Flash News

Given my last few posts, it'd be easy to think this is about a guy who runs real fast. But this is more about my liberal leanings and the fact I'm a recovering journalist. The news has been piling up lately, and it's much too complex to comment on all of it, so here are some stories you shouldn't let slip through the cracks:


Violence After Mosque Attack Kills 111

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen shot dead 47 civilians and left their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad Thursday as militia battles and sectarian reprisals followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine. Sunni Arabs suspended their participation in talks on a new government.

At least 111 people were believed killed in two days of rage unleashed by Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra, a mostly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

This makes me sadder than I can say. And while the story uses the phrase "sectarian violence," "sectarian reprisals" and so on, what we're really talking about here is civil war. What is almost as appalling as the deteriorating situation in Iraq is the total lack of leadership in the United States.


Christian Movement Moving Into Palmetto State

By Ron Barnett, USA TODAY

Turning the state into a promised land for conservative Christians will be easier than he had thought, he says.

Burnell, a 30-year-old financial adviser and founder of Christian Exodus, believes thousands of religious conservatives across the USA agree with him when he says their influence on government is diluted by liberals and Republicans who have failed to do what mainstream Americans elected them to do.

The answer he came up with in late 2003: Move like-minded Christians to one state: South Carolina.

This is funny and scary all at the same time, especially when they let it drop that secession from the U.S. is an option they're willing to consider. So, they want to form their own nation based on religious dogma. Don't they know we've already got an "Iran?"


Mysterious Ball Lightning Created in the Lab

Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer

Ball lightning is one of the most mysterious phenomena in nature. Now scientists have created a laboratory version of the eerie floating orbs using technology taken from a common microwave oven.

OK - that's just cool.