A new USA Today/Gallup Poll suggests that after a slight improvement from President George W. Bush’s all-time low of 31% approval rating, the American people’s estimation of his performance has reached a plateau, RAW STORY has learned. Advertisement The telephone survey, conducted wih 1,005 randomly selected Americans over the age of 18 from July 21-23, showed that while 37% of Americans approve of President Bush’s job performance, 59% disapprove. The results are not statistically significantly different from June when 40% of Americans reported approving of Bush’s job performance. When Americans were asked how they felt about the president’s performance on particular issues, 47% approved of his handling of terrorism, but only 35% did not disapprove of his performance in the war on Iraq. Consistent with the lack of change on Bush’s overall approval ratings, little change of opinion was evident in his performance on particular issues from June.
WASHINGTON — President George Bush’s practice of writing exceptions to legislation as he signs it into law represents a violation of the constitution and a danger to democracy, America’s leading lawyers alleged yesterday. The American Bar Association, an independent lawyers’ organisation, issued a report on President Bush’s prolific use of ‘signing statements’ and found he was using them to create unconstitutional loopholes to laws passed by Congress. The ABA found that the president used signing statements to make more than 800 challenges to congressional legislation, 200 more than all previous US presidents put together. Signing statements have been issued since the nation’s founding but they have traditionally served a ceremonial function, extolling the virtues of the legislation just signed. Mr Bush has used the statements to distance himself from the laws he signs rather than veto them outright. A veto can be overruled by Congress but the legislature has so far been powerless to make the White House enforce provisions the president does not like. For example, in signing a bill last year banning the use of torture by American personnel, the president wrote that the executive branch would ‘construe’ the legislation ‘in a manner consistent’ […]
Tamoxifen, the pill that prevents breast cancer in high-risk women, does not appear in the long run to save many lives, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. Women at the highest risk of breast cancer do appear to live longer if they take tamoxifen, the researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Cancer. But for women at the low end of the high risk group, the sometimes serious side effects of tamoxifen outweigh the benefits, Dr. Joy Melnikow of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues reported. Tamoxifen can cause blood clots and uterine cancer. ‘We found that for women at the lower end of the high-risk range for developing breast cancer, there is a very small likelihood that taking tamoxifen will reduce mortality,’ Melnikow said in a statement. Melnikow and her colleagues calculated that tamoxifen can extend life expectancy only when a woman’s five-year risk of developing breast cancer is 3 percent or higher. This is especially true for women who have not had a hysterectomy, and thus risk endometrial cancer from taking tamoxifen. Many women are in any case switching to a newer class of drugs known as aromatase inhibitors to […]
Palestinians are calling for a general strike in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to protest US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to the region scheduled for later this week, accusing Washington of backing Israel’s military campaigns against Hamas and Hizbullah. Leaflets distributed in the West Bank and Gaza by representatives of several Palestinian factions called for a ‘day of rage’ [a euphemism for violent protests] against Rice’s visit. The groups also called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to refrain from meeting with Rice. ‘We reject Rice’s visit to the Middle East and we will expose its real goals,’ read the leaflets, signed by the National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. ‘This visit comes in the wake of Israel’s US-backed comprehensive aggression against the Palestinians and Lebanese.’ The factions accused Israel of waging a war of ‘genocide’ against the Palestinians and Lebanese after receiving a green light from the US administration. They also strongly condemned the US for vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for its offensive operations in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The Popular Resistance Committees, an alliance of armed organizations, including Hamas and Fatah, […]
Is it just coincidence that Bobby Bonds and his son Barry both made baseball history with their all-star power and speed? Or that Francis Ford Coppola and daughter Sofia rose to fame as award-winning film directors? Questions like these have long plagued psychologists, geneticists and philosophers. Coined nature versus nurture, it is one of the great mysteries of the mind, and much research has focused on the relative role of genes and the environment in determining everything from athleticism to personality to a person’s predisposition to obesity. Smart research More than a century ago, Sir Francis Galton began studying the role of genes in intelligence. He theorized that parents transferred intelligence to their children, who in turn passed these intelligent-boosting genes down to their offspring. To test his ideas, Galton used a method that’s still widely used today: twin studies. In addition to looking alike, identical twins carry exactly the same genes. By examining, for instance, differences between identical twins and fraternal twins, who grow up in the same environment but have different genetics, scientists can tease out environmental versus genetic affects. Explore Yourself! With the advent of molecular genetics, and then […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
