Pet Project du Jour

his frothiness, aka sen. rick santorum of PA, has to pay his pipers sometime and apparently it's the weather services' turn to reap the rewards of their campaign donations. he has introduced a bill that would "prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites."

it's basically trying to privatize weather information that our tax dollars paid to acquire. needless to say, this is patently absurd.

so please - help send a message to santorum and his corporate masters by going straight to the source for weather: nws.noaa.gov

if you'd like to add html to your webpage that links directly to NOAA's weather forecasts by zip, here is the code:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/24/95738/9633


it will look like this:

Get the ad-free weather forecast Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) wants to make illegal!

Enter "City, ST" or zip code:

Learn More...

if you don't have a blog or webpage where you can feature the html, there is always the much simpler googlebomb using http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ as the target for "weather forecast," like so:

weather forecast

the googlebomb can be incorporated into signature files as well as webpages. if neither of these is an option for you, please just spread the word about the shenanigans of his frothiness and convince everybody you know to use nws.noaa.gov for weather information.

won't you come play in the sandbox?


Tags: Santorum,
NWS, Tags: Weather

8640 Voices

8640 Voices

At one point in this nation’s history, the majority opinion held that slavery was quite alright. At one point, the majority insisted that women shouldn't vote. At one point, the notion that blacks were second-class citizens prevailed. Most of our civil rights were won by conscientious judges adhering to the standards and protections in the Constitution; we can not afford to sacrifice this independence of the judicial branch.

Our Members of Congress have sworn an oath to uphold our Constitution. One of its main tenets, and greatest strengths, is the idea that federal power should not be consolidated. Eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees would politicize the appointment process and dilute this essential separation of powers. If a simple majority is all that is needed to decide lifetime justice appointments, there is nothing to prevent a de facto coup of the judiciary by whoever happens to hold 51 seats. The fact remains, though, that one simply cannot extrapolate from the Senate - where the minority might lack only two or three people on the majority - to the American populace, where the opposition party represents millions of Americans.

Our founding fathers spoke at length on the importance of guaranteeing a minority voice and rights. Great philosophers have written at length about the “tyranny of the majority.” We’d be doing them a tremendous disrespect and casting their vision for America aside if we did not heed their words.

- Cedwyn, 4/12/05