What Caught My Eye Today

Tax Day - Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged "tea parties" around the country to tap into the collective angst stirred up by a bad economy, government spending and bailouts. The rallies were directed at President Barack Obama's new administration on a symbolic day: the deadline to file income taxes. Protesters even threw what appeared to be a box of tea bags toward the White House, causing a brief lockdown at the compound. Way to go out on a limb there, conservative guys. How much brain power did you use up figuring out that the vast majority of Americans were going to be extra irritated at the state of the economy on the day their taxes were due? That was a stroke of brilliance. Still, I'd be more impressed if you can get those same protesters to show up any of the other 364 days of the year. Organizers said the movement developed organically through online social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and through exposure on Fox News. All that stuff I just said about impressing me...forget it. I cannot respect any movement--"organic" or otherwise--that is rooted in Twitter or Fox News. Even Facebook is a bit of a stretch, but I belong to that, so I'm not in much of a position to criticize it.

Iraq - It's mostly the headline that drew my attention"Iraq study: Executions are leading cause of death" I'm the first to admit that this is not a laughing matter, but you have to admit the title leaves a little to be desire. It's like saying excessive drinking is a leading cause for getting drunk. Execution-style killings, not headline-grabbing bombings, have been the leading cause of death among civilians in the Iraq war. The study was based on the database maintained by Iraq Body Count, a private group that among other sources uses media reports including those of The Associated Press. The study covered the period from the March 20, 2003 invasion through March 19, 2008, in which 91,358 violent deaths were recorded by Iraq Body Count. Believe it or not, there is a silver lining to this story. Although such killings continue, the numbers of bodies found every day have dropped to the single digits since the U.S. troop surge and a cease-fire called by the main militia leader, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in August 2007. Further evidence, like it or not, that the U.S. troop surge did quell the violence in Iraq. That being said, there is another angle to this story that is probably more likely to explain the drop in execution-style killings. The drop in violence is also due in part to the fact that many formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad have been effectively segregated after the minority sect was purged by the death squads. Baghdad has since become a maze of concrete walls and checkpoints aimed at ensuring security. Turns out you cannot kill each other if you can't reach the other guy.

Saudi Arabia - The United States called the case of an 8-year-old Saudi girl married to a man 50 years older a "clear and unacceptable violation of human rights," in a rare criticism of its oil-producing ally. A court upheld for the second time last week the marriage of the Saudi girl to a man who is about 50 years her senior on condition he does not have sex with her until she reaches puberty. Well that's a relief. That way, an 11-year-old girl can get jumped by her 61-year-old husband. That's much better. Saudi Arabia is a patriarchal society that applies an austere form of Sunni Islam that bans unrelated men and women from mixing and gives fathers the right to wed their sons and daughters to whoever they deem fit. I want to keep an open mind about customs and traditions that I am not accustomed to but I cannot, for the life of me, see any redeeming qualities about this particular tradition.

Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's two-day humanitarian truce ended today and the military announced it was now free to begin a final assault to end the 25-year war against the rebel Tamil Tigers. It's like the military saw this as a 30-second timeout. The Sri Lankan military says only 1,000 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels remain, and accuse the fighters of holding around 100,000 civilians as human shields. In less than three years, the military has retaken 15,000 square km (5,790 sq mile) from the separatists and pushed them into 6.6 square mile box of coastal coconut groves, where commanders expect to end a war that began in 1983. I don't know about that, sparky. I hear you can live off coconuts for a long, long time. The United Nations has said the military has fired into civilian areas, while the Tigers are shooting people who try to flee, firing from populated areas and forcibly recruiting people as young as 15. Both deny the charges. Either way you look at it, the real victims here are the ones who want nothing to do with either side. Sadly, things don't look too promising for the civilians--or rather, captives--seeing as they are caught right in the middle of the crossfire of opposing sides that don't seem too bothered if they miss each other and accidentally take out a few innocent bystanders.

Space Station - This just ain't right. The guy played by the rules and won fair and square. NASA on named its new living quarters on the International Space Station "Tranquility," denying television comedian Stephen Colbert his attempt to get the new Node 3 named after himself instead of Colbert as he and his fans demanded after winning an online poll conducted by NASA. But the U.S. space agency did make one concession. It said it will make a new Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) -- a fancy way of saying "exercise treadmill" -- a key fixture in the space station. Big deal. He could have had an entire module named after him if NASA had played fairly...and by its own freaking rules. The comedic situation stemmed from NASA's recent public outreach to drum up interest in the $100 billion International Space Station by holding an online contest to name the new Node 3, which will house life support equipment. Colbert, who parodies a conservative political commentator on his TV show, waged a campaign encouraging fans to vote for him and he eventually won, earning 230,539 write-in votes to 40,000 for NASA's top suggestion, "Serenity." What up with that? Second place "Serenity" wasn't good enough either? Why bother asking for public input, if you've already made up your mind? Not cool, dude. Totally not cool.