Pope John Paul II has been rushed to the hospital amid problems breathing during a bout with the flu. This kind of story in the news biz is to put it bluntly the kind of story where a beloved or famous figure is aging or sick and the press starts to cover their health closely due to an anticipated sad outcome. The details: VATICAN CITY – Pope John Paul II was rushed to a Rome hospital on Tuesday night, "as a precaution," after his flu worsened and he developed breathing problems,...

We’ve just received this email from a mysterious source indicating this shows one of the U.S. military said to have been seized by terrorists in Iraq. Some are skeptical about an an earlier image, but we can’t understand how they can be…

Are newspapers edging out the middle as they opt for "red-meat" ideological columnists hired for their clear cut positions, rather than giving columns to reporters who’ve put in years of reporting? Veteran columnist Georgie Anne Geyer thinks so — and she makes a good argument for this position. Indeed, over the past 20 years columnists, op-ed pages, and television seem to have chosen conflict and controversy as the goal versus a more tranquil discussion of ideas. Why? Readership/ratings...

The extent to which Dan Rather has sandbagged his own career as it draws to a close is never more evident than in a New York piece, Black Days At Black Rock. We were first alerted to this article via an email from RatherBiased.com, the news site that started scrutinizing Rather and news a few years ago. (They have a great overall synopsis of this article with readers’ comments). What’s striking is that in the end future generations will be looking at articles like this for their journalism...

Our occasional everything-on-it linkpizza. MANY different political viewpoints are offered for your consumption. Opinions do not necessarily represent the views of The Moderate Voice. THE TRIAL OF THE KING OF PERPS POPS BEGINS and Jeff Jarvis is (rightfully) cringing: Oh, gawd, the Michael Jackson trial begins. We watch him going to lunch. We watch him coming back from lunch. We watch the poor guy whose job it is to hold an umbrella over the poster boy for the dangers of fame. We watch MJ being...

YOU KNEW this was going to happen one day, right? NEW YORK (AP) — Old school: The body is a temple. The Next Big Thing, according to 31-year-old Joe Tamargo: The body is a billboard. Tamargo, who runs a Web site LivingAdSpace.com, has started a new enterprise, selling advertisers the opportunity to permanently tattoo their messages on his body. After posting his offer on eBay, the responses began to trickle in. Two advertisers earned spots on his right arm — and put a little more than...

The Washington Post has a story "Decoding Why Few Girls Choose Science, Math" which looks at Thomas Jefferson High school. And it reaches some conclusions — but runs smack, dab into the rational analysis of Betsy Newmark, who is also a teacher. Read her entire post but here’s a small taste about how she picks apart research that’s generalized – and asks some questions that beg to be answered before any stock is put in this research: I somehow doubt that boys are...

The AP reports that an American G.I. has allegedly been captured by "insurgents" — which means terrorists – who threaten to behead him in 72 hours if all Iraqi prisoners aren’t released. UPDATE: But some websites now conclude the photo shows….an action doll figure.. A hoax(?).. Read this before you read the original post below. Then this. MUST READING!!!! We will give you our original post below here anyway (the points are still valid if someone is seized): Clearly...

Here’s a new sign that the average computer may be getting smaller — and more powerful: Hewlett-Packard Co. researchers will introduce groundbreaking nanotechnology today that could replace traditional transistors on computer chips with tiny, molecular structures — a development that could make smaller, more powerful machines possible. The work is part of the $213 billion semiconductor industry’s mad dash to find new ways of miniaturizing computer chips and overcoming the...

A top GOPer seems to be systematically laying the groundwork for a 2008 Presidential run — the son of a famous politician, and now governor of a major state…but his initials aren’t J.B. They’re M. R.: Friends and supporters of Governor Mitt Romney have established a political action committee that has lavished more than $250,000 on Republican candidates and county GOP organizations across the nation since July, apparently laying the groundwork for a potential presidential...

….at two SUPERB blog news aggregators. First, there’s the new blog Pundit Drome which is super cool. It displays boxes showing 30 blogs from varying viewpoints (TMV is highly honored to be one of them) and lets you view these constantly updated blogs on an easy to read screen. This is a GREAT place to check out a wide variety of ideas — and because it’s constantly updated you can visit often. We just discovered it and it’s already a favorite. A similar concept with...

You just KNOW there will be lots of speculation — and jokes — about this: BUFFALO, N.Y. – Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton collapsed Monday during a speech but aides said the former first lady quickly recovered from what they described as a fainting spell triggered by a 24-hour flu and continued on to a second public engagement. She’s fine," aides to the junior senator from New York told NBC News. An aide to the 57-year-old Clinton, who spoke with The Associated Press...

If you were expecting young people to be at the forefront of protecting the first amendment for themselves and future generations you are apparently mistaken. It sounds as if quite a few young folks consider the First Amendment (not to be confused with the inalienable right to party) boring and nothing to get all that worked up about: WASHINGTON – The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech. It...

…and so was the child. PS: Some parents are dumb. Can’t we demand they get licenses before they conceive?

Last week Jack Grant and Greg Piper were gracious enough to fill in as Guest Bloggers for us and they did a superb job. Jack is a scientist. And Greg Piper has just been hired to be fulltime reporter for a newsletter publisher. You can read about it here — but the most interesting fact is that he landed a job bigger than the one he applied for. That means his employer is exceedingly smart. (And his employer is letting him continue his blogging).

ANSWER: As low as humanly — and inhumanly — possible: BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s interior minister said Monday that insurgents used a handicapped child as one of the suicide bombers who launched attacks on election day. Falah al-Naqib told reporters in Baghdad that 38 attacks were carried out on polling stations in Iraq on Sunday and that one of the suicide bombings was carried out by a disabled child. A handicapped child was used to carry out a suicide attack on a polling site,"...

Here’s definitive proof that man was descended from monkeys: Would you pay to see a monkey’s backside? I hope not. Monkeys will, and I guess that’s okay, though it sounds awfully close to the sort of thing that lands guys in jail here in the human realm. A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey’s bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say. So...

How about this tidbit from the New York Post: January 31, 2005 — EVEN in death, Rodney Dangerfield gets no respect. The late comedy legend’s longtime publicist, Kevin Sasaki, got a call from a booker at CNN last week asking him if "Rodney would be available to share his comments on the passing and legacy of Johnny Carson." Sasaki replied that unless CNN had a new way of linking up to the afterlife via satellite, that would be impossible. Dangerfield, of course, passed away...

Well, here it is.

This is a case of a baby eating its parent: NEW YORK/PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – SBC Communications Inc. on Monday said it will buy AT&T Corp. for about $16 billion, in a move to bolster its business with large companies and ending the independence of its former parent that for decades held a monopoly on the U.S. phone market. The combined company would have around $71 billion in annual revenue, the same as the top U.S. telecoms company, Verizon Communications Inc., excluding SBC’s...

Arthur Chrenkoff, who has persistantly rounded up good news from Iraq that he thinks the media is either downplaying or largey ignoring, has a feast of good news today. His collection this time needs to be read in full. At the end he adds this: Yesterday was a birthday: the day free Iraq was born. It’s not the end of the struggle against the revanchists and terrorists, but it’s the day when these murderers lost any pretence that they are representing Iraq or the Iraqi people. And it’s...

Just watch this video (from Ohio University’s WOUB and see if you can’t do anything when you watch the weatherman but cringe.

Iraqi Voters Send Insurgents A Message A high turnout of Iraqis today embraced democracy in the country’s first free elections in 50 years — thus giving a defiant collective gesture to  the terrorists who repeatedly threatened to murder them if they cooperated, ran for office or dared go to the polls. The context of this election is unprecedented in recent history — and perhaps in all of history. For while there  have been other countries that have made dramatic shifts...

Home of Alan Keyes SPECIAL BULLETIN We will run this item from Andrew Quinn in full due to its SHOCKING NATURE. Brace yourself before reading it: KEYES FOR GOVERNOR In other news, a general state of emergency has been declared over the entire state of Illinois. No, we’re being serious (although we really wish we weren’t). I’m no Blagojevich fan; he seems to spend more time on his political feuds than governing the state. I’ve often said I’d...