Like the DNC, Burlesque has taken Denver by storm, and the best place in town to catch the best of classic and neoburlesque is the gorgeous Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret!  Burlesque is rooted in political satire, and what better way to enjoy this historic pairing than by enjoying Denver’s finest burlesque, vaudeville, and variety acts? Full story »

A beautiful young blonde stares into the camera, “whore” written on the duct tape over her mouth. Her defiant eyes speak the words that the slur tried to silence. In another photo, she stares over her shoulder, the words “Fat ass” taped to her back, pointing at her anything-but-fat derrière.

I spoke to the owner and editix of The Hate Project about her fledgling site.
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According to the National Priorities Project (NPP), Colorado tax payers will give $2.1 billion in 2007 to fund the Iraqi war. It’s comforting to know that we are so flush that we can afford to throw cash, as well as our young men and women, as this fiasco.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O’Rourke

The problem is that while we pay for an endless war, Colorado is becoming the third-world nation of states. While we are full of hubris about our quality of life, our beautiful scenery and our youthful, fit populace, money is being wasted abroad when it is direly needed here. According to a Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute report detailing where tax money is being allocated, Colorado is:

• 49th in covering the uninsured and low-income families under Medicaid
• 39th in improving our state highways per capita
• 48th in per-capital investment on higher education
• 34th in per-capita investment in public elementary and secondary schools

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Every winter I snuggle up with a copy of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, losing myself in the maze of his scriptorium. I can smell the unique, musky odor of old books, the oily metallic tang of ink, and hear the rustling of ancient manuscripts.

Recently a friend who knows my love for incunabula and the arcane, gifted me with a link to The Ancient Sacred Text Archive to add to my “book porn” bookmarks. The site includes the full or slightly abridged text for everything from the Mahabharata, one of the longest epic poems in history, to Tolkien’s source texts. Their excellent search functionality makes it easy to find your favorite hermetic text.
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Using only the third veto in his 6 years of presidency, Bush shot down legislation to expand federally funded stem cell research. The bill would have allowed research using donated embryos already slated for destruction. He went on to issue an executive order encouraging the use of stem cell research without the destruction of human embryos.

In his message to Congress, Bush disingenuously blasted the bill as crossing an ethical line.

The Congress has sent me legislation that would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

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The Scholar and Rogue on our masthead is Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967).

Dorothy Parker is best known for her caustic wit as a writer, poet, critic, and a founding member of The Algonquin Round Table.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Parker’s critiques, short stories, poems, and screenplays make up the majority of her life’s work. Her acerbic wit as drama critic for Vanity Fair eventually led to her dismissal as readers became more and more offended. Full story »

The Pentagon has blocked access to 13 websites citing concerns for security and bandwidth. Among those listed are video and music sharing sites such as Youtube.com and Pandora, social networking sites such as Myspace.com, and the photo sharing site Photobucket. Is the pentagon doing the right thing, or are “security and resources” a red herring for something more interesting.

As for security and bandwidth being the main purported impetus behind the decision, on the one hand, the company you work for probably blocks sites for similar reasons. They do not want to waste resources (bandwidth, your time), and they do not want to open up their networks to vulnerabilities. On the other hand, we are now four years into this war and they are just now becoming money and security conscious? One can argue that with congress threatening to cut the purse strings, the DOD/Pentagon is cutting back on extraneous expenses such as the high price of satellite service. Videos are resource hogs. Full story »

In February of this year, Texas Governor Rick Perry surprised his conservative base by signing an order requiring all preteen girls be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer. On May 8th, he backed down from his position

The vaccine, Gardasil, targets four of the HPV types believed to cause more than 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of genital warts; it was also shown to be 100 percent effective against two of the most common HPV strains. More than 300,000 women worldwide die each year from cervical cancer. Prevalence of HPV in American women varies from 20 to 45% depending on age.

Social conservatives oppose the use of the vaccine, saying that it will lead to sexual promiscuity and tramples on parental rights, even though the order allowed for students to opt-out. James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family stated, “[I]n a normal classroom setting, no child will contract or transmit HPV. It can be prevented, for the most part, by abstinence until marriage.” The Family Research Council has explained, “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”
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Rep. Barney Franks (D-Mass) has introduced a bill to lift the ban on Internet gambling.

“[I]t is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans, and this interference should be undone.” More bluntly, he has called the ban “one of the stupidest things I ever saw.”

Franks questions why, with some form of gambling legal in almost every state, why there are limitations on Internet gambling. He supports some restriction on the practice such as age limitations. Supporters of the ban worry about compulsive gambling and minors’ ability to circumvent age-based security.
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Today, May 2, is Prevent Teen Pregnancy Day; a good day to remember that abstinence-only education is a miserable failure. One billion taxpayer dollars have been given to a program that does not make teens more likely to abstain from sex or delay when they become sexually active.

Impacts for Title V. Section 510, Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report (pdf), released in April, was posted on a Government web-site with no press release or advisory, James Wagoner said: “The ‘stealth release’ of this study on an obscure government website on a Friday afternoon is clearly meant to bury its contents..”

“After 10 years and $1.5 billion in public funds these failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will go down as an ideological boondoggle of historic proportions,”

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Bush is preparing to use his veto power for the second time his presidency; the first was to to lift a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research, the second the recent funding bill with a time table for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Bush has used the most powerful of the presidential tools, the veto, less than any other president. Franklin D Roosevelt leads the pack with 635.

The time table is a proposal only, not a mandate. Bush, showing a lack of understanding of the word “compromise” has sworn to work with the majority party to pass the funding bill… without the time line.
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Despite claims by anti-choice groups, a new 10-year study has concluded, once again, that having an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

Researchers base the findings on a study in which they followed 105,716 women for 10 years. They found no link between abortion and breast cancers that occur before menopause.

Earlier studies showed no link between abortion and breast cancers that occur after menopause.

The recent study, named after Harvard researcher Karin Michels, Sc. D., Ph. D shows, “The globality of evidence supports no link between induced abortion and breast cancer.” Full story »

During the Cho investigation, mention was made of use of anti-depressants but that they could find no record of such medication in the government’s files.

Spittake now. Government’s files of… our prescription use?

As as of 2005, The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act required “the Department of Health and Human Services to award grants to States to establish or improve programs to electronically monitor dispensing of controlled substances.” Equally troubling, this was passed by a in the house and senate so that, other than the 25 bipartisan cosponsors, our representatives can not be held accountable for their vote.

The bill requires those dispensing controlled substances to submit patients’ names, addresses and telephone numbers—to state governments within one week of filling prescriptions for “commonly prescribed medications for pain, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder and sleep disorders.” “Data also will be collected on animal owners whose pets are prescribed controlled substances by veterinarians.” The last to track k-holers?
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CU Boulder student, Max Karson, was arrested April 19th after he mentioned that he understood the motivations of school shooters. Other students interpreted that this was a threat of future violence and called the authorities.

He was arrested on “on suspicion of interfering with staff, faculty or students of an educational institution.” For voicing an opinion. For practicing his first amendment rights. If everyone else get to assume his motives, I’m going to assume that he was actually adding to a one-sided, non-productive vilifying of Cho that didn’t address deeper problems such as mental illness and domestic violence.

He was released on $1000.00 bail on the 20th with the admonition of the court not to “press the limits of certain envelopes.” Which envelopes might those be, your honor?

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Today the Supreme Court upheld the misnomered “partial birth” abortion ban implemented in 2003.

While the bill itself is named The Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, it refers to a medical procedure called “intact variant of D&E”, dialation and extraction as opposed to dialation and curettage. In writing the act, Kennedy chose to use the more inflammatory term to shore up support for the bill. Full story »