Speaking of Name Calling...

There were some comments here about the Ayatollah Huckabee reference (that name is courtesy of Juan Cole over at Informed Comment), but what about that whiney, no-talent Chris Matthews calling Hillary Clinton a "witchy" "strip-teaser" "she-devil" with a voice like "fingernails on a chalkboard"?

Post Election Audits - - A Great Idea

Computerworld reports: If you hold an election anywhere in the U.S. today, is it even possible to tally the ballots and arrive at vote totals that won't be disputed by critics somewhere?

Welcome to the world of electronic voting, 2008-style.

But there might be a relatively simple answer to much of the confusion and frustration, the increasing allegations of voting irregularities and the apparent growing distrust of our e-voting systems around the nation.

Advocates call it a random, mandatory audit.

At its essence, an audit is simply a postelection review of a random group of e-voting machines from voting precincts in a state, along with a hand count of the accompanying paper ballots or voter-verified paper records to be sure that the paper records and the machine counts coincide exactly.

By doing so, election officials could ensure that the machines are properly recording the votes. If everything jibes, supporters say, then elections could be trusted again and criticisms about accuracy could be addressed with verifiable facts.

Who could possibly be against such a reasonable idea?

Ayatollah Huckabee

Thanks to Bawdyscot for pointing me at the Informed Consent blog. On it, we see this hateful piece of rhetoric from Republican candidate for president, Mike Huckabee:

' "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

I've blogged about some of the Huckster's other egregious assaults on sanity and reason here. Huckabee is also the only remaining candidate that does not "believe" in evolution.

Atheists and theists alike should be scared of the damage that could occur if this fucker actually won and tried to implement these hare-brained schemes.

No Immunity for Illegal Wiretapping

From People for the American Way (PFAW): Congress will soon decide whether to grant immunity to telecom companies that may have violated the law in assisting with the administration's illegal wiretapping program by handing over their customers' private records without a warrant.

Granting retroactive immunity would pull the plug on current and pending litigation against these companies, allowing the Bush administration to keep buried important information about the extent of its illegal spying programs.

Don't let it happen. You can make an impact. Use this form to send an e-mail to your senators -- PFAW will also use this action like a petition in lobbying efforts, bringing to senators a record of the numerous action-takers in their states.

http://www.pfaw.org/go/NoTelecomImmunity

Survey Says: Christians Are Annoying

USA Today reports: A new survey of U.S. adults who don't go to church, even on holidays, finds 72% say "God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists." But just as many (72%) also say the church is "full of hypocrites."

Indeed, 44% agree with the statement "Christians get on my nerves."

LifeWay Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, based in Nashville, conducted the survey of 1,402 "unchurched" adults last spring and summer. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

This is an interesting little survey for a number of reasons. First of all, I find it disheartening that so many non-chrchgoers still "believe" that god exists... well, god or a higher power, so perhaps there is some wiggle room there depending on what that higher power is.

I think that Christians might be doing themselves a favor if they took this survey's results to heart. (Oh, don't get me wrong, I hope they don't... I'm not in favor of recruiting more churchgoing christians.) What I mean is this: it would seem that if they could be less annoying and less hypocritical that they might be able to attract some of these god-believers to their services.