Starting January 5th, the US is going to start fingerprinting and doing additional background checks on foreigners arriving in the US with a visa. This additional security has so enraged one judge in Brazil that he spewed the following:

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva said in the court order.

Not only is that statement ridiculous on its face, this judge managed to top his own idiocy with his remedy to the situation: for Brazil to subject Americans traveling to their country to this same brutal, threatening, xenophobic, Nazi horror security measures. Oh. The. Irony.

I think he'll hold on and win the nomination, but only because the other Dem candidates are not capitalizing on any of the openings he's left them so far.

Jeff Jarvis looks at Dean's Bush is the "Most dangerous administration in my lifetime" statement. Exaggerate much?

Saturday Night Live is starting to poke fun at him. Al Gore Redux?.

And John Cole looks at Dean's flip-flop on religion. I had completely forgotten about Dean telling southerners to...

stop voting based on "guns, gays, God and school prayer"

Thats an interesting quote now that he's said he'll trot out the Jesus talk when he heads south to campaign.

What not do do during Return Of The King. Funny stuff.

Some of the illegal Iraqi arms deals are beginning to surface - apparently much of the stuff was funnelled thru Syria. Noticably absent from the LA Times story is any mention of France being involved.

The weblog design showcase has some neat stuff in it.

Rowan Atkinson is so depressed over the reviews his last film - Johnny English - received, he's seeking treatment at a clinic in Arizona.

What happens when a 50 year old black man finds out he's not really black? He decides to check the 'Native American' box on the census. Talk about confused.

Could the government be handling the mad cow beef story get any worse? From 1st telling everyone that the meat from that cow wasn't even destined for the food supply to today's story that there is 10,000 pounds of potentially tainted beef that was processed at the same place and the same time the cow in question was slaughtered and that this meat is in retail stores in 8 different states and Guam.

Well, I'm back from a weekend back home, and I think the site updates ought to resume at a normal pace now. Before I left for the weekend, I started to convert Everything Tarantino to tableless design. Its going to be a bit more of a departure from the current design than what I did to this site, but it'll keep generally the same form.

UPDATE: Its all done except for some minor color tweaks and converting the last few pages to the new design.

Is Jeff Van Gundy ruining Steve Francis, while not making the Rockets any better? I tend to think so. All of Francis' numbers are down, and Houston isn't winning more games than last year. In fact, they have become a horrible boring team - averaging 4 fewer points than any other team in the West.

Coaches can get away with turning teams ugly - if they can win games. But to give up exciting play for no real gain, well, I just wonder how long Houston's management will put up with it.

High school student gets in trouble for scrawling

Kill Bush, Hail Saddam

on a school window in a 'bloodlike fluid' that the kid apparently got from a science lab at the school. I guess if you are gonna do something dumb, you might as well make it extraordinarily dumb.

Dang, I missed the on-air Joe Namath pass at Suzy Kolber. I'm guessing Joe had a bit too much eggnog before doing that interview. At least he wasn't hitting on Linda Cohn.

Perhaps Nate took somebody's advice from the comments section here - he has his own weblog - with comments enabled. Since my wife put a little holiday ban on him, this may be your only place to get your fill of him for a while.

UPDATE: Dennis, you are a fucking genius for seeing this coming. An email from Nate:

please take the post on me down. my page has my last and first name on it. seeing how kon could use that info to find me and actually make good on everything he's promised, i'd rather he not know about the page. fucking think a little, would you? are you interested in becoming an accessory to a crime?

i didn't ask for a plug. and i didn't ask to be discussed on your webpage (especially without the ability to respond to people being assholes).

Bite me.

The new layout is going live right now. This shouldn't cause anything to be screwed up, but the server is still acting funny so who knows.

Well, it appears that some people just don't take me seriously. When I say, "stop the nasty, name-calling posts or I'll be the one banning you," I mean it. When I continue to see post, after post, after post of claiming that people are morons, mental midgets, etc. I plan to stick to my word. So, to those that will not be named, YOU'RE BANNED until after the holidays. Gee, next time don't goad me into doing it.

Merry Christmas to everyone else.

This is good. A court ruled that the Bush admin can't hold Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant w/o Congressional approval. Having the power to label anyone an enemy combatant resting all with the Executive branch is not a good idea - though getting Congress involved may turn this into quite a circus.

It isn't just me thats calling attention to Howard Deans' conspiracy theories. Both Spinsanity and the Washington Post are all over him as well. The Post article in particular has some interesting info about Dean's seemingly contradictory statements over the past several years. This very well may begin to stick to Dean like the dumb label stuck to Bush and the liar label stuck to Gore.

Sorry about the comments fiasco this morning, somethings going screwy with the CGI on this server and it gets so slow that the pages don't rebuild even though the comments are being accepted by the system. I think I've cleaned up double posts, but if you see any that I've missed, let me know and I'll wipe them out.

This is worth reading. Scroll down to the 'What To Say If' section.

Now its Madeline Albright saying that Bush may be holding Bin Laden's capture back for a better time politically. She claims she was joking. Yes yes, and Dean doesn't believe the Bush Knew meme he repeated, and Jim McDermott said he didn't know for sure that the Saddam capture was timed for political reasons.

It almost seems like this is some sort of strategy - trot out a conspiracy theory while claiming that you don't really believe it. I doubt its going to work.

This is perhaps the 1st negative thing I've ever seen written about Nick Denton and his Gawker Media sites. Basically, there's an argument about the CSS/XMTML code that used to render the Gawker Media sites and whether it was given to Denton, or whether he's using it without permission of the creator.

The IM conversations Nick posted in the comments to the linked article nearly clear him from my perspective (I need more info to say for sure), but it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

It saddens me to see what the leadership of my Catholic Church is saying about Saddam's capture.

It's true that we should be happy that this (arrest) has come about because it is the watershed that was necessary... we hope that this will not have worse and other serious consequences." (Cardinal) Martino said.

If he/they agree that Saddams capture was necessary, then why did they not support the effort to oust him. Yes, yes, more could have been done short of war. But there is almost always more that could be done - the question is whether anything effective could have been done.

And I hope this is just semantics, but should be happy? Does that imply that they aren't particularly happy about his arrest? Sad if thats the case.

The re-design/tweak is almost complete (make sure to do a Control-Refresh to load the newest stylesheet). No tables, lots of CSS, not quite XHTML (it'll get closer by the time its done, but not all the way - I'll save that for next time).

Imagine that. France caved on the issue of forgiving Iraq's debts and we didn't even have to trade the reconstruction contracts for it. Think the capture of Saddam had anything to do with their change of heart?

UPDATE: Germany caved today also.

More conspiracy theories from the Democrats. 1st it was Howard Dean trotting out the 'Bush Knew' meme, and now Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash had this to say:

... told a Seattle radio station Monday the U.S. military could have found Saddam "a long time ago if they wanted." Asked if he thought the weekend capture was timed to help Bush, McDermott chuckled and said: "Yeah. Oh, yeah."

The Democratic congressman went on to say, "There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing."

"I don't know that it was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him.

"It's funny," McDermott added, "when they're having all this trouble, suddenly they have to roll out something."

Its funny, Dems run into trouble and suddenly they roll out the conspiracy theories.

Because of Joe Horn's little cell phone celebration last night, ESPN has put up a list of the 10 worst touchdown celebrations ever. I thought their #1 worst celebration - Mimicking Killing Teammates With A Machine Gun - was actually funny when I saw it. Tony Gonzalez and his slam dunking of the football over the goalpost wears on me the most.

Dean has a huge foreign policy speech up on his site. Most of the speech is good stuff, but where he tries to draw distinction with Bush, he seems to not be seeing the same things I see:

Working more effectively with the UN, other institutions, and our friends and allies would have been a far better approach to the situation in Iraq.

Of course it would have, but when France, Germany, Russia and China don't cooperate, there isn't much we can do except go it alone, or scrap the idea and keep trying. This is a recurring theme in Dean's speech. The US should rely more on traditional alliances, and less on coalitions of the willing.

I agree, until our traditional allies don't share common goals with us anymore. We haven't been allies with Britian/France/etc because we liked eachother's food for all these years - we had common goals, common enemies. I don't think we have those things in common with some countries anymore and as such their cooperation isn't going to be as forthcoming as it traditionally has.

It is the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt insisting that human rights are not the entitlement of some, but the birthright of all.

I assume he includes the Iraqis in that sentiment. But how do you get other countries to oust Saddam with you to achieve the goal of human rights in Iraq when other countries do not share that goal. Here's what some of our traditional allies have done:

From the Telegraph, Not Dean...the new Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is worth quoting. "This shouldn't be just about who gets contracts," he said. "It ought to be about what is the best thing for the people of Iraq."

Good point. The best thing for the people of Iraq was to get rid of Saddam, and back in the spring Mr Martin didn't want to be a part of that. The best thing for the people of Iraq, according to Mr Martin and , and Herr Schroder and M de Villepin, was that Saddam should be allowed to go on killing and torturing them for another decade or three. Reasonable people are prone to reasonableness, and the reasonable thing to do is, invariably, nothing.

Thats why they wouldn't join us in ousting Saddam - many of our traditional allies simply do not share out current goals and enemies. Dean realized this back before he was a Presidential candidate.

From the Washington Post: Though Dean has repeatedly criticized Bush for failing to win international support for the Iraq war, for instance, in June 1998 he defended Clinton's bombing of Iraq by arguing on the Canadian program, "I don't think we could have built an international coalition to invade or have a substantial bombing of Saddam."

During another 1998 appearance on the show, "The Editors," Dean said it was not worth trying to woo French support on foreign policy initiatives. "The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy," he said.

I think those excerpts speak for themselves. Dean also had a paragraph in his speech that just seemed odd.

There is a global struggle underway between peace-loving Muslims and this radical minority that seeks to hijack Islam for selfish and violent aims, that exploits resentment to persuade that murder is martyrdom, and hatred is somehow God's will.

I don't see this struggle being played out anywhere. I see the peace-loving Muslims largely ignoring the radicals among them. And the struggle is between the radicals and the 'West', not other Muslims.

Courtesy of Dennis, the Hanes socks resealable bag mystery has been solved:

The reasealable bags are for consumers to be able to open the bag and bag and view the product.

Considering how haggard Saddam looked when we captured him, can you imagine what Bin Laden will look like when we catch up to him. (I happen to think Osama is dead, in which case he'll look significantly worse than Saddam)

Does anybody know why Hanes athletic socks come in a resealable ziplock-type bag? Surely, nobody actually stores their socks in the bag after the've been washed.

As you've no doubt heard elsewhere - we've captured Saddam Hussein alive. Here are some of the stupid statements I've seen since the news broke:

He was captured in a cellar in Tikrit. There is no way that he could have been leading the "resistance". Is this really so different than Osama coordinating the worldwide actions of Al Qaeda from a cave in Afghanistan?

Howard Dean: "President Bush deserves a day of celebration." "We have our policy differences but we won't be discussing those today." Thats pretty convenient on the day when his anti-war, turn it over to the UN at any cost policy looks worse than ever.

Dean Supporter: ...yes, Saddam would still be in power, so what. I'll take afforable healthcare for everyone in the US over Saddam capture any day."

Another Dean Supporter: Sigh. All I can think about is the effect of Saddam's capture on the Dean campaign!". Dean ... the candidate of the 'Me First' generation?

Atrios: Saddam was a bad guy, but it isn't clear he's any worse of a guy than some of the folks who are a part of our "Coalition of the Willing," so this pretense of moral clarity, etc... is ridiculous.

David Stern speaks out against Rasheed Wallace.

"Mr. Wallace's hateful diatribe was ignorant and offensive to all NBA players," he said. "I refuse to enhance his heightened sense of deprivation by publicly debating with him. Since Mr. Wallace did not direct his comments at any particular individuals other than me, I think it best to leave it to the Trail Blazers organization -- and its players and fans -- to determine the attitudes by which they wish to be defined."

I'm currently in the beginning stages of a site redesign that you can take a look at while its in progress. Its my 1st attempt at a table-free layout and seems to be working OK so far (in IE and Mozilla at least). Its a bit buggy in Opera, but I don't care.

If any of you use a Mac, I'd like to get a screenshot of the layout from you please.

UPDATE: There's now 2 versions. A tweak of the current design and the whole new layout. Neither are even close to being complete, but now there's a few options.

I gotta say, doing this all without tables has been 10 times easier than I expected. I spent some time studying Glish's CSS templates and built on them. The mistakes I had made previously seemed obvious this time around - I had no idea what 'float: left' did, and was messing up the total width of my container div.

The ease of this whole process is part of the reason I worked up the tweak of the current layout - just to see how long it'd take to make it all pretty. It took about 10 minutes. I don't think I'll ever go back to tables.

XHTML may be another story. I don't see anyway of getting my headlines to reside on the same line at the beginning of each post without using SPAN tags. Anybody got ideas?

Apparently one third of the first battalion in the new Iraqi army quit this weekend. How exactly does one go about 'quitting' the military. I've always thought they were considered deserters, rounded up and thrown into military prison until they decided they were going to fulfill the obligation they volunteered for by signing up for the army.

They are branching off of their illegal activities and into the realm of race baiting: Wallace claims NBA's white establishment is exploiting black players to make itself rich. Wallace gets exploited to the tune of $17 million dollars per year in salary. I hope he gets fined, by either the team or the league.

17 of the kids at Goose Creek, South Carolina, are suing the school principal and superintendant along with the police chief and an officer in connection with the morning 'drug' raid that turned up no drugs. You'll probably remember this case is where a group of officers raided the school with drug dogs and weapons drawn and had kids layed out on the school's hallways while they searched them.

Who the hell would buy an Ann Coulter doll? Is this supposed to be a gag gift to give to liberals or are there right-wing wackos out there actually putting these things up next to their computer monitors?

When Newt Gingrich beings criticizing Bush's Iraq policy (how its being run, not the invasion itself), its a pretty clear sign that all is not well.

11-year-old gets suspended from school for 35 days for a creative writing project that the principal deemed 'threatening'.

Dylan started writing his novel, titled "Costume Party," on Oct. 1, and in two days had polished off 10 chapters. Students in his English class urged him to read some of it aloud on Oct. 6, and Dylan said that even his English teacher "didn't have a problem with it."

The story describes a boy named Dylan at H.B.T. Middle School "who adored his teachers like he enjoyed honey," but who was "bullied and pushed around by everyone bad enough to be evil."

The Dylan in the story decides to incorporate plots from horror movies into a scheme for revenge. As in the "Halloween" movies, the killer dons a plain white mask, knives and bullets fly at unsuspecting targets, and bodies are found in pools of blood.

Dylan said that other than sharing his name, he had nothing in common with the main character of his novel. "He just has my name - there's nothing about him that's like me at all," Dylan said. "I just thought it would be neat to take one of these movies and change the setting."

Rion Vernon's Creatures & Freaks artwork is some very neat stuff.

What is it with music teachers and threatening their students? Back in 2002 a music teacher threatened her class with a gun if they didn't play their instruments corrently. And now today I see a recent story of a music teacher who was accused of threatening her elementary school class with a gun is now claiming that the kids made up the story to frame her. When asked why they would do such a thing she said, "Evil, I guess."

13 year old boy charged with assault after giving a girl a hickey in school.

Too bad I don't smoke. Because with as much time as I spend in front of a computer between work and websites a cigarette lighter that mounts like a CD drive would kick some serious ass.

Stacy, do you think your dad would get any use out of this?

Have the Blazers finally had enough? They just traded Bonzi Wells to Memphis for Wesley Person and a draft pick. And it appears that they are waiting for the other shoe to drop for Zach Randolph once his police drug test results come back - look for a hefty team suspension if they are positive. Rasheed Wallace is in the last year of his contract and likely won't be re-signed.

Its official, Neoflux is no longer interesting.

Interesting exchange between Howard Dean and Chris Matthews

DEAN: I hate right-to-work laws. And let me tell you why it’s OK to be forced to join a union. The union is out there negotiating for your wage increases. Why should you get a free ride? Why should you should be able to go to work for that company, get the same benefits as everybody else who paid their union dues and you paid nothing? That’s why I’m against right-to-work laws.

MATTHEWS: OK.

DEAN: But I do believe it’s important for states to be able to make their own laws.

MATTHEWS: You understand why a libertarian would disagree with you, right? A libertarian would think they had a right, he or she, to work where they can do the job.

DEAN: Yes, but why should they-but why should they get the benefits of everybody else who is paying dues and get a free ride?

MATTHEWS: Because it’s a free country.

Its time to just shut down the Portland Trailblazers franchise. Zach Randolph arrested for DUI. The Blazers 25 point pledge to their fans is clearly a joke and we're only a month into the season.

And I thought we were getting over the hump of idiocy in schools. A 7-year-old boy was punished for using the word 'GAY' in school.

Second-grader Marcus McLaurin was waiting for recess Nov. 11 at Ernest Gaullet Elementary School when a classmate asked about Marcus' mother and father, the ACLU said in a complaint.

Marcus responded he had two mothers because his mother is gay. When the other child asked for explanation, Marcus told him: "Gay is when a girl likes another girl," according to the complaint.

A teacher who overheard the remark told the kid that 'gay' was a bad word and sent him to the principal's office where he was told that he couldn't use the word 'gay' in school.

His punishment? To come to school early and write "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again." On the classroom blackboard. After being told not to use the word 'gay' in school again. I'm dumbfounded.

This isn't a good enough reason to overturn the recent gay marriage/sex judicial decisions, but it'll sure give creedence to the far Right's slippery slope argument. Utah Polygamist Invokes Ruling on Gay Sex.

The nation's high court in June struck down a Texas sodomy law, ruling that what gay men and women do in the privacy of their homes is no business of government. It's no different for polygamists, argued Tom Green's attorney, John Bucher, to the Utah Supreme Court. "It doesn't bother anyone, (and with) no compelling state interest in what you do in your own home with consenting adults, you should be allowed to do so," Bucher said.

I actually think Green has this one correct. I can remember plenty of folks complaining about the Texas sodomy case - not because of the ruling - but because of the basis of the ruling. By relying on privacy issues rather than equal protection, the Texas Supreme Court opened up a huge can of worms - and here they are.

China's idea of turning control of the internet over to the UN is a pipe dream. Thankfully, the US govt and apparently Europe, are both opposed.