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How many companies offer phone service — traditional land-line telephone companies, cable companies, satellite providers, numerous wireless telephone providers?

Whatever the number, it certainly is not a monopoly and the providers are highly competitive. Yet, we still have a telecommunications regulatory agency, the Federal Communication Commission, that in many ways still operates as if we had but one land-line company.

The U.S. lags well behind many countries in Asia and even some in Europe in broadband deployment, not because many companies in the U.S. are unwilling to provide the service, but because they are hobbled by regulators. Some people at the FCC and their sister organizations within the states not only lack a vision of the future, but seem incapable of understanding both the industry’s economics and the technologies now available.

The news about the dangers of abortion is getting out, despite suppression by scientists and other vested interests — in particular, the relationship of abortion and subsequent breast cancer in the youngest women, those under age 18. They should be informed about the abortion-breast cancer link, especially if they become pregnant unexpectedly. Read More ›

SEATTLE –Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti maps what he depicts as a growing scientific case against neo-Darwinism in his new book, Why is a Fly Not a Horse? (Discovery Institute Press, July 2005). Sermonti challenges the myth that all critics of Darwinism are American religious fundamentalists and argues that since genetics does not explain even the present forms of life, genetic Read More ›

The debate over how to teach evolution continues to escalate in Utah and around the country. Some insist that only Darwinism be taught in the science classroom while others are bent on including the Biblical account alongside modern evolutionary theory. One is a dogmatic approach to science education while the other enshrines a particular religious text in the public class Read More ›

When the next terrorist incident occurs in the U.S., who do you think Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Democratic Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Hillary Clinton of New York and much of the national news media will blame? If you said President Bush and the Republican Congress, you understand the “politics of terrorism.”

It will be charged not enough was spent to protect Americans from bombs on (insert appropriate noun for the incident — buses, trains, airplanes, ships, buildings, bridges, etc.). Of course, the Republicans know this is what will be said.

As a result, huge amounts of dollars are spent, and our civil liberties curtailed to protect politicians from both parties from the charge they “did not do enough to protect us.” Much of this new expenditure is not enhancing our protection, but only weakening us economically, and the never-ending restrictions on civil liberties undermine the freedoms we hold dear.

RALPH NADER once mused to me about what a terrible thing it was that Jack Kevorkian was (at the time) the world’s most famous doctor. He was right. That distinct honor should have belonged to Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement who died last week at age 87 in London at St Christopher’s, the hospice she Read More ›

Truth Sheet #05-01 Overview: Periodically certain Darwinists make false and unsubstantiated claims that Discovery Institute advocates “theocracy” or is part of the “radical Christian right” or supposedly supports something called “Christian reconstructionism.” These charges are little more than smears, and they show the bankruptcy of the Darwinists’ own position. Rather than argue about the substance of the scientific debate over neo-Darwinism, Read More ›

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is one of the world’s most successful and effective advocacy organizations. Dedicated to the “rights” of animals with a devotion so fierce it borders on fanaticism, PETA activists practice propaganda as an art form and are so skilled at in-your-face advocacy and agitation that executives of the world’s most powerful corporations cow when the PETA activists pound on their doors.

The constant flow of press releases, boycotts, movie-star endorsements, and never-ending (and often funny) street demonstrations–such as the recent “Running of the Nudes,” a naked protest against Pamplona, Spain’s famous running of the bulls–not only keeps PETA continually in the news, but also serves to mask the organization’s bizarre and rigid ideology. But now with the recent arrest of two of its employees for cruelty to animals in North Carolina, the true weirdness of the cult-like group may finally receive the attention it deserves.

For those who missed it, here’s the story: Adria J. Hinkle, 27, and Andrew B. Cook, 24, were arrested in Ahoskie, North Carolina, after a four-week law-enforcement investigation into the illegal dumping of about 100 dead dogs into area trash receptacles. The illegal dumping began around the time PETA arranged with local animal shelters to transport stray animals that would otherwise be killed in area pounds to their Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters, purportedly to find homes for the animals–or, for the ill and unadoptable, to submit them to euthanasia.