The blogosphere is abuzz this morning with news that two more US deaths (and one in Canada) may have occured from RU-486, the "chemical abortion" drug.  This brings to six the total number of US deaths that have been linked to RU-486.

Any death is a tragedy; but these deaths must be put in context.  The FDA determines drug safety based on alternatives - if a drug is considered to be safe if it is as safe, or safer, than alternative treatments (or doing nothing).

In the case of RU-486, we can say that a pregnant woman has three alternatives:

After the Constitutional Convention, A lady asked of Ben Franklin:

"Well Doctor what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic", replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

Senator Russell Feingold has introduced a resolution to censure our president for violating the law. The violated law in question, as we all know, is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Harry Truman said that "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know".  Bearing this in mind, what does history tell us about our presidents violation of FISA?  Is it a trifling to be ignored?  A molehill that Feingold is trying to turn into a mountain?  Or is it a dangerous new milestone in the path toward the end of the Republic?

According to yesterday's column by Robert Novak, polling indicates that both Karl Rove and Robert Novak are in deep voodoo:   

"Interviews of 1,003 voters last Nov. 5-16, conducted for the Democratic Leadership Council, showed 59 percent felt Rove should quit while 25 percent said he should not. Comparable figures for DeLay were 63 percent and 24 percent. While DeLay faces trial in Texas after being indicted in a campaign finance controversy, Rove has been investigated but not indicted in the CIA leak case.

On October 17 1929, Irving Fisher issued the following statement:

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher than it is today within a few months." 

One week later, the stock market crashed, dropping from a high of 381 on 9/3/1929 to a low of 41 on 7/8/1932 - almost a 90% drop.  It took roughly 25 years for the stock market to recover back to its peak.

W. "Mitt" Romney used the occasion of a Martin Luther King tribute breakfast on Monday to blast the Massachusetts teacher's unions.  Talking about opposition to charter schools, The Boston Herald reports that our governor remarked:

"Sad to say that the teachers union and their supporters will fight these answers with every tool they have,... They will distort and deprive, they will torture and twist, but don’t forget, to them, it’s first about compensation and jobs. To you, it’s about kids and their future”

I decided to put Romney's assertion to the test - is there any evidence that Massachusetts teachers only care about money?  Are they a bunch of rotten hacks, as Romney implies, or - perhaps they are professionals doing a good job?

Let's look at the numbers and see what we can find out:

Foul Rumsfeld's just announced a possible 5% US troop reduction in Iraq.  Being a numbers guy, this got me thinking: is this really a reduction, or just another game with numbers in order to placate The People?

A quick Google found this article from January 12, 2005.  Two interesting points can be seen:

1. At that time we had just increased the number of troops to 150,000 ahead of of the January 30 elections.  For last week's elections, we beefed up to 160,000 troops.  If the local Iraqi forces are actually getting more capable, then why would we need an extra 10,000 of our people this time?  Seems to me that either the situation is getting worse, or the Iraqi forces are getting less capable - in any case, the actual numbers are not a hopeful trend.

Courtesy of my good friends at NewsBusters, I see that the crack team of Groseclose and Milyo are once again touting their pretend science project that purports to identify and measure Liberal bias in the news media.  Basically, the paper claims to scientifically prove that The Drudge Report is neutral, Fox and the Washington Post are to the Right, and everything else is to the Left.

I was first introduced to this work roughly a year ago, when I was sent a link to their paper by a Right-leaning friend of mine.  I actually took the time to read the 29 pages in the hope that I might learn something - instead, it simply confirmed my hypothesis that the Right is science-challenged.

I am constantly amazed (and annoyed) when the Right claims that the US has been hijacked by the Left over the past few decades.  This is utter nonsense - the actual evidence indicates that we've moved far, far to the Right.

Consider the case of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961), Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, and a Republican.  Funny thing is, by today's standards, Ike would be a flaming liberal, to the Left of all recent serious contenders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.