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Thank you for the clarification of your post. I now see why you feel all the UN resolutions / actions are binding on US law. I do not interpret Article 2 as broadly as you do, but will admit I may be misinterpreting it. (I doubt it, but it definitely is possible.) As for the Sabres, for some reason the game wasn't on DirecTV CI in Rochester last night so I didn't get a chance to watch it. I only knew they were winning big and then knew that they had won. Fortunately didn't get any of the gory details.

I'm a beer drinker myself, so most of these mixed drinks are emetics in my opinion. I'd probably actually consider it a moron's martini, but I think we're getting down to semantics.

Well considering legislators are actually elected and the "volunteer" that came up with this mess wasn't in any way, shape, or form I think that it is different. My concern, and why I claim the Court is activist is that it stated, in my reading of it, that parents now have no right to control or oversee what a teacher or "educator" wants to present to their children. Considering the fact that this survey had to have "parental approval" in the form of a misleading consent form, I think that even this school board and the "volunteer" running the program believed that parents have some rights regarding their children's educations. If my reading of the decision is correct, and parents do not have that right according to the 9th/8th court, I have a big problem with that, as it is almost impossible to get rid of a poor teacher with tenure in many school districts. If I am mistaken in what the Court actually decreed, then cool. But every time I read the decision, I keep coming back to the same place, that is that parents were just denied one more opportunity to keep "education" within the framework they are comfortable with. (By the way, I don't see this as a clearly right wing loss; I can definitely see "liberal" parents in Kansas or other more conservative regions thinking that they took it up the back side as well.)

1 oz gin 2 tsp sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, & orange juice several drops curacao Combine w/ ice, shake well Strain, add ice.

Well, I'll respect your opinion on this, but I just can't keep from seeing it from the flip side that these words in this ruling are actually stating that "educators" don't need to take the views of the parents into consideration before letting loose with any other program that is this moronic. I am still taking out of this ruling that the district doesn't even need to point out to the parents beforehand that they want to do something this poorly thought out. I hope that I am just reading it wrong.

Please point out to me where in the UN Charter it says anything about member nations being bound by General Assembly resolutions. As near as I can tell, and I admit I may be missing something, the General Assembly makes RECOMMENDATIONS and reports. I saw nothing binding in any of it. The Security Council is a different matter, but we have a veto on that one, so I'm not too worried about anything biting our butt from there. And you can go blank yourself with the "you didn't read the Constitution" crud. I have read the Constitution on several occasions and even bothered to relook at it before posting to you. My issue isn't with reading the bloody thing. My issue is that I don't see where any "resolutions" have been ratified by the Senate as PER THE CONSTITIUTION. I ASKED for CLARIFICATION of YOUR STATEMENTS and you suggested I go reread the Constitution, thus the point about being "snippy". The Charter is a treaty, you are correct. However my point was that the Senate has to ratify any treaties and the way you have been describing things, it would imply that you think once a treaty has been signed any and all modifications are necessarily binding on the US. I do not come away with that impression. That definitely is not the case with "normal" treaties. IF the UN Charter IS a different beast, please point me to the direct reference as I DON'T SEE IT THERE.

Campy, I see your point, but disagree with you about UN resolutions being "treaties" that the US is bound to. Unless the Senate RATIFIES a treaty it is NOT the "law of the land". (The Kyoto treaty that Clinton signed being a prime example.) I don't understand how the US becoming a member nation more than half a century ago automatically forces the US to follow something that was added in the interim. The US is party to GATT, but if/when that gets revised, it won't be binding on the US until the Senate ratifies the revisions. I don't see how this is any different. PS Thanks for the snippy answer about reading the Constitution.

Apologies about the caps, wasn't trying to "scream" at you, but my browser sometimes has issues with getting things like "bolding text" to work. I called it a "sexuality survey" because I felt it was very disingenious of the lady who sent the letter out to ignore that several rather "mature" questions, which IMHO are totally inappropriate for 6 and 8 year olds, would be included. Let's be honest about it, she had to have known that if she told the parents that those questions would be in the survey that most of them would have denied permission. I do not come to the same conclusion reading the Court's opinion that you do about notifications. It says parents don't have the right to override decisions about THEIR children, I interpret this to mean their OWN children. You seem to view it as more individual parents don't have the right to alter the curriculum for all children. On that you and I would both agree. I do though see this as becoming a precedent for something far more substantial / sinister (IMHO), that being that parents now no longer have the option to keep their children out of class if something is being taught that the parents object to or to keep the children from participating in activities that the parents don't want them involved in. You keep bringing up the word "exclusive", if that had been in the sentence in question, I would tend to agree with you that this is not a significant issue. It wasn't included in the Court's opinion, and I find it hard to believe that they just "accidentally" worded the sentence in a way that would provide very expansive powers to "educators". If this does in fact become such a precedent, this is a VERY bad thing. If they stated in their opinion that in this one particular instance the plaintiff's didn't have a case for the reasons you have cited, I would agree with you that the Court exhibited judicial restraint. It's funny, because you see this as being a case of judicial restraint and I (and I will admit immediately that I am not a lawyer) see it instead as an opening for intense judicial activism. Yes, if a school board or renegade teacher does pull a stunt like this in the future, the populace can, at the next board election, try to get the board kicked out. But what about the tenured teacher, can the parents get her booted now that they apparently don't have the right to keep their kindergardeners out of today's lesson on proper condom usage? Again, you and I are taking different meanings from the sentence in question. If you could be so kind, please help me understand how I am reading that sentence incorrectly, because if I could get over to your view of the ruling I would be much more comfortable with it.

Nice post. I agree with all of it except the "when it will be part". If the future could be seen with precision, then I would not have a problem with saying everything will be wonderful or FUBAR'd on x date. Unfortunately, none of us know what the future holds, and cannot say y will happen on z date. I do not have a problem though with the administration providing a listing of individual goals that are to be accomplished and then allowing the American people to decide on their own whether progress towards the goals are being made at a satisfactory pace. I believe a lot of those goals have been put out there, but perhaps more specificity would help.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (November 10, 1975) "THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, ... DETERMINES that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Looks pretty cut and dried to me. If all UN resolutions are automatically US law, I guess that one is as well. I don't believe that UN resolutions automatically become US law as parts of binding treaties because that would render ANY US laws subject to modification via UN resolutions. I don't see where today's Senate can be forced to ratify / abide by a UN resolution today because the US joined the UN over 50 years ago. Maybe you could provide some clarification on what you mean by this, because I am not following you one bit on this one.

1st off, could you please post a link to the UN resolution that stated the US was not authorized to invade Iraq? Or is the lack of a resolution stating explicitly "the US may invade Iraq on xxx date at yyy time to ensure compliance with resolutions that Iraq is currently violating" the same as a resolution stating "the US may not enforce Iraq's compliance with our other violated resolutions"? As near as I could tell, the US was actually enforcing the 18 or so resolutions that Iraq was violating. You lost me there with the part about UN resolutions becoming a part of federal law. Is it really true that federal law says "Zionism is racism"? When did the Senate ratify that one? You also lost me with the US is violating Geneva Conventions. As far as I know, any Iraqi soldier that was captured by the US led forces was provided with all rights and priviledges engendered under the Geneva Conventions. I don't believe there are currently any "terrorist" signatories to the said Geneva Conventions.

Mickey, what part of that consent form indicated in any way whatsoever that 1st graders were going to receive a sexuality survey? I certainly wouldn't have assumed that because the form stated "answering questions may make my child feel uncomfortable" that the 1st graders (heck, the 3rd or 5th graders either) would be asked questions of a rather "adult" sexual nature. Would you have interpreted the consent form that way? I also take extreme exception to the Court's ruling stating "we also hold that the PARENTS HAVE NO due process or privacy RIGHT TO OVERRIDE THE DETERMINATIONS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS TO THE INFORMATION TO WHICH THEIR CHILDREN WILL BE EXPOSED WHILE ENROLLED AS STUDENTS." I am surprised that you do not have an issue with this. As CTM mentioned, that does seem to render the whole idea of parental consent forms as being superfluous, as it does appear that parents cannot grant nor withhold consent. The other thing I thought was interesting in this whole matter is that the lady who administered these questionaires was a "volunteer". The friggin' school board is letting random people come in and ask some really inappropriate questions, but since it was "rationally relagated to a state purpose" I guess that it is ok. I will be shocked if any members of that imbecilic school board get reelected. I am not shocked that the 9th Court thinks this is ok. It actually seems par for the course.

No data on what happened to the old morning guys, as they were too annoying to listen to more than 1-2 times / quarter. Agree that Riter can be less than stellar, but he is much better than the pair that precedes him.

It seemed back in the late '70's and early '80's that he was the ultimate bandwagon jumper. If they won a game they were playoff bound and if they lost one they were the worst team in the world. The effect was even more magnified for Fergy. I never thought too much of Felser when growing up but didn't mind listening to him when he'd be on Howard's show on WNSA in the afternoons.

I don't think that he is as good as he was on WNSA but he is still very listenable. I hadn't thought that much of him when he was just on Empire, but I really liked his radio shows on WNSA. He is still 1000% better than D'ohopp and the Bullfrog. In an ideal world, he'd get moved from mornings to the afternoon and Riter would get moved to the morning drive time. The other 2 can get moved sometime to the evening after the signal strength goes down and I can't pick WGR up.

Thank you for the link. I downloaded the article. Won't be able to read it tonight or tomorrow, but plan to read it before the weekend.

With all the references to the tech bubble, one thing I have always been curious about is how much of the '90's boom was caused by the Y2K scare? Companies spent a ton of money and a lot of people were hired to deal with this "problem". After 1/1/2000, the Y2K issue was no longer an issue, and companies and individuals no longer had to pay for expensive upgrades and/or Y2K experts. I would expect that a fair number of people that had been hired to deal with that problem found themselves expendable after the 1st of the year and that companies that normally expect software / hardware to be used for 3+ years decided that they did not need to perform upgrades for at least that long. I haven't found any good studies about Y2K's effect on the tech bubble. Does anyone know of links to any studies to how much Y2K affected the '90's and present economies? Thanks in advance for any info.

IIRC (and it's been a long time since I was in a history course, so please someone with a much stronger history background than myself correct me if I am wrong) that when the Calvinists started out that is what their belief was - that all is predetermined by God. The way they got around the issue you bring up was by saying that not only had it been predetermined who would and would not make the cut, those that did make it would demonstrate in this life that they were going to Heaven by behaving better than everyone else. Kind of an olden days, let's rub the noses of the sinners in the fact that we're going up and they're going down sort of thing.

I'm in. I'm not sure what "right wing conspiracy" you would like to see investigated in addition to this one and for which this post is a setup, so I am reserving judgement on your next call for an independent investigation, but I definitely support this one. Heck, depending upon what it is, I might even support that next call for an independent investigation as well.

I'm sure there is at least 1 and probably several coach / GM combos out there that are convinced THEY can get TO to play to his full abilities AND not detract from their team. I'd say they are fooling themselves, but you don't get to that level without having an ego.

What French riots? I haven't seen anything about those on the front page of Rochester's D&C, but they did have a nice front page article titled "Rioters vent rage at Bush, U.S. at Americas summit" yesterday. I'm impressed.

Ah yes, the leak is merely a noble effort of a man (or woman) of extreme conscience and not the result of a disgruntled employee who doesn't like the new boss for trying to change the way things are done. Either way it does not explain why the righteous indignation we saw in the "Plame affair" is not emanating from the Democrats in this one.

What, you missed the media and Democratic cries for a special prosecutor to track the sources of these leaks?!? Oh, I guess we all did.

7 residences and 1 closed restaurant. Yep, when CBS got the AFC they relooked at the blackout zones. IIRC Syracuse, NY and Baton Rouge, LA were the only 2 markets nationwide that got hosed. The small sliver of land was officially switched from Syracuse to Rochester TV market the year after Syracuse was blacked out but the league did not remove Syracuse from the blackout zone.