A new report in California shows a troubling rise in deaths related to pregnancy, with Caesarean sections and obese mothers blamed in part for the spike. Maternal deaths rose from 8 per 100,000 live births in 1999 to 14 per 100,000 births in 2008, reports the Bay Citizen…
Continue reading …Gas prices are hurting Americans—and they’re hurting President Obama’s poll numbers, too, a Washington Post /ABC News survey finds. Some 60% of respondents said they are reducing their driving thanks to the prices, while 70% said the prices were causing money woes, the Post reports. Of those who saw…
Continue reading …Al-Qaeda operatives pushed for a series of attacks following 9/11, but the plans were foiled following the capture of leading figures, WikiLeaks documents say. Among the plots discussed were attacking West Coast aircraft, blowing up a gas-filled apartment and gas stations, and cutting cables on the Brooklyn Bridge, the New…
Continue reading …Had you scooped up a copy of The Making of a Fly on Amazon last week, you would have made author Peter A. Lawrence a very happy—and rich—man. It listed for nearly $24 million, thanks to a robot pricing war gone wrong, reports CNN . Blogger Michael Eisen first…
Continue reading …Don’t listen to Donald Trump. Barack Obama is not a Socialist Kenyan Muslim. The truth is far more startling: He’s a moderate Republican from the 1990s, writes Ezra Klein of the Washington Post . Obama’s major policy ideas—mandate-based health care reform, cap-and-trade, and raising taxes to reduce the deficit—are…
Continue reading …Even to those of us with no plans to sit through the royal wedding, Prince William and Kate Middleton are intriguing. “My friend is not a royal watcher or a tabloid reader. Neither am I,” writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post . Yet both were familiar with Kate’s sister Pippa…
Continue reading …Marie Wolf got quite a shock when she returned an unworn $70 pair of sweatpants to Victoria’s Secret a few weeks ago. A clerk happily refunded her money—then took out some scissors and sliced the pants to shreds, explaining that it was store policy. Wolf was outraged, she tells…
Continue reading …Most political polls these days emphasize what the all-important bloc of independent voters is thinking, but a closer reading suggests they may not be thinking at all, writes Michael Kazin in the New Republic . He notes a recent survey by Democracy Corps in which independents agreed with GOP talking points…
Continue reading …CNN isn’t the only cable channel crashing the birthers’ party . Add none other than Fox News, or at least anchor Shep Smith. After denouncing Franklin Graham’s questioning of the president’s birth certificate credentials, Smith declared: “Fox News can confirm the president of the United States is a citizen of the…
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