While nojo is correct in pointing out that Americans like to blow things up, so does my favorite Brit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI2MpcIiO6A

On this day 38 years ago, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, holding that women have a privacy interest in the decision whether to bring a pregnancy to term, and thus ending an era of back-alley unsafe and illegal abortions.  (LBJ also died on January 22, 1973, but that news was overshadowed by the Roe decision).

In the intervening four decades, the Court has limited its decision. Access to a full spectrum of reproductive health services, including abortion, is limited by geography and state laws.  Despite ongoing efforts by politicians, primarily Republicans, to further limit women’s access to abortion, 62% of Americans oppose overturning Roe. In fact, one out of three women in the United States will have an abortion at some point in her life. Read more »

You know you’re an American when you take an unhealthy delight in blowing shit up.

[via Daring Fireball]

WTF? Hang on while we figure it out…

First of many updates: He’s not giving a reason. We’ll start the guessing with the Comcast takeover of NBC Universal.

Update #2: While we’re waiting for Interwebs to light up, let’s run the latest photo from his Twitter feed.

9:27pm ET: MSNBC runs Olbermann promo…

Read more »

“Greenland’s massive ice sheet experienced record surface melting and runoff last year, according to research released today. Unusually warm conditions in much of the country helped extend the annual melting season by up to 50 days longer in 2010 than the average observed between 1979 and 2009, researchers found.” [NYT, via PourMeCoffee]

Our afternoon guest columnist is the host of the popular Fox News program “Glenn Beck’s Paranoid Style”, spittling last June 10. Elsewhere in Cyberville, the penultimate paragraph is getting a lot of play today. We’re having a difficult time making sense of any of it.

The media and the politician have all of this wrong. In every single walk of life — you want to know why TV doesn’t reflect you? You want to know why Washington doesn’t reflect you? Because they don’t understand, from the radical revolutionaries to the Islamic extremists — and yes, DOJ, they do exist — to the Tea Party movements.

Just because you in Washington and you who are so out of touch with life in the media, just because you don’t believe in anything doesn’t mean nobody else does. We do. You know why you’re confused by this show? It’s because I believe in something. You don’t.

Read more »

“Yes, the Agriculture Department said Thursday, it did have a hand in the recent mass killing of starlings in South Dakota. According to the USDA, the birds were poisoned in Nebraska to help farmers who had complained about starling flocks defecating into livestock feed troughs. The birds dropped dead en masse after migrating north.” [Yahoo]