If you want to cut down on your cancer risk, the latest info suggests, you should be monitoring your intake of red meat: SYRACUSE – A major American Cancer Society study finds people who reported eating high amounts of red and processed meat were thirty to fifty percent more likely to develop colorectal cancer than those who eat little or no meat at all. The study of nearly 150,000 Americans, is the largest and most comprehensive study to date, and adds to previous evidence linking higher consumption...

So now we find out quietly — as if the power that be are ashamed and hope people won’t notice — that the adminstration has abandoned the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is clear is this: the end of the search was not trumpeted because this administration wanted minimum publicity for the end of a search that we were told was a KEY REASON for us going to war: The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after...

Oxblog’s David Adesnik points out that Iraq policy critic Scott Ritter has a new outlet for his writings: Al Jazeera, which many consider the p.r. voice for Al Qaeda. In his latest column, Mr. Ritter explains that Abu Musab al Zarqawi is a "phantom menace" invented by Ba’athist intelligence officers in order to provoke the United States into launching assaults that will cause civilian casualties and thereby turn the Iraqi people against the US-backed Allawi government. Ritter...

Well, if it is, just CLICK THIS,  sit back and it’ll become clearner.

R.I.P. the mainstream media as a covert de facto political party. That’s essentially what Newsweek’s Howard Fineman writes in what is basically an obit for the mainstream media as we have long known it. But his excellent piece represents even something BIGGER: It’s an obit for what during the 60s and 70s was called "advocacy journalism" — where journalists began to take firm stands, almost like editorial writers. Slowly this began to creep more and more into daily...

A pregnant woman named McDonald gave McBirth at McDonald’s — proving McDonald’s delivers: UNION, Missouri — Ann McDonald knew the baby was coming and there wasn’t a hospital in sight, so she pulled over and delivered the child outside — appropriately enough — a McDonald’s restaurant. Chayse Westin McDonald was due Wednesday. But on Sunday, Ann McDonald knew her time was getting near — and fast. Problem was, there is no hospital in this eastern...

Even if some folks on the right and left have some bones to pick with President George Bush’s new pick for Homeland Security chief one thing appears to be clear: this time he got it right by picking a tough jurist who is not a flamboyant personality: President Bush has chosen federal appeals court judge Michael Chertoff to be his new Homeland Security chief, turning to a former federal prosecutor who helped craft the early war on terror strategy, The Associated Press has learned. Chertoff...

Due to our trip to L.A. last night in the middle of one of the big,  storms here (see below) The Moderate Voice is hopping into The Moderate Bed Moderately Early. Like by 7 p.m Check back tomorrow and our posts and update of the Dan Rather story (we will put more quotes on our roundup) will continue then.

Various readers who read our previous posts have emailed asking if we’re OK because we were travelling last night…and the past 24 hours have been disastrous in Southern California due to the La Conchita mudslides which SO FAR have claimed four deaths — with 27 more missing. Firstly, this is the first day since this blog started a year ago when we don’t have much energy to update. It’s due to the harrowing travel last night — and not due to mudslides. I was not...

Question: if we’ve seen politicians without guts,  what’s wrong with seeing Supreme Court justices in the nude? Stories like the this (link is above) about people deciding what YOU and ME can read inspire me: in fact, I’m so ticked off as SOON as I finish posting this I’m getting on Amazon to order this book in protest (NO JOKE). The story: GULFPORT, Miss. – Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart’s best-selling "America...

The Big Battle is on about the future of DVDs and while some companies may fall by the wayside in a big bucks battle over which format will triumph, porn producers are sticking it out — in the battle over the format, that is. Yes, according to the New York Times, the decision over high definition DVDs’ future of could be stimulated by porn producers in a high-stakes battle that will climax in one format being on top: LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – As goes pornography, so goes technology....

When I lived in Madrid for nearly  four years, Spaniards used olive oli for everything from salads, to frying eggs, to lubricating keyholes. And now, researches say, it may help battle breast cancer: Researchers believe a fatty acid found in olive oil might cut the risk of developing breast cancer. Researchers from Northwestern University, found oleic acid significantly reduced levels of a protein that is produced by the breast cancer gene known as Her-2/neu. The gene appears in about a fifth...

IMPORTANT NOTE: Last night we had to do a major service on our computer which took hours. As a result, our roundup on our post on CBS/Dan Rather (see below) is not yet done. The Moderate Voice in his other incarnation had to leave for Los Angeles last night to to stay over (we have big storms and he couldn’t risk leaving in the morning) at a motel (Motel 6 if you must know) so  he could do some programs in the morning. Usually TMV has a laptop — but it’s being fixed. So most...

Italian police are looking into the case of whether one of Italy’s best known soccer players is longing for the good old days of Benito and Adolph — a question raised by him giving what looked like to be a classic fascist salute. According to the BBC: Paolo di Canio appeared to make the gesture after his team Lazio beat local rivals Roma by 3-1. Di Canio used to play for English teams West Ham and Charlton, as well as at home with Juventus and AC Milan. .. On Saturday, though, Italian...

CBS’s has issued its long-awaited "Memogate" report over the Bush memo fiasco but it’s unlikely to totally end the controversy and could well spark an ongoing additional one. Here’s why. According to the CBS website’s press release on the 224 page report: It ousts four CBS employees, including three corporate bigwigs for their roles in the highly controversial and disputed story about the memos that purportedly raised questions about President George Bush’s...

Yes, it’s that time of the week again…when we do our stint as a Guest Blogger on Dean’s World. Just click on THIS LINK and you can visit us there. Our regular posts resume here on Monday morning, possibly as early as late Sunday night.

Now it appears as if Staples may have done corporate CYA in light of  David Brock’s just released letter to the office supply giant indicating it had actually APPROVED AND EDITED Media Matter’s press release indicating it was pulling its advertising from Sinclair Broadcasting. We ran the original story here on the reported pulling of ads from Sinclair. And then later in the day this post on a press release from a group saying Staples denied pulling the ads. Now — since we ran...

The newspaper/blogging revolution — where a newspaper is co-opting blogging to bring its online news into the 21st Century — is poised to happen in a big way in Greensboro, North Carolina. Once again, the updated news comes to us from Jay Rosen’s PressThink, which has covered in great detail the blogging culture’s unwitting incursion into a major North Carolina newspaper…even as the mainstream media has largely ignored this story. The irony is: if all goes well (and...

This just in: you may soon have to pay for the New York Times’  online (which will be extra money for all the newspapers, broadcast and cable networks that still follow its choice of stories as The Newsworthy Ones): NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Times Co. is considering subscription fees to the online version of its flagship newspaper, which now is available for free, but it has no immediate plans to do so, the company said on Friday. One of the paper’s biggest rivals,...

No matter how you slice it, dice it, and try to finesse it , in  journalism and professional opinion-writing taking money from someone to promote their position is NOT CORRECT — it’s considered corrupt. If it was OK then someone could write something and put a little "Thank Yew" at the end for the financial support for their ideas….but they wouldn’t. Guess why? At issue here is the news that the White House actually PAID a commentator to pitch its education...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was shocked by what he saw in the tsunami battered areas — calling it among the worst damage he has ever seen "I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile," a shaken Annan told reporters. "You wonder where are the people? What has happened to them?" Indeed, by all accounts the 160,000-plus death toll is expected to climb for a while. More: With tens of thousands still missing and others threatened by disease from the powerful...

Oliver Stone has revealed the REAL reason why his movie Alexander bombed: LONDON – Often-controversial director Oliver Stone has blamed the failure of his epic film Alexander on the "raging fundamentalism" in the U.S. South. But that doesn’t explain why the film was also repudiated in the North, East and West. The film, which stars Irish actor Colin Farrell in the story of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, was greeted with derisive reviews. It was also a failure...

There are consquences to every event and former Army officer Ralph Peters sees a strategical roadmap drawn by a cruel Mother Nature via the tragedy of South Asia’s killer tsunami. Yes, the tsunami — the one that butchered 160,000 people (and counting). In a piece in the New York Post Peters writes of a stragegical map…literally drawn  by monster waves, and tears: THE tsunami’s devastation on the Indian Ocean’s shores offers a strategic lesson of incomparable importance....

There has been a milestone for China — a big one: BEIJING (Reuters) – China named the first baby born at a Beijing hospital Thursday as the 1.3 billionth person of the world’s most populous nation, more than two decades after a one-child policy was introduced to keep its numbers in check. China’s population exploded after the late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong exhorted the people to multiply in the 1950s to make the country strong. But China put the brakes on growth...