American Press

**soubiri** · 06-05-2007, 07:24 AM

_MD_RE: American Press

The Universe, Expanding Beyond All Understanding By <a title="More Articles by Dennis Overbye" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/dennis_overbye/index.html?inline=nyt-per">DENNIS OVERBYE</a>Published: <date w:st="on" Year="2007" Day="5" Month="6" ls="trans">June 5, 2007</date> When <a title="More articles about Albert Einstein." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/albert_einstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Albert Einstein</a> was starting out on his cosmological quest 100 years ago, the universe was apparently a pretty simple and static place. Common wisdom had it that all creation consisted of an island of stars and nebulae known as the Milky Way surrounded by infinite darkness.<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/space/05essa.html#secondParagraph#secondParagraph">Skip to next paragraph</a> We like to think we’re smarter than that now. We know space is sprinkled from now to forever with galaxies rushing away from one another under the impetus of the Big Bang.Bask in your knowledge while you can. Our successors, whoever and wherever they are, may have no way of finding out about the Big Bang and the expanding universe, according to one of the more depressing scientific papers I have ever read.If things keep going the way they are, Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University and Robert J. Scherrer of <a title="More articles about Vanderbilt University" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/v/vanderbilt_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Vanderbilt University</a> calculate, in 100 billion years the only galaxies left visible in the sky will be the half-dozen or so bound together gravitationally into what is known as the Local Group, which is not expanding and in fact will probably merge into one starry ball.Unable to see any galaxies flying away, those astronomers will not know the universe is expanding and will think instead that they are back in the static island universe of Einstein. As the authors, who are physicists, write in a paper to be published in The Journal of Relativity and Gravitation, “observers in our ‘island universe’ will be fundamentally incapable of determining the true nature of the universe.” It is hard to count all the ways in which this is sad. Forget the implied mortality of our species and everything it has or has not accomplished. If you are of a certain science fiction age, like me, you might have grown up with a vague notion of the evolution of the universe as a form of growing self-awareness: the universe coming to know itself, getting smarter and smarter, culminating in some grand understanding, commanding the power to engineer galaxies and redesign local spacetime.Instead, we have the prospect of a million separate Sisyphean efforts with one species after another pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down and be forgotten. Worse, it makes you wonder just how smug we should feel about our own knowledge.“There may be fundamentally important things that determine the universe that we can’t see,” Dr. Krauss said in an interview. “You can have right physics, but the evidence at hand could lead to the wrong conclusion. The same thing could be happening today.”The proximate culprit here is dark energy, which has been responsible for much of the bad news in physics over the last 10 years. This is the mysterious force, discovered in 1998, that is accelerating the cosmic expansion that is causing the galaxies to rush away faster and faster. The leading candidate to explain that acceleration is a repulsion embedded in space itself, known as the cosmological constant. Einstein postulated the existence of such a force back in 1917 to explain why the universe didn’t collapse into a black hole, and then dropped it when Edwin Hubble discovered that distant galaxies were flying away — the universe was expanding.If this is Einstein’s constant at work — and some astronomers despair of ever being able to say definitively whether it is or is not — the future is clear and dark. In their paper, Dr. Krauss and Dr. Scherrer extrapolated forward in time what has become a sort of standard model of the universe, 14 billion years old, and composed of a trace of ordinary matter, a lot of dark matter and Einstein’s cosmological constant.As this universe expands and there is more space, there is more force pushing the galaxies outward faster and faster. As they approach the speed of light, the galaxies will approach a sort of horizon and simply vanish from view, as if they were falling into a black hole, their light shifted to infinitely long wavelengths and dimmed by their great speed. The most distant galaxies disappear first as the horizon slowly shrinks around us like a noose.A similar cloak of invisibility will befall the afterglow of the Big Bang, an already faint bath of cosmic microwaves, whose wavelengths will be shifted so that they are buried by radio noise in our own galaxy. Another vital clue, the abundance of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen manufactured in the Big Bang, in deep space, will become unobservable because to be seen it needs to be backlit from distant quasars, and those quasars, of course, will have disappeared. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/space/05essa.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/space/05essa.html</a>

**soubiri** · 06-05-2007, 07:36 AM

_MD_RE: American Press

Discontent Over <country-region w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Iraq</place /></country-region /> Increasing, Poll FindsAmericans Also Unhappy With CongressBy <a title="Send an e-mail to Dan Balz and Jon Cohen" href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/dan+balz+and+jon+cohen/">Dan Balz and Jon Cohen</a><state w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Washington</place /></state /> Post Staff Writers <date w:st="on" Year="2007" Day="5" Month="6" ls="trans" />Tuesday, June 5, 2007</date />; Page A01 Growing frustration with the performance of the Democratic Congress, combined with widespread public pessimism over <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/George+W.+Bush?tid=informline">President Bush</a>'s temporary troop buildup in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Iraq?tid=informline">Iraq</a>, has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/The+Washington+Post+Company?tid=informline">Washin gton Post</a>-<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/ABC+Inc.?tid=informline">ABC News</a> poll.Almost six in <time w:st="on" Minute="0" Hour="10" />10 Am</time />ericans said they do not think the additional troops sent to <country-region w:st="on" />Iraq</country-region /> since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order there, and 53 percent -- a new high in Post-ABC News polls -- said they do not believe that the war has contributed to the long-term security of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/United+States?tid=informline">United States</a>.Disapproval of Bush's performance in office remains high, but the poll highlighted growing disapproval of the new Democratic majority in Congress. Just 39 percent said they approve of the job Congress is doing, down from 44 percent in April, when the new Congress was about 100 days into its term. More significant, approval of congressional Democrats dropped 10 percentage points over that same period, from 54 percent to 44 percent.Much of that drop was fueled by lower approval ratings of the Democrats in Congress among strong opponents of the war, independents and liberal Democrats. While independents were evenly split on the Democrats in Congress in April (49 percent approved, 48 percent disapproved), now 37 percent said they approved and 54 percent disapproved. Among liberal Democrats, approval of congressional Democrats dropped 18 points.Bush's overall job-approval rating stands at 35 percent, unchanged from April.Many Democratic activists have complained that the 2006 midterm election results represented a call for a course change in <country-region w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Iraq</place /></country-region /> and that so far the Democratic-controlled Congress has failed to deliver.Deep public skepticism about <country-region w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Iraq</place /></country-region />, concerns about the Democrats and Bush, and near-record-high gasoline prices appear to have combined to sour the overall mood in the country. In the new poll, 73 percent of Americans said the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, while 25 percent said things are going in the right direction.That gap is marginally wider than it was at the beginning of the year and represents the most gloomy expression of public sentiment since January 1996, when a face-off between President <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Bill+Clinton?tid=informline">Bill Clinton</a> and a Republican-controlled Congress over the budget led to an extended shutdown of the federal government.Among the nearly three-quarters of Americans expressing a pessimistic viewpoint, about one in five blamed the war for their negative outlook, and about the same ratio mentioned the economy, gas prices, jobs or debt as the main reason for their dissatisfaction with the country's direction. Eleven percent cited "problems with Bush," and another 11 percent said "everything" led them to their negative opinion.The new poll showed that Americans have recalibrated their view of who is taking the lead in <state w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Washington</place /></state />. Earlier this year, majorities of Americans said they believed that the Democrats were taking the initiative in the capital, but now there is an even split, with 43 percent saying Bush is taking the stronger leadership role and 45 percent saying the Democrats are.That shift occurred across the political spectrum. In April, 59 percent of independents said Democrats were taking a stronger role, but that figure has dropped 15 points, to 44 percent.The political machinations over the <country-region w:st="on" /><place w:st="on" />Iraq</place /></country-region /> war funding bill have been the dominant news event in Congress for much of the spring, and the Democrats' removal of the provision linking funding to a withdrawal deadline came shortly before the poll was taken.<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/04/AR2007060401230.html?hpid%3Dtopnews?hpid=topnews"> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/04/AR2007060401230.html?hpid%3Dtopnews?hpid=topnews</a>

**soubiri** · 06-06-2007, 08:34 AM

_MD_RE: American Press

In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention By <a title="Send an e-mail to Peter Baker" href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/peter+baker/">Peter Baker</a><state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> Post Staff Writer <date ls="trans" Month="6" Day="6" Year="2007" w:st="on">Wednesday, June 6, 2007</date>; Page A01 The sentence imposed on former <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/The+White+House?tid=informline">White House</a> aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby yesterday put <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/George+W.+Bush?tid=informline">President Bush</a> in the position of making a decision he has tried to avoid for months: Trigger a fresh political storm by pardoning a convicted perjurer or let one of the early architects of his administration head to prison.The prospect of a pardon has become so sensitive inside the West Wing that top aides have been kept out of the loop, and even Bush friends have been told not to bring it up with the president. In any debate, officials expect <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Dick+Cheney?tid=informline">Vice President Cheney</a> to favor a pardon, while other aides worry about the political consequences of stepping into a case that stems from the origins of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Iraq?tid=informline">Iraq</a> war and renewing questions about the truthfulness of the Bush administration. Article continues<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501275.html?hpid%3Dtopnews">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501275.html?hpid%3Dtopnews</a>

**soubiri** · 06-10-2007, 11:06 AM

_MD_RE: American Press

<h3 dir="ltr" style="background: white; margin: auto 0cm" align="left">Our view on illegal immigration: Amnesty? What amnesty? Critics substitute fear for facts<h3 align="left">Proposed path to citizenship is long, tough, expensive process.<h4 align="left">Opponents of the immigration compromise that stalled in the Senate on Thursday night have wielded the word "amnesty" like a club, as if repeating it over and over constitutes rational argument.</h4></h3></h3>Continuing reading:<a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/post_7.html#more">http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/post_7.html#more</a>

American Press

American Press

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