SALSA'S LAST LION
"One of the last of a vanishing breed, Johnny Pacheco holds a torch that now shines as much for fallen comrades like Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz, Pete 'El Conde' Rodriguez, Charlie Palmieri, and Jose Fajardo as for himself."
(VILLAGE VOICE)

CHICKEN FEED
A man wearing a chicken suit robbed a Kroger grocery store in Columbus, Ohio and the store's surveillance camera caught the robbery on tape. Watch in the WCMH Columbus FeedRoom.
(FEEDROOM)

MARIJUANA INITIATIVE ON ALASKA BALLOT
" A proposal to legalize marijuana use in private by people older than 21 has become the first initiative approved for the 2004 general election ballot in Alaska."
Initiatives to outlaw bear baiting and one mandating an election to fill U.S. Senate vacancies are also expected.
(ALASKA DAILY NEWS, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

VIRUS DISSERTATION
While much attention has been paid to the malicious online attackers who exploit technology's vulnerabilities, little has been documented about the origins of the virus. Its early iterations were not created by malcontent teenagers or antisocial geeks but by campus researchers, system administrators and a handful of old-school hackers who thought that the ability to reproduce their programs automatically was a neat trick.
(C/NET NEWS, unearthed by Infopackets)

THIS YEAR'S MOVIES
"It's still a tossup whether 2003 was a great year for movies. But there's no argument that it was one of the most gratifying years in recent memory for cinematography, and not just the eye-catching, high-contrast color gloss that often passes for great camera work but would be better relegated to press-on nails. "
(NYT)

BUSH PARODY CONTEST FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
Check out the final entries and vote for the funniest anti-Bush ad before Ashcroft shuts the website down and sends all of these people off to Guantanamo as "enemy combatants".
(MOVING ON, unearthed by Grag A. Reeves)

BUSH'S "FORWARD STRATEGY OF FREEDOM" INCLUDES COMBAT OF FREE SPEECH
"When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up 'free speech zones' or 'protest zones,' where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event. "
(SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

FEDS STEAL PATIENT'S MARIJUANA
"In a clash between state and federal law, a Routt County man whose medical marijuana was seized in a law enforcement raid was still waiting to get it back Monday."
(ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

NEOCON 101
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
Are you one? Take the test.
(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR)

HIGHS AND LOWS OF 2003
The highs and lows of 2003 as seen by the New York Times' critics.
(NYT)

SCHOONER BRINGS MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO CUBA
"The ship is carrying 100-150 boxes of medical supplies, sports equipment and special wheelchairs for organizations in Baracoa, Cuba, that help the blind, elderly, handicapped and women with high-risk pregnancies. Voyager is making its second humanitarian mission to Cuba, but the St. Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association has already made two dozen trips to Cuba to help people in need."
(ST. AUGUSTINE RECORD, unearthed by CubaNews Digest)

Village Voice:
FILM CRITICS' POLL
Here's the list of the best films for the year as seen by the critics for the Village Voice.
(VILLAGE VOICE)

FELIX AWARDS
Michael Musto's annual Felix Awards do need an introduction, but rather than waste time trying to come up with a truly appropriate one, let's just get on with the honors—the wacky wrap-up of the year in tears, fears, queers, and male brassieres. These tawdry trophies make the Golden Globes look relevant. And the Felixes go to . . .
(VILLAGE VOICE)

CASTRO: BATTLE OF IDEAS
...this is a country where no school-age child is to be seen roaming about or begging in the streets, where 100% of elementary-age children go to school and graduate from sixth grade, and that it is the only country in the hemisphere - including the United States - where 100% of children enroll in seventh grade and 99.5% of teenagers graduate from ninth grade. "This is a country, the only one in the hemisphere, where, from birth, children have the possibility of growing up healthy, of having a liter of milk a day, the necessary food, and, in terms of their schooling, can progress from kindergarten to graduation as a doctor of science without having to spend a single cent," he observed.
(GRANMA, unearthed by Cuban Daily News Digest)

BATTLEFIELD CHICAGO
...[T]he Bush Administration has insisted on treating [Yaser] Hamdi and [Jose] Padilla as soldiers. Labeling them "enemy combatants," the administration asserts that they may be held without any legal process whatsoever until the "war on terror" is over....

...(In upholding the detention of Hamdi) the Fourth Circuit's ruling was frighteningly broad. But what the government was asking the Second Circuit to do in the Padilla case was still more dramatic: to sanction the indefinite detention of an American citizen who was not captured on a foreign battlefield, but rather picked up in Chicago. The government was arguing, in short, that the one fact that the Hamdi court relied upon was one fact too many.

Although the district court that heard Padilla's habeas corpus request ruled that the government should have to provide "some evidence" in support of its position that Padilla was an enemy combatant, the government disagreed. In its view, no fact, no evidence, and no legal process should be required.

The Second Circuit ruled against the government on broader grounds than did the district court, and thus did not discuss the government's burden of proof. Yet its opinion was in many ways a narrow one, which in no way challenged the government's key underlying claims. It did not, for example, question the Bush Administration's assertion that the "war on terror" is a literal war, unlike, for instance, the Cold War or the War on Drugs.
(FINDLAW COMMENTARY)