000 police in central China had so far rescued 217 people, including 29 children, the official China Daily reported today.

But state television said many more may be trapped, making bricks for little or no pay in brutal conditions in Shanxi and Henan provinces.

As many as 120 suspects had been detained.

"Now our conservative estimate is that at least 1,000 minors from Henan have been trapped and cheated into back-breaking work in these Shanxi brick kilns," a reporter from Henan said on the current affairs program Oriental Horizon.

The program showed workers who had been recently rescued – ragged, emaciated and mute and some bearing injuries.

But even amid the high-profile rescue effort, criticism is rising of official indifference to the poor farming families.

Local media reports and websites have cited what they say is a petition from fathers of boys kidnapped from Henan.

They complained that Shanxi police were unwilling to help Henan authorities to find and rescue the children.

"We are too weak and our children face constant threats to their life. We can only beg the government," said a copy of the document.

The China Youth Daily noted that local officials had apologised for failing to rescue the workers.

"But we have even more reason to ask why was it only after the case was widely reported by the media and shocked the central leadership that the local government then thought to apologise to these poor rural workers," it said.

"What were they doing before?"

AU Daily Telegraph ~ Reuters ** 1000 slave kids in brick jail
Related: China rocked by slave scandal...
Xinhua News Agency ** Police rescue further 220 slave workers in N China
Xinhua News Agency ** China police rescue 248 people from slavery in brick kilns
Xinhua News Agency ** Central China police rescue 217 from slavery in brick kilns
Fox News.com ** Infanticide, Abortion Responsible for 60 Million Girls Missing in Asia
This Blog *** Two thirds of Chinese cities' water, air polluted
Washington Times ** China Supplying Arms to Insurgencies

Posted by yaahoo_ at 5:43 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 16 June 2007 5:45 AM EDT

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Jessica Alba wants no-strings sex

Stunning actress Jessica Alba says she is up for a one-night stand - as long as the man leaves the next morning.

The curvy 23-year-old, who was recently romantically linked to Hollywood hunk Mark Wahlberg, likes the idea of getting intimate with lots of different people because she loves experimenting in sex.

She told Cosmopolitan magazine: "I just wanted to see what it was like to be with different people. I don't think a girl's a slut if she enjoys sex.

"I could have a one-night stand, and I'm the kind of girl who looks over in the morning and is like, 'Do you really have to be here?' I don't need to cuddle and do all that stuff because I know what it is and I don't try to make it more.

"I feel like a lot of women try to make it into more, so they don't feel so bad about just wanting to have sex. I don't really have a problem with just wanting sex. Never have.

"Even when I was a virgin and wanted to marry the first guy who I slept with, I never passed any judgments about that. But now I'm done with dating around."

The Sun ~ UK ** Alba wants no-strings sex

*Sigh* Alright then, I guess I'll take one for the team... 

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:47 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 15 June 2007 2:51 AM EDT

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Supreme Court rules unions can't spend dues for political purposes without consent

Supreme Court Rules on Union Dues, Deals Setback to Labor Unions

There was a big Supreme Court ruling yesterday, folks, and it was unanimous, by the way. Not good for Big Labor. "In a unanimous ruling on Thursday, the US Supreme Court said labor unions may not spend union dues for political purposes without first getting consent from the people who paid those dues. The ruling stems from a case in Washington State, where even teachers who were not active members of the Washington Education Association were required to pay dues to cover the costs of collective bargaining. Some of the money was spent on political causes that some teachers did not support.

The Washington Education Association said the case involved only a small number of union workers who decided not to be active members. But a conservative legal group hailed Thursday's court ruling. 'The WEA decision is a great moment for America's workers,' said Pacific Legal Foundation Attorney Timothy Sandefur. 'It's sad enough that American workers -- most of whom are not union supporters -- are often forced to hand over their earnings to unions against their will, but the Washington Education Association went even further and used the money to support political causes that the workers did not believe in,' he said." Unanimous!  Even Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg voted for this! Unbelievable!

Cybercast News Service ~ Susan Jones ** Supreme Court Deals Setback to Labor Unions

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:20 AM EDT

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