Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said.

"The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information that goes against state security and public interest," it added.

While the communist government encourages Internet use for education and business, it also blocks material it deems subversive or pornographic. Online dissidents who post items critical of the government, or those expressing opinions in chatrooms, are regularly arrested and charged under vaguely worded state security laws.

A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter.

Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.

"Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl's biological mother.

[Source: School Expels Girl for Having Gay Parents]

After a dental surgeon said he would have to break and reset her jaw for a successful "makeover," Williams said in her suit, producers told her they were dropping her because the recovery time wouldn't fit into their schedule. She got the news just hours before the surgery was to take place, according to the suit.

Williams' case began in December 2003 when she applied to "Extreme Makeover" and was selected to meet with producers in Los Angeles.

There, Williams was videotaped recounting the ridicule she suffered as a child and her years in an abusive marriage to an ex-husband. Her current husband and sisters were also interviewed and encouraged to make disparaging comments about her looks, the lawsuit says.

Suit Accuses 'Extreme Makeover' of Fraud

The undershirt the white student wore had a confederate flag on the front with the words "Keep it flying." On the back, a cartoon depicted a group of hooded Klansmen standing outside a church, waving to two others who had just pulled away in a car reading "Just married."

Two black men in nooses were being dragged behind.

The white student, who is now enrolled at a community college, said he got the shirt about a week before the incident for $10 at a flea market. He said he typically took off his shirt on the way to the gym, and on that day he didn't think about what he wore underneath.

He said he put the shirt on in the morning because he planned to wear it to a party that night with others who, like him, had enlisted in the Marines.

"I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else . . . . "

"I'm a redneck," he said. "But no, I'm not racist."

7. If your blog has a personality, do you find it hard to blog about topics outside that personality?

Sometimes. Sometimes I don't blog about something because I'm afraid it'll hurt my readers feelings. I know only one persynally, but others I've created an online friendship with.

8. Name your most popular post ever. Why was it your most popular post?

Bad Week -- As a general rule, I answer all my comments.

[b]At the Front of Nowhere at All[/b]
The Perfect Storm and the Feral City
By Tom Engelhardt

The headline was: "Direct hit in New Orleans could mean a modern Atlantis," and the first paragraph of the story read: "More than 1.2 million people in metropolitan New Orleans were warned to get out Tuesday as [the] 140-mph hurricane churned toward the Gulf Coast, threatening to submerge this below-sea-level city in what could be the most disastrous storm to hit in nearly 40 years." That was USA Today and the only catch was -- the piece had been written on September 14, 2004 as Hurricane Ivan seemed to be barreling toward New Orleans.

I commented at the time: "When ‘Ivan the Terrible' threatened New Orleans, correspondents there had a field day discussing whether the city might literally disappear beneath the waves -- this was referred to as the ‘Atlantis scenario.'" I was then trying to point out that we might indeed be entering a new, globally warmed world of Xtreme weather and no connections whatsoever were being made in the media. At the time, global warming, if discussed at all, was a captive of the far north (melting glaciers, unnerved Inuit, robins making miraculous appearances in Alaska), and "Atlantis scenarios" were the property of distant islands like the atolls that make up the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, threatened with abandonment due to rising ocean waters and ever fiercer, ever less seasonal storms And yet just short of a year ago, not only was it well known that New Orleans' levees weren't fit for a class 5 hurricane or that the Bush administration was slashing the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers, but the "Atlantis scenario" was already somewhere on the collective mind. Now, it has been upon us for almost a week.

"Sometimes, while masturbating, I pretend that I am a man jerking off - for some reason, the power behind that really gets me off," one woman wrote to me. Not an uncommon fantasy for butch dykes and other genderbenders - but how do you get off stroking a hunk of rubber?

Pick a dildo whose appearance and texture you like. In this case, a fairly realistic dildo might be best - it's hard to fantasize you're a horny guy when your tool is a dolphin-shaped, lavender-swirled model. Realistic dildos come in a range of styles and materials. Thick or long, with or without balls, with delicately sculpted glans or heavy, ropy veins. Silicone, Cyberskin, rubber. An elastic harness might not work well for this - you want a tight, secure fit. Check out a leather harness.

The volunteers won't let you in the shelters, and many of the evacuees are quite content to stay at the shelters for now as they are offered some stability. In addition, there seems to be a racial issue where blacks and Hispanics aren't willing to go anywhere with whites. This, of course, doesn't apply to ALL, but it is the general consensus among survivors. SO, having said that, I humbly admit that perhaps it is best to go through an agency like the one mentioned above.

Rice has spoken to members of the Congressional Black Caucus in recent days to reassure them the government was doing everything it could to help hurricane victims.

On Sunday, she attended a church service in Whistler, Alabama, and prayed alongside the congregation for victims of the hurricane.

Asked to say a few words from the pulpit, Rice, a preacher's daughter, said: "The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time." She added: "If we just wait."

"The guy who runs this building I'm in. Emergency Management. He's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming. Son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah. Mama. Somebody's coming to get you.' Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday. And she drowned Friday night. And she drowned Friday night. Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For god's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody."

-- Aaron Broussard, the President of Jefferson Parish on Meet The Press, 9/4/05

Transcript for September 4: Meet the Press

Yes, I have a blog roll, but it's changed a lot from what it used to be. I've written the politics of linking and the "A-list". The result has been that I've removed most "A-list" blogs from my blogroll, on the grounds that they already get enough links and don't need/won't miss one from me.

I tend, now, to link to blogs that I enjoy because of the writing, the information they provide, because I have some relationship with the blogger, or because they've linked back to mine. I have a separate list of links for blogs linking back to mine, in part because I'm interested in who's reading my blog. And a good way to find that out is to find out who's linking to it.

Only three?! Oh no. I'll give it a try... Well, aside from the three contributors at Shakes, and SistersTalk, which is a given, I'd have to say Pam's House Blend, The Heretik, and Lance Mannion.

The Blend is just an outstanding blog; Pam is a great writer, and her regular forays into Freeperland to get their responses on stories is an act of blogging bravery that never fails to amaze me. She's also a friend who I absolutely adore - she is smart and funny and totally cool. All of those attributes come through on her blog every day, which I honestly can't recommend enough.

The Heretik's blog is wholly unique. Every one of his posts is introduced with another amazing image he's created, and everything he writes is poetry. Joe manages to get to the hearts of issues, their emotional center, always with elegance. And he's one of the most kind and generous bloggers around, never failing to promote his favorites.

Mannion is a terrific writer, and I find myself often inspired by his work. Several of the posts on my "Greatest Hits" list start out with "Mannion had an interesting post today..." He's also a random blogger, writing about lots of topics, but sees politics as a thread that runs throughout our lives in many ways, a view I share, which always makes him an interesting read.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Bush put Roberts up for Chief Justice, simply because he looks confirmable, his paper trail is so short, there are so many more battles to fight, and Roberts is so young. Trying to run one confirmation battle, another confirmation battle, and dealing with a war over the elevation of Scalia or Thomas to Chief would be an almost impossible task.