Watch closely

The Beast 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2004

34. Clarence Thomas

Crimes: On the wrong side of every Supreme Court decision since he got the job carrying Scalia’s golf clubs.

Smoking Gun: Angry black man routine during Anita Hill hearings was the most forced overacting this side of Keanu Reeves’ tantrum in Johnny Mnemonic.

Punishment: Led out of the Court in chains after inadvertently casting the deciding vote to reinstitute slavery.

http://www.buffalobeast.com/66/50mostLoathsome2004.htm

From

Parish to bury ashes of fetuses

Vigil to mark Roe vs. Wade

By Eric Gorsk
Denver Post Staff Writer

To lament the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, a Roman Catholic parish in Boulder plans to bury the remains of hundreds of aborted fetuses, most of which came from a local abortion clinic without the clinic's knowledge.

The parish received the ashes in boxes from Crist Mortuary in Boulder, which picks up fetal remains from the Boulder Abortion Clinic and cremates them.

The owner of the business, disturbed by what he found in the shipments, has been quietly passing the remains along to the parish said Susan LaVelle, former Respect Life coordinator at Sacred Heart of Mary parish in Boulder.

The parish will stage a candlelight vigil for the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. After 9 a.m. Mass on Sunday, the ashes are to be buried in the church cemetery at a "Memorial Wall for the Unborn."

LaVelle said the remains of between 600 and 1,000 fetuses would be laid to rest. "We believe these babies deserve the dignity of a proper burial."

Today is  National Handwriting Day, National Pie Day, & Measure Your Feet Day

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Yesterday was  National Answer Your Cat's Question Day

From Annies_Snapshots

Thousands of slaves were accepted as collateral for loans by two banks that later became part of JP Morgan Chase.

Citizens Bank and Canal Bank are the two lenders that were identified. They were linked to Bank One, which JP Morgan bought last year.

About 13,000 slaves were used as loan collateral between 1831 and 1865. Because of defaults by plantation owners, Citizens and Canal ended up owning about 1,250 slaves.

The bank said that it is a "very different company than the Citizens and Canal Banks of the 1800s".

EDIT:

449 YEARS AGO TODAY

Jan 23 1556

The Shaanxi earthquake occurred on the morning of 14 February 1556 in China. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected.

 It is the deadliest earthquake on record, though the numbers are very sketchy. According to Chinese historical sources, the earthquake killed 830 thousand people. A 500-mile area was destroyed and in some counties, sixty percent of the population was killed.

The walls of narrow valleys between heights tumbled down and buried hundreds of settlements with all their inhabitants in mere minutes.  

Most of the population at the time lived in artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed during the disaster

Modern estimates give the earthquake a moment magnitude of approximately 8. Aftershocks continued several times a month for half a year.

The epicenter was in Hua county in Shaanxi. It is also among the deadliest natural disasters in history, only outstripped by floods of China's Yellow River.

 It is noteworthy that 50 percent of most devastating natural disasters of all times happen in China. A big part of the Chinese territory is located in a seismically dangerous zone. In addition, China still remains the most populated country in the world.

Shaanxi holds the lamentable record of human losses when it comes to earthquakes; the record has not been broken yet. 

The earthquake that rocked Southeast Asia was the strongest one since 1964, when a very strong quake measured 9.2 on the Richter scale occurred in Alaska. For the time being the latest earthquake in Southeast Asia ranks 11th on the list of most powerful quakes of modern times. It also enters top 30 of most destructive natural disasters in history. 

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shanxi_earthquake

-http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/14794_quake.html

A pregnant Russian woman went into labour in the middle of a parachute jump.

Marija Usova gave birth to a baby girl minutes after landing from the jump in Moscow.

She had ignored warnings when she decided to arrange the jump when she was eight months pregnant.

Halfway through her jump she suddenly felt an enormous pain and realised she had gone into labour.

She managed to control her descent, although she said she was close to passing out at times, and landed safely where she immediately began to give birth.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has scrapped its list of Iraq allies known as the 45-member "coalition of the willing," which Washington used to back its argument that the 2003 invasion was a multilateral action, an official said on Friday.

The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the White House replaced the coalition list with a smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq sometime after the June transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.

The official could not say when or why the administration did away with the list of the coalition of the willing.

The coalition, unveiled on the eve of the invasion, consisted of 30 countries that publicly offered support for the United States and another 15 that did not want to be named as part of the group.

Former coalition member Costa Rica withdrew last September under pressure from voters who opposed the government's decision to back the invasion.

From HomerTheBrave

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Top hotels in several Asian capitals have stopped ordering sea bass and sole from waters off their tsunami-ravaged coastlines to ease diners' concerns about fish feasting on corpses.

In a region that suffered through bird flu and other recent food scares, several top eateries and their suppliers are unwilling to take chances.

Villagers across tsunami-hit coastlines in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere have reported losing their appetite for fish. Fish mongers in Indonesia reported sales were poor as many who had seen the waves engulf loved ones worried about fish feeding off bodies.

Health ministry officials cut open the bellies of tuna, sea bass and other fish caught in the Andaman Sea to show there were no human remains inside.

Fish sales in Penang had plunged by about 50 percent after rumors that a human finger was found in a fish's belly.