Blog Heap of Links for the day 8 March 2011

The Justice Department on Tuesday filed its expected appeal of a federal judge's ruling that the sweeping health care reform law championed by President Barack Obama is unconstitutional. With the appeal, the case now goes to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for consideration, and could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The White House is ramping up an effort to promote a nationwide competition to decide which high school wins a commencement speech by President Obama. An internal White House memo indicates that the White House is facing a shortage of applications less than a week before the deadline.

Obama winced at the mention of vegemite, an Australian food paste made from yeast extract, when a student asked about it during a classroom visit the two leaders conducted. "It's horrible!" the president declared. Gillard displayed some diplomacy befitting a world leader on her first Washington tour, calling the issue "a little bit of a division between the president and I. I love vegemite." [MR DIPLOMAT, THAT OBAMA!]

General, Eric Holder has come forward, finally, to identify who he will and will not defend. Remember, this is the man who called us cowards on race. Now, two years after making that statement, Eric has grown a few. He says he isn't going after the New Black Panthers because he wouldn't want to "demean his people." One can assume that since Obama hasn't fired his AG by this point, these are his peeps, too... Shovel the below on the stinking pile AG Holder and the President have been adding to the last two years...

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been "hijacked by this group." The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, "the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people." Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

On the videotape, Mr. Schiller tells people posing as Muslim philanthropists that the Republican party has been "hijacked" by the Tea Party and that Tea Party supporters are "seriously racist, racist people." Mr. Schiller indicates that he is sharing his personal point of view, not NPR's. Dana Davis Rehm, a spokeswoman for NPR, said in a statement Tuesday, "We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for." [What's that SMELL? Eue de irony?]

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe expressed confidence Monday in the military leadership now in control of Egypt and credited its allegiance to the United States with a decades-long program to train young officers. Days after leading a congressional delegation to Israel, Turkey, Germany and several African nations, the Oklahoma Republican conceded that it is not possible to predict whether countries experiencing dramatic political changes will end up taking tougher stands against Israel.

March 6, 2011: The rebellion against the Kadaffi dictatorship in Libya has not produced any official outside help, but Egypt has apparently sent some of its commandos in to help out the largely amateur rebel force. Wearing civilian clothes, the hundred or so Egyptian commandos

Spokesperson dies at age 29 related to obesity. Should restaurant be shut? [No. Why even ask. Let Darwin take its course. Nobody's forcing them to eat there are they?]

The Oklahoma House has killed legislation authorizing the Board of Health to develop rules for altering the gender on the birth certificates of people who have sex change operations.... voted 71-23 to defeat...

the NPR guy is talking to emissaries of the (fake) Muslim Brotherhood outfit who espouse a mission to impose sharia around the world, and he's complaining about how the GOP and the tea parties are "fanatically involved in peoples' personal lives." Because, as we all know, sharia is nothing if it is not a libertarian credo that boils down to "live and let live."

An Old Saybrook woman is accused of making her son sleep in a locked dog crate because he was acting out and soiling his bed.... Police started investigating Kathlyn Anthony, 54, after the boy's sister said at school that she was tired because she kept getting up at night to let her brother out of his "sleep locker."...

OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma Department of Human Services received five abuse or neglect complaints against a Del City couple in the years leading up to the deaths of their three children in a Jan. 4 motor home fire but found no cause to remove the children from the home.

In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today's Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males. The question left open by economists is what the consequences will be of such a large surplus of young men. History offers a disquieting answer.

A Brooklyn judge ordered a teen to live with his homeless dad -- in a shelter -- after the boy's mom, a $90,000-a-year court worker, was critical of the legal process, court papers reveal.

The gaps and stringy fibers in these space rocks sure look like bacteria, and a NASA researcher has caused a stir with claims that they're fossils of alien life. But as NASA found 15 years ago, looks can be deceiving.

Weeze's Cafe owner Louise Smith entered a plea of "no contest" to two charges of violating the tax code in municipal court today after making an agreement with the Oklahoma Tax Commission last week for the repayment of delinquent sales taxes.

Using tissue from a patient's damaged urethra, researchers can grow an entirely new section of urethra and then transplant it into the patient, according to a surgeon who employed the technique on five boys.

The last two years have seen unprecedented attempts by Washington to socially engineer people away from the lifestyles that modern conditions make necessary. One such effort was to attract people away from cars to intercity rail services and transit instead. Never mind that there is no U.S. evidence that material diversion is possible (at any expense), and never mind that such programs would make travel more expensive and usually slower. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been a willing participant in these efforts [h/t Cuz BD]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change recruiting and promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat, an independent report for Congress said Monday. [This... I... urk...]

Two sailors were killed and a third was injured during a training exercise at Camp Pendleton on Monday morning... the three sailors were in a 7-ton water truck that rolled over on a road on the base...

there are a number of rules, tips, and tricks that anyone - with a bit of logic and a calculator - can use to draw meaningful conclusions from flawed polls and incomplete information.

Jerry in Fl comments on arloandjanis.com: I've had my eyes open for old Mark Twain books for years and last week, after looking at so many old books that I was getting dizzy and had to sit down, I found two 1897, excellent condition (and signed by the way) books. I had never known that he wrote a fictional book about Joan of Arc. I'm almost afraid to handle them....