Musafir's Musings

• Christ is going to appear," Frazier continues. "He is going to call all of his saved, all of his children, home to be with him."
  

• In other words, "in the twinkling of an eye," as the Rapturists often say, millions of born-again Evangelicals will suddenly vanish from the earth—just as they do in LaHaye's "Left Behind" books. They will leave behind their clothes, their material possessions, and all their friends and family members who have not accepted Christ—and they will join Christ in the Kingdom of God.
  

• Frazier continues. "Jesus taught his disciples that he was going to go away to his father's house, but that he was not going to abandon them, because while he was gone he was going to prepare for them a suitable dwelling place.… And when the time was right, he would come back to claim his own.… Jesus is going to come and get his bride, which comprises all of us who are born again.
  

# posted by musafir @ 7:53 AM 1 comments

• Within minutes of the launch of the new site bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government Web sites.

• Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results.
  

# posted by musafir @ 3:31 PM 0 comments

• Yesterday the UK organisation Dignity in Dying, which used to be known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said Dr Turner's story showed British law was shortening lives and called for assisted suicide to be legalised.
  

• "This case is truly heartbreaking," said its chief executive, Deborah Annetts. "The government must make time in parliament for the assisted dying for the terminally ill bill. Only this bill could have prevented Anne Turner from taking her life early. If this bill had been law, Anne would not have been forced to go to Zurich while she was still able to travel, for help to die. She would be alive today."
  

• Dr Turner, who would have been 67 today, said in an interview shortly before her death that she did not want to reach the point where she could not travel to a country where assisted suicide is legal. "I think it's dreadful that somebody like myself has to go to Switzerland to do this, which is an awful hassle," she said.

# posted by musafir @ 8:57 AM 0 comments

• " Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said Thursday.
  

• "The system's kind of broken," said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.
  

• "Nominees now, Democrat and Republican nominees, come before the United States Congress and resolve not to let the people know what they think about the important issues," such as a president's authority to go to war, said Biden.

# posted by musafir @ 9:12 AM 1 comments

• The plans offered by Republican leaders yesterday would change two of the three areas of law or regulation that govern lobbyists' behavior: the congressional rules that limit gifts to lawmakers and the laws that dictate the amount of disclosure that lobbyists must give the public.
  

• A third major area -- campaign finance laws -- would go untouched, an omission that amounts to a gaping loophole in efforts to distance lobbyists from the people they are paid to influence.

# posted by musafir @ 10:54 AM 0 comments

• Reed said he helped close an illegal casino in Texas and prevented casinos from coming to Alabama. "Many marriages and lives were saved" and "many children were spared the consequences of gambling because of the work I did."

  But, he added, "if I had known then what I know now, I would not have done that work."

# posted by musafir @ 8:52 AM 2 comments

• The practice is common among all religious groups - Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Muslims, and Christians - but appears to be most common among educated women, a fact that befuddles public health officials and women's rights activists alike.
  

• "More educated women have more access to technology, they are more privileged, and most educated families have the least number of children," says Sabu George, a researcher with the Center for Women's Development Studies in New Delhi, who did not participate in the study. "This is not just India. Everywhere in the world, smaller families come at the expense of girls."
  

• Like China, India has encouraged smaller families through a mixture of financial incentives and campaigns calling for two children at most. Faced with such pressure, many families, rich and poor alike, are turning to prenatal selection to ensure that they receive a son. It's a problem with many potential causes - from social traditions to the economic burden of dowries - but one that could have strong social repercussions for generations to come.
  

# posted by musafir @ 11:20 AM 0 comments

• But just as Alito appeared to have satisfied Senate Democrats on the agenda book issue, Sen. Edward Kennedy produced the most dramatic moment of the day by holding up an agenda book allegedly owned by Alito that the senator claimed to have bought on eBay. Reading from it, Sen. Kennedy said, "It's right here, as plain as day: 'Monday, 9 AM: Pick up dry cleaning. 10 AM: Pass litmus test.'"

• Elsewhere, Iran announced plans to enrich uranium, and Vice President Dick Cheney announced plans to enrich himself.

And so it goes.

# posted by musafir @ 11:20 AM 0 comments

• In years past, when the House has recessed for its winter break, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has decamped for warmer climates and a sailing trip to the Caribbean with some of the city's top lobbyists, including Henry Gandy of the well-connected Duberstein Group and Timothy McKone of SBC Communications.
  

• Over the summer, they discussed a trip for this year as well, Boehner said yesterday, but last week the lobbyists weighed anchor without him, content to communicate by telephone while the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee rushed to Washington for a high-stakes run to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) as House majority leader.
  

• The annual vacation, dubbed a "boys' trip" by detractors, points to an issue underlying the current House leadership race: Both Boehner and his rival for majority leader, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), have extensive ties to the same K Street lobbying world that stained DeLay's reputation and spawned the Abramoff corruption scandal.
  

• Both camps this week have been pointing to the other's well-documented connections and activities, some of which are the stuff of legends. They include Blunt's failed effort to insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the massive bill creating the Department of Homeland Security and Boehner's distribution of checks from tobacco concerns in 1995 to lawmakers on the House floor. Also of note are both men's prodigious fundraising activities, some of which involve individuals and clients with ties to Abramoff.

# posted by musafir @ 8:45 AM 0 comments

"In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"

State of War, by James Risen

# posted by musafir @ 9:40 AM 0 comments

• "Rep. Tom DeLay (Tex.), one of the most powerful and feared Republican leaders in Washington, abandoned his quest to regain his House majority leader post yesterday, bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans worried about the growing corruption and campaign finance scandals linked to his office.
  

• DeLay's announcement in his home town of Sugar Land ends his decade-long tenure as a legislative juggernaut and conservative ideologue who revolutionized the relationship between power and money in Washington. It also cleared the way for a leadership contest that could further shake up the House GOP team going into an uncertain election year. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) said Republicans will choose a new majority leader and other officers the week of Jan. 30, when members return for President Bush's State of the Union address."
  

# posted by musafir @ 6:22 AM 0 comments

• 2006...Here we are in the first days of 2006. What does the ‘6’ symbolize? How about- 6 hours of no electricity for every one hour of electricity? Or… 6 hours of waiting in line for gasoline that is three times as expensive as it was in 2005? Or an average of six explosions per day near our area alone?
  

• People buy black market gasoline because for many, waiting in line five, six, seven… ten hours isn’t an option. We’ve worked out a sort of agreement amongst 4 or 5 houses in the neighborhood. According to a schedule (which is somewhat complicated and involves license plate numbers, number of children per family, etc.), one of us spends the day filling up the car and then the gasoline is distributed between the four or five involved neighbors.
  

• I know for most of the world, highly priced gasoline is a common concern. For Iraqis, it represents how the situation is deteriorating. Gasoline and kerosene were literally cheaper than bottled water prior to the war. It’s incredibly frustrating that while the price of petrol is at a high, one of the worlds leading oil-producing countries isn’t producing enough to cover its own needs.
  

• There is talk of major mismanagement and theft in the Oil Ministry. Chalabi took over several days ago and a friend who works in the ministry says the takeover is a joke. “You know how they used to check our handbags when we first walked into the ministry?” She asked the day after Chalabi crowned himself Oil Emperor, “Now WE check our handbags after we leave the ministry- you know- to see if Chalabi stole anything.”
  

• I guess the Iraqis who thought the US was going to turn Iraq into another America weren’t really far from the mark- we too now enjoy inane leaders, shady elections, a shaky economy, large-scale unemployment and soaring gas prices.
  

• Goodbye 2005- the year of SCIRI, fraudulent elections, secret torture chambers, car bombs, white phosphorous, assassinations, sectarianism and fundamentalism… you will not be missed.
  

• Let us see what 2006 has in store for us.

# posted by musafir @ 9:58 AM 0 comments