Well, I reported yesterday that two Americans won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. It is starting to get boring, but here ya go: Nobel Prize in physics is won by two Americans as well. Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot led a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians that built and launched the Cosmic Background Explorer, or Cobe, satellite in 1989 to study a haze of microwave radiation that is believed to be a remnant of the explosion that, according to the Big Bang theory, started the universe. Cobe’s...

Fellow Dutchman ‘Joey’ left a comment in the Tragedy At Amish Schoolhouse thread. His comment was the following: When does America finally do something about the amount of guns freely available to anyone in the country? The reason that I quote Joey is that he is asking a question many, many, many, many (fellow) Europeans ask themselves (and if possible they will ask this to Americans) just about every time something is reported about a tragedy like this one at the Amish schoolhouse,...

Buying and reading Ayaan’s new book (and posting about it) earlier today, reminded me of an article written by her for the American Enterprise Institute, which got published at the AEI website one month ago called Women the Future of Freedom. As with all her brilliant articles, it provides for a great, inspiring and informative read. Please consider reading it and sharing your thoughts on it.

The Dutch have voted: according to my fellow Dutchmen, we are the third “most loutish, bad-mannered nation” in Europe. The number one? Russia (vodka). The number two… drumroll… France (no further explanation necessary). The best mannered nations in Europe according to the Dutch: Swiss, Scandinavians and the Belgians. What can I say… we simply like TO PAAAAARTY! H/t “Interested”.

U.S. President Bush is expected to sign a bill this week which makes it harder for gamblers to place bets on the Internet. Bush was expected to act quickly after Congress approved the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making it illegal for financial institutions and credit card companies to process payments to settle Internet bets. It also created stiff penalties for online wagers. [...] The bill’s chief Senate sponsor was conservative Republican Jon Kyl, who, like Leach, has said...

Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello “have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine” earlier today for “for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes”. Before I will use an excerpt of the NYT’s article explaining this process and its importance, I cannot help but object to the use of the word ‘won’ in this context. Since when is the Nobel Prize a race? Since when is it an ordinary contest? It is not. It is a means of honoring those...

The New York Times reports that a gunman walked into an Amish schoolhouse: six people have, reportedly, died. Among them the gunman. According to early reports, the gunman, described as “not a young person,” entered the school about 11 a.m. and took several girls hostage, ordering the boys to leave. When the state police arrived on the scene – the community has no local police force-they tried to get the man, whom they addressed as “Roy,” to drop his gun. Shooting...

Sebastian Mallaby wrote a compelling column for today’s Washington Post. His main point: Democrats seem to be unwilling to push through / support certain necessary reform on the one hand, while on the other hand not putting their feet down regarding extremely important issues such as the latest law regarding the treatment / rights of detainees: After years of single-party government, the prospect of a Democratic majority in the House ought to feel refreshing. But even with Republicans collapsing...

A very interesting post over at Strategy Page called The Joke’s on Osama. In short: Osama Bin Laden was once a highly popular figure in many Muslim countries. His ‘popularity peak’ perhaps, was on 9/11/01. However, five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center Al Qaeda is talking the talk, but no longer walking the walk: Al Qaeda has not been able to carry out attacks against the West for quite a long while now: instead, the US – leading the ‘Coalition of the...

Today I bought Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book: Mijn Vrijheid: My Freedom. To be honest, I am not sure whether it has been translated into English yet. That being said, I will read it the coming days and will publish a review of the book either Wednesday or Saturday.

If Foley thought that he had hit rock bottom, that things could not possibly get worse, well… I guess he has to change his belief system: The FBI has announced that it will examine Foley’s notorious e-mails. The FBI announced last night that it is looking into whether former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) broke federal law by sending inappropriate e-mails and instant messages to teenage House pages. [...] Republican leaders continued to insist yesterday that it was understandable...

The New York Times reports: Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada were among the players that a former major league pitcher accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, according to a federal agent’s affidavit, the Los Angeles Times reported. The player reportedly making the accusations was Jason Grimsley, who used to play with Clemens and Pettitte on the New York Yankees and is now out of baseball. Clemens and Pettitte, now teammates on the Houston Astros, denied the allegations...

Is a Palestinian civil war about to break out? The Palestinian security service controlled by Hamas moved forcefully in the Gaza Strip on Sunday to disperse demonstrators loyal to the rival Fatah movement who were demanding months of back pay from a nearly bankrupt government. At least five civilians were killed, including two teenage boys, and more than 70 were injured in day-long clashes that marked the most severe partisan violence in months. The fighting, which erupted in downtown Gaza City...

The Washington Post reports: Abortion and race dominate the Supreme Court’s agenda for the term that begins tomorrow, with the Bush administration and its conservative allies urging the justices to put limits on abortion rights and affirmative action. Conservatives want the court to uphold a 2003 federal law banning the procedure opponents call “partial-birth” abortion, and to strike down local integration policies that distribute students by race. They are asking the court not...

Tim Golden reports for The New York Times that there seem to be two, prominent, sides within the Bush administration regarding the treatment of detainees (related to the GWOT). In a memo, Gordon R. England and and Philip D. Zelikow “urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies.” Furthermore: They called for a return to the minimum standards of treatment in the Geneva Conventions and for eventually closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay,...

The Times Of London: Is There Blood On His Hands? As Kofi Annan prepares to stand down as UN secretary-general, Adam LeBor investigates the accusations made against the world’s chief defender of human rights. [...] Charge one: Rwanda That in 1994, Annan and the DPKO refused the UN commander General Romeo Dallaire (below) permission to raid Hutu arms caches, despite his warning mass slaughter was planned, that they failed to inform the security council, and failed to clarify the extent of...

As so many pro-Israel bloggers, I am completely fed up with the UN’s (negative) bias towards Israel. When one looks at the UN, it almost seems as if Israel is the enemy of Human Rights and of the free world. The UN is, more and more, becoming a charade. That is why I endorse this petition. Excerpt: We, the undersigned, are concerned that the UN has been subverted for decades into an instrument to persecute a member state, Israel. This violates charter guarantees of equality for all states...

All in good fun of course: H/t to Interested. Are you a Democrat, Republican or Southerner? Here is a little test that will help you decide. The answer can be found by posing the following question: You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, an Islamic terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a HK .45 cal pistol and you are...

It seems that top House Republicans knew about Foley’s, umh, questionable correspondence with minors for quite a long while already: Among those who became aware earlier this year of the fall 2005 communications between Mr. Foley and the 16-year-old page, who worked for Representative Rodney Alexander, Republican of Louisiana, were Representative John A. Boehner, the majority leader, and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee....

Please read this post by one of the best bloggers in the entire blogosphere regarding Islamism: Muslihoon. Excerpt: Two people I admire very much (Dr. Victor Davis Hanson and Oriana Fallaci)—joined with many others I also admire—have made our engagement with Islamism clear: it is not only a war with bullets but also a war of wills and of civilizations (so to speak). If we focus only on the military aspect, we still might loose. We need to focus on all aspects of this war. Islamists...

This story reminded me of certain comments left here at The Moderate Voice by more liberal people, accusing ‘rightists’ or people right of center, of trying to prevent people from exercising their right to vote: A Brazilian law designed to ensure fair elections has kept police from arresting a 23-year-old law student who confessed to hiring hitmen to kill his mother. Adriano Saddi Lima Oliveira told police he paid 40,000 reais ($18,433) to hitmen who killed his mother Marisa, a real...

The New York Times published a review of Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial. In Bob Woodward’s highly anticipated new book, “State of Denial,â€? President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war. It’s a portrait that stands in stark contrast...

Will this cause problems? The police officer leading the investigation into train bombings that killed more than 200 people in the Indian city of Mumbai in July accused Pakistan’s spy agency on Saturday of masterminding the attack. Tariq Azim, Pakistan’s minister of state for information, denied the claim, calling it “sad and unfortunate.” “We reject this allegation, and demand that India should provide us any evidence, if they have,” Azim told The Associated...

Well, reasonable Muslims have, again, proven themselves to be completely unable to deal with criticism. This time, a French philosophy teacher and author had the nerve to criticize Islam in a newspaper commentary. Afterwards, he received a “series of death threats, including one disseminated on an online radical Islamist forum.” Continue reading.

Bob Woodward writes in his new book In Denial that Andrew Card asked / advised US President Bush to get rid of Donald Rumsfeld… twice, thus reports the Washington Post. Card was afraid that the Iraq war would (rightfully) be compared, into time / in the course of history, with the Vietnam war. The first time he advised Bush to fire Rumsfeld was right after the elections in 04. The second time was around Thanksgiving Day 05. Remarkably Card was supported by… Laura Bush, according to Woodward...