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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use “text-speak” — the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers — in national exams this year, officials said.

Text-speak, a second language for thousands of teens, uses abbreviated words and phrases such as “txt” for “text”, “lol” for “laughing out loud” or “lots of love,” and “CU” for “see you.”

I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong that is. This is a huge step backward for the English Language. We might just as well go back to chiseling pictographs on stone. Except you can’t charge $.10 per message for such things. And that, I suppose, is the point.

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From the Associated Press:

BILOXI, Miss. – Leann Real promised her husband, an avid sports fan, that if they ever had a son he’d get to pick the name. ESPN Montana Real was born this week at Biloxi Regional Medical Center.

Rusty Real, of D’Iberville, chose ESPN (pronounced Espen) after the sports network and Montana after football legend Joe Montana.

Baby ESPN isn’t alone.

Three others were cited in a 2005 report on tivocommunity.com about the network’s 25th anniversary. They are Espn Malachi McCall in Pampa, Texas; Espn Curiel in Corpus Christi, Texas; and Espn Blondeel in Michigan.

It isn’t often I have the urge to smack a total stranger. Today I do.

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Larry Bird has his own personal brand of Napa Valley wine. It costs $80 a bottle.

Great. A guy who grew up in French Lick, Indiana, and has probably never even tasted a bottle of wine, unless it was disguised in a bottle of Bud, has his own label. I think Dan Shaugnessey of the Boston Globe said it best: “ The closest Larry ever got to Napa Valley was when the Celtics played the Warriors at the old Oakland Coliseum.”

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Katie Couric is named anchor of CBS Evening News.

Murrow . . . Cronkite . . . Rather . . .

Couric.

Remember the old days, when news anchors were, like, news people?

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This is from Reuters: “The Rolling Stones will hold their first-ever concert in China in April. Tickets range from $38-$375.”

I’m not sure where to even begin with this story. Which element is more dissonant?

1. The Rolling Stones are still alive, much less playing concerts.
2. The Rolling Stones are playing in China. Or,
3. People in a country where the per capita income is roughly $5000 are going to shell out $375 to see these old farts play “Satisfaction”.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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DOHA (AFP) – The radical Palestinian group Hamas joined voices for calm in the international furore sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Hamas calling for calm.

That’s like Keith Richards teaching a D.A.R.E. class.

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I’ve been offended by portrayals of Jesus in the popular media before.

But guess what? Somehow, I got through it without committing arson and murder.

Was that wrong of me? Does this make me a bad Christian? Should I go on a killing spree next time?

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Pro-Western Communists Win Vote In Moldova.

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Jimmie Walker is a columnist for Jewish World Review.

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Valencia Fans to Sue Referee for Madrid Penalty Decision

Wrong Again, Kids.

Another woefully, painfully bad decision from the Supreme Court. Read the opinion here and just bask in the glow of the Court’s indifference to the importance of the 4th amendment.

The Illinois Supreme Court, in its decision that led to this case, said they didn’t want police roadblocks to become an everyday, common feature of American life. The highest court in the land, it seems, doesn’t have a problem with that possibility.

Democratic Congressmen lecturing Republican Presidents on deficit spending.

Have I been in a coma? Has a temporal anomaly transported me to bizarro universe? Is it April 1st?

I don’t get this. What’s happening? I’m frightened . . . so . . . very . . . frightened . . .

So their is no liberal bias in the American press. Anyone who says their is such a thing is clearly deluded, right? Take comfort, in that this lack of liberal bias extends to religious stories as well. I was reading about the appointment of the Franciscan Fr. Sean O’Malley to be the new Archbishop of Boston.

Here, the Associated Press shows it’s neutrality by implying that a Catholic Archbishop who is loyal to the teachings of the Catholic Church is suspect as a “conservative” and therefore uncommited to healing the damage done by the sex scandals in the Boston Archdiocese:

The Rev. Richard McBrien, a liberal theologian at the University of Notre Dame, said despite all the kudos O’Malley has won for his response to sex abuse, he is still a conservative priest who would be “uncritically loyal to the Holy See and would not veer one millimeter from its policies and teachings on anything.”

The quotation may be true to the context of Fr. McBrien’s remarks, or it may not. It could very well be that Fr. McBrien was “Dowdified”. Either way the implication is outrageous.

I Swear I Thought This Was An Onion Story!

Sadly, it is not.

In related news, LeBron James has legally changed his name to “Nike Presents LeBron James”

Pat Leahy wants the President to pick Supreme Court justices who are not “controversial” or “ideological” (which I read to mean he wants justices who are “not in favor of limited, constitutional government” and “not opposed to the large scale government-backed killing of pre-birth human beings”.

Two Points:

1. Pat Leahy has more nerve than a chipped tooth.

2. This is analagous to the manager of the Yankees asking the manager of the Red Sox not to put in pitchers who pitch “fast” or ” with lots of curves and stuff”

Bill Bennett: Vegas Whale

I don’t know about you, but this is the first endearing thing I’ve ever read about the guy.