Busters:

The new software you have recently had deployed on the NB site is a travesty.

I have seen repeated Flash/Shockwave errors that are shutting down my browser with loss of data. I think others are seeing the same.

I see the main window title is no longer meaningful, something that looks like a diagnostic message for developers.

Annoying popups appear regularly. I am sure you think they are paid advertising. I view them as a source of exceptions which are killing my browser.

The load is painfully slow, especially the init time for the comment HTML text area. This leads to errors and lost data.

In general, I would FIRE the software developers you have hired to do this. They are in over their heads and this website is not ready for primetime. Do us all a favor, find somebody who actually knows what they are doing.

In their report on Saturday’s Pentagon protest, New York Times reporters David D. Kirkpatrick (formerly assigned to cover the conservative movement for the Times) and Sarah Abruzzese offered readers several things the Washington Post did not. Their story used the "liberal" label (twice), explained that the ANSWER Coalition was affiliated with the Workers World Party, noted the ANSWER signs celebrated communist icon Che Guevara, and quoted Cindy Sheehan’s speech (typically) calling out President Bush and Vice President Cheney as "war criminals."

Unlike the Post, the Times story was not featured on Sunday’s front page (and I can’t tell from the website whether it made the print edition at all.) The headline was unremarkable: "In March, Protesters Recall War Anniversaries." The Times duo quickly applied the liberal label to protest groups:

[Note: Link to YouTube video showing Capitol spray-paint at bottom of post.]

In her March 18 article, the Washington Post's Brigid Schulte informed readers about why Gathering of Eagles counter-protesters set out to guard the Vietnam War Memorial on March 17 during the scheduled anti-war protests:

At a Jan. 27 antiwar rally, some protesters spray-painted the pavement on a Capitol terrace. Others crowned the Lone Sailor statue at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue with a pink tiara that had "Women for Peace" written across it.

Word of those incidents ricocheted around the Internet.

“That was the real catalyst, right there,” said Navy veteran Larry Bailey. “They showed they were willing to desecrate something that's sacred to the American soul.”

Yet a review of major newspapers in Nexis found few mentions of anarchist anti-war protesters who spray-painted the U.S. Capitol steps in late January. In fact, the New York Times yielded no reporting on the defacement, while the Washington Post only ran a brief item on page B2 three days after the fact.

Here's the 170-word squib from the Post’s Elissa Silverman in the January 30 paper:

The Washington Post highlighted Saturday’s anti-liberation of Iraq protest march to the Pentagon on the front page, splashing a large color photo of a crowd of leftist demonstrators over the headline "4 Years After Start of War, Anger Reigns: Demonstrators Brave Cold to Carry Message to the Pentagon, as Counter-Protesters Battle Back." Counter-demonstrators won an article and two photos of their own in the Post, but Post reporters repeatedly referred to jeering conservatives giving the leftists a battering of abusive comments. The Post used no ideological labels or explained the communist origins of the organizers of the ANSWER Coalition – unlike The New York Times, which did both in their Sunday coverage.

The lead sentence of the front-page Post article by Steve Vogel and Michael Alison Chandler mentioned that the "anti-war" protesters were "jeered along the way by large numbers of angry counter-demonstrators, but the rest of the front page was devoted to the left, especially the standard sympathetic rookie protester: 72-year-old Korean War veteran Paul Miller "making his first appearance at an anti-war rally" who felt "so bad for the young Marines who are getting their legs blown off and losing their lives."

We have an issue along our southern border with Mexico that needs to be addressed. Solving the problem over time could solve other problems with crime, health costs, etc...
The technology is available.
People, its time to decide and move forward.
This seems to me a national security issue, a clear and present danger that has going on for way to long. Sealing the borders isn't the fix. I would suggest putting the integrity of a secure border in place. Electronic walls, lasers, monitoring systems.
What are we waiting for?

All I can say is, wow.

Sunday, 03/18/07
Tenn. mine enriched Gore, scarred land
No major pollution violations, but threat remains

By BILL THEOBALD
Tennessean Washington Bureau

CARTHAGE, Tenn. - Al Gore has profited from zinc mining that has released millions of pounds of potentially toxic substances near his farmstead, but there is no evidence the mine has caused serious damage to the environment in the area or threatened the health of his neighbors.

Two massive white mountains of leftover rock waste are evidence of three decades of mining that earned Gore more than $500,000 in royalty payments for the mineral rights to his property.

New owners plan to start mining again later this year, after nearly four years of inactivity. In addition to bringing 250 much-needed jobs to rural Middle Tennessee, mine owners will resume paying royalties to some residents who, like Gore, own land adjacent to the mine and lease access to the zinc under their property.

So how many Gathering of Eagles (GoE) counterprotesters were in Washington yesterday, and how did their numbers compare to the Answer Coalition's protest count?

The New York Times (may require registration) reported "several hundred counterdemonstrators" (HT Michelle Malkin, who has the priceless quote of the day -- ".... the NYTimes relied on 'several veterans of the antiwar movement' to give them crowd estimates of the Gathering of Eagles. It's the domestic equivalent of MSMers relying on dubious Iraqi stringers to provide them with war coverage...." -- THWAP!)

The Washington Post, in its article about the protest, wrote of "thousands of counter-demonstrators."

Gathering of Eagles' web site reports that they were told by the National Park Service that their GoE estimate is ..... is .....

CBS continues to pound away the US attorney firings story. On the March 16th edition of "The Early Show," reporter Bill Plante lead his story stating "the hole just keeps getting deeper." Plante then played a sound bite from Democratic hyper partisan Senators Chuck Schumer at Patrick Leahy. After playing a few clips of White House staffers Karl Rove and Tony Snow, they hyped Republicans calling for their resignation, touting Senator Gordon Smith and playing a sound bite of Representative Dana Rohrabacher implying Gonzales should go.

Anchor Harry Smith sought some expert opinion from Republican strategist Ed Rollins and Democratic strategist Mike Feldman. Fair and balanced debate? Not from what Mr. Rollins said from the start.

HARRY SMITH: Ed, let me start with you. Alberto Gonzales, two questions, should he stay or should he go?

Keying off the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war this Tuesday, the networks will be running overviews of the situation there all week. Judging by the opening salvos this morning on ABC and NBC, you might when tuning in want to hide the sharp objects and keep the Zoloft handy. The picture painted is ceaselessly dismal, with any bright spots ignored or explained away.

Take the report by ABC's Terry McCarthy on today's Good Morning America. After citing weekend casualty statistics, he began by claiming that "now more than ever" Iraqis are nervous about the future of their country. According to McCarthy, "the sound of bombings and gunfire are constant backdrops to everyday life." Constant? Really? I daresay that in the great majority of the country, people rarely hear either. Even in hotspots like Baghdad, while such sounds are not unusual, neither are they "constant" by any means.

One challenge for the MSM is explaining away the largely peaceful and prosperous Kurdish north. McCarthy did his unlevel best: "even in northern Iraq's Kurdish region, which is relatively peaceful, the fight to keep terrorists out takes up a lot of time and energy. The Kurds dug a six-foot ditch all around the largest city, Irbil, to stop car bombs from entering."