BEWARE THE DREADED DEAD SPOT: The single, flickering bar on Lisa Montgomery's cell phone display confirmed her worst fears -- she was in a cell phone dead spot.
The 21-year-old student had been driving along a dark stretch of Sonoma County highway near Freestone when she hit a deer, disabling her car.
She reached for her cell phone to call for help. It was after midnight and she was miles from her Occidental home. But the phone didn't work. She was in a spot with no reception. So she started walking.
"I didn't get home until 5 a.m.," said Montgomery, a Santa Rosa Junior College student who was returning from the Oakland airport. "I felt stranded and alone."
Montgomery has company. Cell phone users across the North Coast say they are frustrated by poor or no service -- a problem that often leaves them cut off from the world at critical times.

Seems Bill got all riled up over SF's outcomes. Not that I vote in the SF district, but I'm pleased he's pissed.

I suppose I'll put it this way: Bill, I call your bluff. Let's have it your way. Let the mighty US military stop protecting us San Franciscans from the evil terrorists, and we'll just suffer the consequences. They can put away the tanks and stop the air cover they're flying. Oh, right, there are no tanks. There is no air cover. Well at least the guys at the security checkpoints who keep a terrorist from blowing up a U-haul full of fertilizer on the golden gate bridge during rush hour can go home. Oh, wait, there are no check points. There is no active protection of this city in any specific way.

For the next thirty seconds I shall use my amazing super powers to protect you, my dear reader, from terrorist attack.

LOOKS LIKE FALL - FEELS LIKE SUMMER
Put your sweaters away
North Coast basks in unseasonably warm weather - and it should last for a while
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
By KATY HILLENMEYER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Don't shake the mothballs out of your woolens yet: Santa Rosa is expected to see record-high temperatures today, continuing a dry spell that forecasters think may stretch to Thanksgiving.
"The entire West Coast is locked in a dry weather pattern for the next seven to 10 days," said forecaster Steve Anderson of the National Weather Service in Monterey.
In Santa Rosa today, temperatures could peak at 80 degrees, he said, breaking the previous Nov. 15 record of 77 degrees in 1977. The AccuWeather forecast, which The Press Democrat uses, also called for sunny skies, but with temperatures topping out only at 76 degrees. Monday's high hit 77 in Santa Rosa.

Assisi adopts graves of heroes who fell liberating their city
THE people of Assisi have found a touching way of honouring the sacrifice of British and Commonwealth troops who died liberating their town in June 1944. Aware that the real relatives of the dead soldiers live too far away to visit the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Assisi, locals have begun “adopting” the graves of the 945 men that are buried there.
The “adopt a hero” initiative started last year and more than 300 graves have been allocated so far. Participants promise to visit the grave of their “hero” at least once a year, on the anniversary of his death, and to leave a flower there.
But more important than any practical obligation is a personal commitment to keep the memory of a particular soldier alive. “We want people to understand what this cemetery means and to carry this knowledge with them,” Vincenzo Cavanna, the co-ordinator, said, adding that until recently few people in Assisi had clear ideas about the site’s significance.

Signor Cavanna, 82, said that while allocating graves he has tried to prioritise soldiers from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa because their relatives were the least likely to visit.

The cemetery is almost always empty. Romeo Cianchetti, head of the local Second World War veterans’ association, decided something had to be done. The idea of an “adoption” scheme came to him amid preparations for the 61st anniversary of the arrival of Allied troops in Assisi on June 17, 1944.

Some local people have managed to put behind them past bitterness, taking this opportunity to make a gesture of reconciliation. Emiliano Zibetti was 3 in April 1944, when his father was strafed and killed by the machine guns of an RAF aircraft. The incident happened as he drove to a funeral in a lorry laden with wreaths.

Signor Zibetti admitted his family had been bitter for years because of the circumstances of his father’s death. But he has adopted the grave of Harry Barnett, a gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery (2nd regiment), who came from Ledbury, Herefordshire. He was killed about ten weeks after Signor Zibetti’s father, and was the same age. “I’ve come a long way mentally. But now, whenever I go to my father’s grave I also go to see Harry’s, too. They’ re buried only a kilometre apart.”

Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) announced his opposition Tuesday.
"I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending last week to help achieve deficit reductions we can now then turn around two weeks later to provide tax cuts that exceed the reduction in spending," he said. "That is beyond me, and I am sure the American people."

The soaring deficit with China has increased calls in Congress for the administration to take action against what critics complain are China's unfair trade practices such as manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages, rampant piracy of American movies and other copyrighted material and state support to the country's textile industry.

On Tuesday, the administration announced that it had reached a three-year agreement with China to limit imports of clothing and textiles, something that the U.S. industry said was desperately needed to halt a surge that began in early January and has already cost thousands of American textile jobs.

The figures for September showed that a series of "safeguard" quotas that the administration has been imposing on various categories of Chinese imports had resulted in a 5.2 percent drop in imports of Chinese clothing and textiles in September, when compared to August. However, these shipments were still up by 50.4 percent for the first nine months of this year, reflecting the surge that had occurred in earlier months before the quotas were imposed.

Several area historians and writers are among those President Bush will award the National Humanities Medal in an Oval Office ceremony today.
Bethesda historian Walter Berns, and D.C. author and columnist Judith Martin are receiving the National Humanities Medal.

Martin is famous for her "Miss Manners" column. She covered Washington culture for 25 years at The Washington Post.

House GOP leaders agreed last night to strip plans to permit oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the offshore continental shelf from a $54 billion budget-cutting measure, probably securing the votes to pass the bill today.

"They know all about their car, but never seem to know their wife's bra size.
"When trying to buy a sexy bra for their wife or girlfriend, usually they point to other women in the shop or, when asked about size, they say a 'handful'."
The wall consists of rows of silicon breasts in all sizes.

In a final flurry of campaigning Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told voters that today would be "Judgment Day."

I wonder what it would take to force presidential candidates to actually get rid of the scripted "debate" format and actually have something a little more real. Perhaps a massively coordinated, bipartisan boycott of the "debates" by viewers? I'm not even sure that would work. I think the only thing that would actually work is to nominate candidates that actually owned some gonads.

1) The remains of noted astronomer Nicholas Copernicus are believed to have been discovered in a medieval cathedral in Poland. Great ... yet another "fossil theory" that the fundamentalist wackos in Kansas can dispute. I'm sure they'll just say that those bones were placed there by an Intelligent Designer in order to confuse us, since we all know that a heliocentric model of the solar system specifically contradicts the Bible. Next thing you know, they'll be finding T. Rex bones in a monastery in Russia. Those damned pinko commie atheists!!

If the White House ever nursed a hope that the fourth Summit of the Americas would boost Mr Bush’s flagging image, that hope died as the talks in Argentina petered out late on Saturday without clear agreement on how or when they might resume.
Mr Bush’s follow-up bilateral with President Lula da Silva in Brasilia yesterday ended in warm words, but no sign of a meeting of minds on the stalled Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
. . .
President Kirchner of Argentina urged the creation of globalisation that works for everyone, not just a few. Brazil showed that it was the real muscle behind the scenes by leading opposition to Mr Bush’s desire to set a date for the resumption of full FTAA talks. Senhor Lula said that he preferred to wait until next month, for the next ministerial meeting in the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round of trade talks, when world agricultural subsidies are on the agenda. He won the day against the US and 28 other countries supporting a firm date to relaunch the pan-American free trade zone.
. . .
The South American press criticised not only Mr Bush, the most unpopular US President in the region since polling began, but also his host. Argentina’s leading broadsheet, La Nación, called the summit an “all-out failure”. It said that Señor Kirchner had been “navel-gazing” when, at its inauguration, he blamed US policies for Argentina’s economic crash in 2001. La Nación criticised Señor Kirchner for not concentrating on the “common conflicts” of Latin America, such as social inequality.

"The idea that pandemic flu has just gotten traction is not strictly accurate," said Martin G. Myers, former head of the National Vaccine Program Office and now a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He said a draft was presented in 1998 to Donna E. Shalala, HHS secretary in the Clinton administration.
An influenza pandemic occurs when a strain of flu virus emerges that has the capacity to be transmitted easily from person to person but is so different from previously circulating strains that just about everyone is susceptible to it. It occurred only three times in the 20th century -- 1918, 1957 and 1968.
Over a long enough period of time, a flu pandemic is inevitable. But the intervals can be long enough that an entire generation reaches maturity with no recollection of one."Flu people have a saying: 'The clock is ticking. We just don't know what time it is,'" Myers said.

Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said Alito told him in their private meeting that he recognized a right to privacy, the principle that underlies the Supreme Court's abortion rights rulings. ``I think he believes in that fundamental right,'' Durbin told reporters in Washington. He added that Alito didn't say if he would apply it in abortion cases.

On abortion, Nelson expressed support for a dissenting opinion by Alito that said states can require a married woman to notify her husband before ending a pregnancy. As governor of Nebraska, Nelson said, he helped push legislation requiring a waiting period for women before an abortion and that minors get parental consent for the procedure.
``I thought it was a legitimate effort by the state legislature, and, with my urging, to get those enhancements in place because I thought it was the role of the state to do so,'' Nelson said. ``It is pretty clear that judge Alito feels similarly.''

Durbin said Alito told him that the dissent ``was a tough decision'' to write.
``He spent more time worrying over, and working on, that dissent than any other'' opinion he ever wrote,'' Durbin said. ``I was glad to hear that.''

Clark Lombardi, now a law professor at the University of Washington, became a clerk for Alito in 1999.
"I grew up in New York City, and I'm a political independent. But I liked Judge Alito because he was a judicial conservative, someone who believed in judicial restraint and was committed to textualism," he said. "His approach leads to conservative results in some cases and progressive results in other cases. In my opinion, he is a fantastic jurist and a good guy."

Joel Friedman teaches labor and employment law at Tulane University Law School, but is temporarily at the University of Pittsburgh because of Tulane's shutdown following Hurricane Katrina.
"Ideology aside, I think he is a terrific guy, a terrific choice," said Friedman, a Yale classmate of Alito's. "He is not Harriet Miers; he has unimpeachable credentials. He may disagree with me on many legal issues — I am a Democrat; I didn't vote for Bush. I would not prefer any of the people Bush has appointed up until now.
"The question is, is this guy [Alito] going to be motivated by the end and find a means to get to the end, or is he going to reach an end through thoughtful analysis of all relevant factors? In my judgment, Sam will be the latter."

The Senate Judiciary Committee is ready to attempt to advance a newly minted, and renamed faith-based initiative that we all know as the Anti-Gay Amendment to the United States Constitution.They now call it the: "Marriage Protection Amendment."If they want to protect marriage, then they need to stop heterosexual couples from having a cavalier attitude about divorce! Stop legal divorce, and you protect marriage. Stopping committed Americans from legally solidifying their relationship is not protecting marriage. This faith-based initiative is all about hatred and bigotry. But we all know that already. The time is now to fight it!
My Senator, Arlen Specter is the head of the Judiciary Committee. He has the power to stop this from moving forward. He needs to hear from us, and right away!You can call his Washington office at (202)-224-4254. Simply urge him to "stop" or "oppose" the so-called "marriage protection amendment."

KEY JUDGMENTS:
Planned Parenthood v Casey 1991: Argued that a Pennsylvania law requiring married women wanting an abortion to notify their husbands did not place an undue burden on women. He said the state’s interest in promoting a husband’s interest in the foetus was legitimate.
United States v Rybar 1996: Argued against a federal law prohibiting private possession of machine guns. Said the government had no right to ban citizens from owning machine-guns.
Saxe v State College Area School District 2001: Argued that a school anti-harassment policy barring any speech that others might find offensive violated the students’ First Amendment right to free speech.
ACLU v Schundler 1997: Argued that a Christmas display on city property did not violate separation of Church and State doctrines
Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v Farmer 2000: Ruled against a New Jersey law banning partial birth abortions