PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tag new

In the wake of New York City's ban on restaurant use of trans fat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the ban is "not going to take away anybody's ability to go out and have the kind of food they want, in the quantities they want. ... We are just trying to make food safer."

A New York mother has written to national advice columnist Harriette Cole saying she wants her pregnant 14 year-old daughter to have an abortion. The letter points to the alarming trend of parents forcing their children to have abortions when they discover their teenage daughters are pregnant.

The vast majority of Britons oppose moves to secularize Christmas, according to a new poll. The survey found that 80% believe celebrating the birth of Christ remains an important part of the festival. The study follows a string of high-profile media reports of apparent attempts to rebrand Christmas on secular lines as a "winter" celebration.

A federal court has issued an order that will prevent a New Jersey school from censoring students' Christian musical selections in future talent shows. The Alliance Defense Fund said the order comes down in favor of an elementary school student who, when she was a second-grader in May 2005, had been chosen to participate in the competition, and then picked "Awesome God," made famous by the late singer-songwriter Rich Mullins, to perform. Officials at Frenchtown Elementary School denied her permission, a decision endorsed by the board of education, citing not only the song's religious content but its "proselytizing" nature.

Democrats can't not be crazy. They will instantly set to work enacting a national gay-marriage law, impeachment hearings, slavery reparations and a series of new federal felonies for abortion clinic protesters. The only way to get Democrats to focus on terrorists would be to convince them that the terrorists are interfering with a woman's right to choose or that commercial jetliners exploding in midair are a threat to America's wetlands.

How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television. Michael Palmer, the general manager of television stations WVII and WFVX, ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, has told his joint staff of nine men and women that when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories.”

Republican prospects in November's elections are decidedly brighter today as result of the ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. The court ruled that same sex partners must be granted the same rights and benefits afforded opposite-sex couples under New Jersey's civil marriage statues, but deferred to the state legislature the decision on whether the same sex arrangement should be called marriage. So the court essentially said that same sex partnership walks like a duck, looks like a duck and should be granted all the rights and benefits of a duck, but concluded it didn't have the authority to call it a duck.

Some of Barbra Streisand's fans have some advice for the diva as she makes a rare U.S. tour -- shut up and sing. Not all members of her audience, who paid up to $250 (134 pounds) for a ticket, have appreciated her politics. During a performance at New York's Madison Square Garden this week, one concertgoer yelled out, asking if the concert was a fundraiser. Streisand replied: "Shut the f*** up!" ()() I couldn't agree more. Actors and singers don't have a right to push their views on people who pay to see them perform, not preach.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are desperately hoping to divert us from the Mark Foley scandal with a new storyline: Dem dirty tricks. Why did these disgusting e-mails come out just a few weeks before a critical election? It is true the party of Bill Clinton, Gerry Studds and Barney Frank is not going to clean out the sexual cesspool, but frankly I don't care: I'm not responsible for what they do. Rep. Dennis Hastert is a basically decent man who happens to head up a party that failed to investigate evidence that a GOP congressman (widely known among insiders to be gay) was seeking inappropriate contact with minor boys entrusted to his care. The Washington Times is right: He should resign his leadership post. ()() My question is what did the Democratic leadership know and when did they know it? Aren't they just as responsible? Maybe Nancy Pelosi should resign?

While many U.S. troops in Iraq are bracing for an increase in terrorist attacks coinciding with the Islamic holy month, other soldiers, including officers, are cringing at new requirements that include "sensitivity classes" on how to "understand Ramadan and the Islamic culture." ()() As a former member of the U.S. Army reserve, I can tell you this is complete bullshit. When I served under the first President Bush, we didn't worry about crap like this. It won't make our soldiers any safer!

The disaster in New Orleans was caused, not by too little welfare spending, but by too much. Four decades of dependence on government left people without the resources -- economic, intellectual, or moral -- to plan ahead and provide for themselves in an emergency

Dubbed a "social experiment," the next season of the CBS reality show "Survivor" will divide its contestants at the beginning of the season by race. Critics call the move offensive and an "insult to anyone of an intelligent mind."

When Judge Anna Diggs Taylor was given the job of deciding whether the Bush administration’s wiretapping program was unconstitutional, she certainly understood that she would be ruling on one of the most politically charged cases in recent history. So it would have been prudent for her to disclose any activity that might conceivably raise questions about her ability to be impartial. Regrettably, it was left to a conservative group, Judicial Watch, to point out her role as a trustee to a foundation that had given grants to a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a plaintiff in the case.

If the school decides to remove a communist propaganda book from the library shelves you can count on the ACLU to fight it crying “book ban”. If students are being required to take Muslim names, play jihad games, and bow down in the direction of Mecca you can count on the ACLU to be silent. But when it comes to a tiny New Testament being distributed to students the ACLU think it is unconsititutional.

An Ohio school board is expanding sex education following the revelation that 13 percent of one high school's female students were pregnant last year. There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005, and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported. The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district's health curriculum in line with national standards. ()() Sounds like they're closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.

Lawyers for a man convicted of beating a former girlfriend to death with a lead pipe argued before the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday that their client should be spared the death penalty, partly because jurors were not allowed to smoke while deliberating. ()() Talk about a broken judicial system. This should be titled "Defense Lawyers Gone Wild!"

The Church and the Culture Wars There they go again. The liberal media, it seems, likes nothing better than to play up what they see (or create) as divisions in the evangelical ranks. This Sunday’s New York Times featured a front-page story about Gregory Boyd, an evangelical pastor in Minnesota who is highly critical of the religious right and refuses to talk about abortion or other cultural war issues from his pulpit.

The nerd has persisted as a consistent character of high school practically since the invention of group education. We see him with frequency in our own lives, and in pop culture, too. The nerd reliably makes an appearance in every teen-targeted blockbuster, novel or comic. But now, the stereotypically male nerd is almost exclusively female. No longer is nerdiness -- diligence and commitment to school -- so derogatory a characteristic. In fact, now, it is socially prized, but just in young women. Male nerds? No more. ()() I'm afraid my daughter might be slipping into this new category of girl geek.

I knew the events in the Middle East were big when the New York Times devoted nearly as much space to them as it did to a New York court ruling last week rejecting gay marriage. Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing. Most Americans have been glued to their TV sets, transfixed by Israel's show of power, wondering, "Gee, why can't we do that?"

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr filed a lawsuit against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday, claiming Bloomberg's attempt to crack down on gun dealers was "careless, willful and clearly illegal." The lawsuit, filed in Cobb County Superior Court, is in response to a federal lawsuit filed by Bloomberg in May alleging that 15 firearm brokers in five states, including Georgia, were "rogue gun dealers."

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force. Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory. ()()The hypocrisy is stunning!

In a special televised address last night, President Bush addressed the nation on the immigration crisis. Unless a total indifference to the wishes of the American people can be counted as a kind of political boldness, anyone hoping for a bold new approach from the White House last night on immigration was likely disappointed. The president is in bad shape. His approval rating with voters is approaching Saddam Hussein territory—his handling of the immigration issue a major reason for the plummet.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that it would be implementing a new, revolutionary, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art approach to the illegal immigration problem. What is this “new” approach? Believe it or not, the department declared that the U.S. would now be cracking down on employers who “knowingly and recklessly” hire illegal aliens. In other words, they are going to try a “new” program called “enforcing existing laws.” Guess what? It works!

America's number one talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, is giving an enthusiastic thumbs up to the controversial new 9/11 movie, "United 93." Limbaugh said on Friday's broadcast that critics are wrong when they say it's too soon to revisit the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Abortion rights advocates once hoped that RU-486 would prove at least as safe as surgical abortions and largely end the abortion wars by making access widely available and very private. But in the wake of reports in March that two more women had died after taking abortion pills, some doctors say they are increasingly uneasy about prescribing them.