I didn’t even bother to think up a new headline for this article, Froomkin pretty much nailed it. Casual lawbreaking at the White House indeed.

New evidence unearthed by House Democrats establishes that White House political adviser Karl Rove and many of his colleagues used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for official business — even though White House policy is clear that doing so is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Yet another possibility, of course, is that Rove and the others chose to use the RNC e-mail accounts for official business as a way to keep their e-mail from public scrutiny, which is implicit in the use of White House e-mail accounts. If that was their goal, they appear to have succeeded.

Unlike the White House, whose e-mail retention rules essentially preserve everything forever, the RNC automatically deleted most e-mails after 30 days and allowed users to manually delete whatever they felt like. The result, as I first reported in April, is that countless White House e-mails are now missing.

Gee, I wonder…

Following up on the previous post concerning penalizing oil companies in order to help research and development of renewable fuel sources, an addition to the previous bill would hit oil companies for $29 billion in taxes if it gets passed.

The massive tax package, double what Democrats had discussed as recently as last week, is “designed to promote clean and sustainable energy,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee that approved the measure by a 15-5 vote.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the taxes on the large oil companies - most of the provisions exempt smaller producers - “will almost certainly lead to gas price increases” as oil companies pass on the added cost. “You can’t raise taxes … by $29 billion and not expect gas prices to increase,” he said.

On that second point, all I have to say to Senator Kyl is that as long as gas prices stay nice and low, there will be little incentive to move away from oil. There is this odd claim that it seems some are making, that we can both keep gas prices nice and low and then move on to other fuels as though anyone would ever make the jump if the pump price stays low. Ain’t happening.

I’d like to thank Reddit for alerting me to an LA Times article discussing Conservapedia, which is apparently a conservative version of Wikipedia. Apparently a teacher disliked the kind of facts people were pulling from it. The article starts off with possibly the best thing I’ve ever read.

Andy Schlafly was appalled. He was teaching a history class to home-schooled teens and one student had just turned in an assignment that dated events as “BCE,” before the common era — rather than “BC,” before Christ.

Home-schooled. Kid had the temerity not to mention Jesus. Andy Schlafly. Yes, the son of Phyillis Schlafly. This is off to a fantastic start!

A mild digression first. Is it just me, or does the right seem to consider facts as debatable, and then insist that their “side” needs represented? The news wasn’t what they wanted to hear, so they made a network that, rather than reporting facts, panders to what the viewers want. But I digress. I poked around on Conservapedia, and here are some fantastic gems.

From the page on Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton may suffer from a psychological condition that would raise questions about her fitness for office. A recent book entitled The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton examines the Senator’s instability, incoherent speeches as both student and First Lady, casual disregard for the law, and ever-changing opinion on the Iraq war. These character flaws, analyst Bay Buchanan writes, make Hillary overly dependent on gurus and outside experts, with no internal compass to guide her, displaying all the classic symptoms of “clinical narcissism.” The American Psychiatric Association describes this condition to include feelings of superiority, self-importance and “fantasies of unlimited success, fame or power.” The author further states, “We are not talking about self-infatuation, we are talking about a clinical condition that could make her dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief.”

Naturally, Bay Buchanan is a source. How about George W Bush? Surely they’re rough on him as well, there’s no way they can be that soft-handed on the president.

The deal cut with Democratic leaders in exchange for their acquiescing to fund the troops calls for the President to sign legislation raising the minimum wage. [3] One commentator remarked, “Despite all the talk of standing up to George W. Bush, despite all the bravado about taking control of Congress, despite the so-called mandate to change direction, Democrats caved….They claim that the majority of Americans are with them on the Iraq issue, but…President Bush, at the weakest moment of his presidency, still bested his Democratic rivals.”

Amazing. In an article about Bush, a quote that lambastes Democrats is quoted in full. Michael Moore?

Some of his work includes the pseudo-documentary films Fahrenheit 9/11, Roger and Me, and Bowling for Columbine, and the books Dude, Where’s my Country, Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. and Stupid White Men.

Later, in discussing SiCKO, the word “documentary” is placed in quotes, and a picture is offered showing Moore “ranting.” How about social security?

African-Americans would be among those with the most to gain from transforming Social Security into a system of individually owned, privately invested accounts, similar to IRAs or 401k plans.

According to a study by researchers at Harvard University, virtually every woman-single, divorced, married, or widowed-would probably be better off financially under a system of personal retirement accounts, the earnings of which could be shared by spouses.

…at least they acknowledged that it wasn’t cited. Rather than go into gay marriage, which seems to only consider James Dobson a reliable source on the topic, I’ll move right along to science. What’s it got to say for creationism?

Accordingly, creationists point out that there are over one hundred million identified and catalogued fossils currently in the world’s museums.[11] Creationist insists that if macroevolution happened, then there should be “transitional forms” in the fossil record that show the intermediate life forms. Another term for these “transitional forms” is “missing links”. If creationism is true then there should be a lack of transitional forms or at the very least there should be merely a handful of disputed transitional fossils.

There is little consensus among scientists about how macroevolution is said to have happened as can be seen below:

The entire article spends its time arguing against evolution. But hey, it’s an article on creationism, I suppose that’s par for the course. Obviously the article on evolution will fight for the other side. Since, after all, it’s fair and balanced like FOX.

There is little consensus among scientists about how macroevolution is said to have happened as can be seen below:

No, I’m not repeating myself. The same damn section is in the article on evolution. It gets better.

Dr. Henry Morris, in order to illustrate that the macroevolutionary position is not verified by experimental data, quoted a leading evolutionist regarding this matter. Dr. Morris wrote the following:

Opponents of the macroevolutionary position assert that evolutionary scientists employ extremely implausible “just so stories” to support their position and have done this since at least the time of Charles Darwin.

In addition, the biological world has the strong appearance of being created as can been below:

Every section in the article fights against evolution. There is nearly nothing in the full screed that is arguing for it. At this point I think it’s fair to remind everyone that “fair and balanced” in the conservative mind seems to mean “give my opinion plenty of coverage”.

I only scratched the surface on all of this. Conservapedia is a joke, and has nothing to do with being even-handed or fairly representing the facts. Its entire purpose is to offer a conservative viewpoint on everything. As Schlafly put it:

The whole point of his encyclopedia, he said, is to provide a different angle on the facts — ones that a student researcher wouldn’t necessarily find on Wikipedia, or in the school library.

Yup. A different angle on the facts. That’s what they’re calling it now.

Rechan found this lovely bit in the article on, of all things, kangaroos.

According to the origins theory model used by creation scientists, modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah’s Ark prior to the Great Flood.

…and of course…

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land[5] with lower sea levels during the post-flood ice age, or before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart[6], or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.

By the way, if you run into any real gems in the ‘pedia, put it in the comments and I’ll add it to the main article. I only did the basics here.

Normally I’d be skeptical about a story like this, but it came from ABC’s Blotter, and so far I’m not aware of any false info coming from Brian Ross. So it seems that the, amazingly, still existent Al Qaeda/Taliban unit is now training people for suicide bombing missions into Europe and the US.

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood.

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”

The leader of the team assigned to attack Great Britain spoke in English.

“So let me say something about why we are going, along with my team, for a suicide attack in Britain,” he said. “Whether my colleagues, companions and Muslim brothers die today or tonight, every drop of our blood will invigorate the Muslim (unintelligible).”

So, it seems, “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” has been adopted by the enemy. Boy, weird how no one saw that one coming. But don’t worry, the USA is right on it!

U.S. intelligence officials described the event as another example of “an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda campaign.”

See, that’s why we got hit in the first place. People didn’t take the warnings seriously.

It’s a bizarre dichotomy. Foiled threats like the “Miami 7″ or the “Liberty Tower” attempt are looked at as national emergencies and proof we need to lock down the nation. Then this comes out and it’s just “propaganda.” You’d almost think the guv’mint knows that all of the “attempts” and emergencies are bullshit, and only hypes them up when it can be used politically.

Of course, that would be a crackpot liberal theory, wouldn’t it?