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Morning Buzz: May 24, 2007
Tweet Share on Facebook May 24, 2007 CommentThis morning's top stories:
- Israeli troops arrested several dozen lawmakers belonging to the militant group Hamas in retaliation for rocket attacks the group allegedly launched from border towns into Israel.
- U.S. troops in Iraq have identified the body of one of the three missing servicemen south of Baghdad.
- The website Ancestry.com has put 90 million war records online, adding to its database of family genealogies and other records.
- An explosion at a coal mine in Siberia has left 35 dead, just weeks after a similar explosion in a nearby mine killed 110, Reuters reports.
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Is the SAT Inherently Finger-ist?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2007 Comment (1)The big news on the blogosphere today is a study, reported by LiveScience.com, that found a tentative correlation between finger size and performance on the SAT.
As it turns out, the ratio between a person's index and middle fingers in connected to prenatal hormone levels that also play a role in brain development.
The SAT is unlikely to be scrapped in favor of measuring a person's fingers, but the news comes as yet another question mark as to how effective--and, more important, how fair--the test is in measuring aptitude. Here are three articles from the U.S.News & World Report archives on the evolution and attempts to bring down the storied exam.
Psyching out the SAT, Oct. 9, 1994
The SAT Revolution, Nov. 3, 2002
The New SAT: It's Bigger, But Is It Better? March 6, 2005
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Murtha Survives Reprimand Vote
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2007 CommentA bitter legislative quarrel in the House, played out in the parliamentary vocabulary of reprimands and motions to table, raged on yesterday as the Democrats pushed back a Republican attempt to officially chastise Rep. John Murtha, the combative Pennsylvanian whom Speaker Nancy Pelosi unsuccessfully backed for majority leader after the Democrats won control of the House in November.
As we reported here on May 11, the scuffle started with an early-morning effort by Republicans to kill a controversial pet project in Murtha's district: the National Drug Intelligence Center.
Here's a synopsis of the fight so far:
- Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, attempts to strike a $23 million earmark for the center. The effort fails.
- A week later, Rogers says, Murtha storms across the House floor and says to him: "I hope you don't have any earmarks in the defense appropriations bill, because they are gone and you will not get any earmarks now and forever." (Murtha chairs the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee.)
- Rogers introduces a motion to reprimand Murtha for threatening legislative revenge.
- The House tables the motion, effectively killing it, voting almost strictly along party lines.
No word yet on whether the conflict will boil over again when the House breaks for recess.
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Goodling in the Hot Seat
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2007 CommentThe distinctly D.C. psychodrama of the fired U.S. attorneys is back in the spotlight today as Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison at the Department of Justice during the time of the firings, testifies today before the House Judiciary Committee.
Ahead of the hearing, the committee released another heap of documents obtained from DOJ, including department correspondences that involves Goodling, who was granted immunity from prosecution in the case in exchange for her testimony. All the documents are available here.
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Morning Buzz: May 23, 2007
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2007 CommentThis morning's top stories:
- In a commencement address today, the president is expected to detail newly declassified information that Osama bin Laden has ordered terror attacks outside Iraq, the Associated Press reports.
- Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are claiming victory in the final Iraq spending bill, which does not mandate troop withdrawal but has some provisions for withholding reconstruction aid if certain security benchmarks are not met.
- A report by the World Conservation Union claims that 35 of Europe's 231 mammal species are in danger of extinction.
- Dubai will be home to the first of a new series of self-sustained buildings that are powered by wind energy, LiveScience.com reports.
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TSA: Liquid Explosive Tests Going Well
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentThe era of dirty hair for shampoo-deprived airline passengers is a step closer to ending. A new device that can detect liquid explosives inside sealed bottles will soon be rolling off the shelf, the Transportation Security Administration announced this morning. Early results have been so positive, the agency says, that it expects to deploy up to 200 such machines in major U.S. airports by October.
The move comes after months of testing. TSA officials say they've long focused on the liquid explosive threat; in spring 2006, before the plot to blow up 10 airplanes headed from the United Kingdom to the United States was exposed, the agency began testing 10 technologies that could detect liquid explosives. The machines chosen today use a system called FIDO--presumably alluding to bomb-sniffing dogs--made by Washington, D.C.-based ICx Technologies. Their method tests chemical vapors inside bottles for traces of explosives.
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Filtering the E-Activists
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentAs we've written about before in this space, the hosts of user-generated news sites and blogosphere barometers are ripe for the picking for motivated E-activists. Enough fingers on the mouse can launch story after story on a given subject to the top of sites like Digg.com, which rely on votes from readers on which articles and links reach the top of the site. (You know who you are.)
One such site, Helium.com, which launched last October, is taking a somewhat different tack in restricting who is allowed to vote for stories. A new debates section, which was launched this morning, hopes to extend that strategy to the always dicey realm of politics.
A full report about the site is here, on USNews.com.
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"Straight Talk America" In Serious Debt
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentStraight Talk America, Sen. John McCain's leadership political action committee, is in debt more than $150,000 and has less than $3,000 cash on hand, Congressional Quarterly reported yesterday on its Political Money Line website.
Most of the candidates for president in the 2008 election have similar leadership committees--not to be confused with the funds they have for their own campaigns--that they use to provide funding to other candidates to help build support, among other activities. Here's a list of other leadership PACs that are associated with major 2008 candidates. Three of the six have not yet filed reports for 2007, according to Political Money Line.
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Doc: An $880,000 Lawsuit Between Congressmen
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentNote: This article ran on May 21, and was updated with a response from McDermott, below, on May 22 at 10:45 a.m. ET.
A legal battle between two longtime congressmen has cost the winner $880,000, according to the winner's lawyer.
A federal court ruled earlier this month in favor of House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio against Rep. Jim McDermott, a veteran Democratic member from Washington State. The case is very much inside-the-beltway stuff. As News Desk explained earlier this month, the dispute was over a tape McDermott had obtained of Boehner discussing an ethics ruling with then Speaker Newt Gingrich and several other members of the Republican leadership. Boehner's complaint alleged that McDermott violated federal law when he disclosed the tape of an "illegally intercepted conversation."
The court ruled on May 1 that there was no First Amendment right "to disclose the tape to the media," a victory for Boehner.
In a letter obtained today by U.S. News, Michael Carvin, a lawyer for Boehner, discloses the fees. (Letter: Page One, Page Two.)
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Morning Buzz: May 22, 2007
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentThis morning's top stories:
- A deadly clash between Lebanese troops and Fatah Islam militants in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon enters its third day today.
- Meanwhile, Israel struck two camps suspected of use by Hamas after a rocket attack killed a woman in southern Israel.
- The explorers who recovered a valuable Colonial-era shipwreck worth up to $500 million say they have been inundated with calls for the movie rights and other claims to their story.
- The bubonic plague has been identified as the culprit in the death of a monkey in the Denver Zoo, Reuters reports.
