12 Oct 2005
Miers' Religion Cited in Court Nod

It warms my heart to know that there's a religious test for Supreme Court justices. Hmmm, wasn't there something about that in our Constitution? As George Carlin supposedly said:

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for us for over 200 years and we’re not using it anymore.

AP - President Bush said Wednesday that Harriet Miers' religious beliefs figured into her nomination to the Supreme Court as a top-ranking Democrat warned against any "wink and a nod" campaign for confirmation.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Expert: Hold developers liable for flaws

Alright, as long as we hold architects responsible when banks they've designed are robbed...

Former U.S. cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt says coders should be held accountable for security problems in their software.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Cattle grazing may help rather than hurt endangered species

I can tell you from experience that this is true: we have a nesting pair of heron's in our little watershed, mostly due to the cattle keeping things trimmed to the point where the birds can spot predators more readily. But the key word here is "landowner"...

A landowner has an economic incentive to keep his pastures productive. A landowner will not overgraze his property, to the point where it burns out. However, much of the cattle on grass in this country are on public lands (mostly out West), where no such incentive exists, and a reverse incentive may apply (to "get all you can while the gettin's good", as they say). In the absence of strong governmental management this inevitably leads to a tragedy of the commons.

The fight between cattle-grazing landowners and environmentalists may be a false dichotomy.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link