President Bush's recent calls for "Free Trade" with Colombia is the single most destabilizing force in hemispheric affairs in the last 50 years. If you want oil at 300.00 a barrel, Brazil to never work with us again, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela to break further away from us, and Ecuador to stop working with us, and whatever benefit we have from CAFTA to fall through; by all means, working with a drug dealers government is a good idea. If you want peace and prosperity, we have to work peacefully with all the parties involved. See my post below. If it is passed, be sure that Delaware will thank you for More ILLICIT DRUGS on our streets. It does not work for our nations benefit to try to turn Ecuador into a new Gaza strip . It works for Exxon-Mobile. A government of the people does not work to subsidize Exxon's disputes. Let Exxon fight its own fights. Never say I did not tell you so or warn you about this, I love the United States but drown out reason and l...

I don't know where you're planning to spend Super Bowl Sunday, and with whom, but it obviously won't be a church. Citing copyright laws, the NFL has cracked down on churches showing the big game to parishioners on anything larger than a 55-inch scheme. Immanuel Bible Church in Washington DC is among those who have felt compelled to end long traditions of such parties by the league's insistence on rigid adherence to antiquated copyright rules. From Privacy Maven (via other sources): NFL communications vice president Brian McCarthy said ... the league is following decades-old federal copyright law. “We have absolutely no objection to churches and others hosting Super Bowl parties,” he said. “We’ve never stopped a church from doing anything like this, as long as they aren’t trying to attract 400 or 500 people.” While a free church event of that size might seem harmless, he said thousands of such non-commercial showings would significantly reduce network TV ratings, and t...

I rarely find myself in agreement with Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter on much of anything, and even today he's right for the wrong reasons. Specter wants to repeal the 1961 anti-trust exemption granted to the NFL (which set a precedent for other sports leagues) allowing the franchises to group themselves as one entity to sell TV broadcast rights, primarily because he objects to the fact that some games are not freely available over commercial airwaves. That's the right action for the wrong reasons. Even the New York Sun , while opposing Specter's legislation (which also has no realistic chance of ever making it out of committee), admits that the current practice amounts to "football economic socialism," by allowing Green Bay or Nashville to reap the same financial rewards as New York or Los Angeles and thus achieve parity in terms of ability to recruit the best players. The Sun argues that such a move would be costly for NFL fans, because the teams would move i...