Hope everyone had an enjoyable Independence Day Weekend. Today we celebrate the wild fig, or we would if we were ancient Romans.

In these modern times, we've got Obama in Russia , the Climate Bill getting a workover by the Senate, and unrest in China .

This is an Open Thread. Write about whatever the fig you'd like.

Legal stories of the day: Bernie Madoff faces sentencing, and SCOTUS decides on the Ricci case .

In international news, there was an apparent military coup in Honduras on Sunday, and Iran begins a "re-" count of some ballots in the presidential election.

Finally, Obama advisor David Axelrod refused to rule out the taxing of health care benefits to help pay for the heath care reform bill making its way through congress.  This is a stark contrast to Obama's campaign promise not to raise taxes on middle class families.  Sen. McCain's health care plan did rely on taxing health care benefits, which President Obama called "the biggest middle class tax increase in history ". [edit by stinerman; SL and I posted OTs at the same time]

And now for something really important: Transformers 2 may be the worst-reviewed $400million hit.

Open Thread for Sunday & Monday!

It's International Clothesline Week. Time to abandon that old-fashioned gas or electric clothes dryer and use this amazing new solar-powered device !

Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend. In the news today:

Obama set to choose Sonia Sotomayer for the Supreme Court . Let the mudslinging begin! Oh, wait , it began weeks ago.

North Korea is acting up again. Testing Obama? Internal power play? A bit of both?

Rather than news headlines, I thought I'd post a couple of political cartoons, just for fun.

We seem to be eating up the Open Threads lately. Here's a fresh one.

Some news items after the jump.

In the news today:

Bank Stress Test results : Looks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were financially solvent enough to pay for good grades, while Bank of America was not. ;)

Fighting escalates in Pakistan .

Toyota has a bad year . First year losing money since 1963!

What's on the front page of your local newspaper today?

Here's mine: Cape Cod Times : Dammit! The Bruins lost! and Ooh look! Pretty flowers!

It’s been mentioned that it would be a good idea to learn about the non-political interests of Swords Crossed members. I agree that it helps to foster more good-natured debate when you realize that your adversary is a real person with many interests that may coincide with your own. In that spirit, I'm starting off with a primary interest of mine that is most likely to be shared, at least on some level, with other SCers: beer.

Obama has released his FY 2010 Budget , and there's a lot to digest in there. NPR has a helpful overview by department. My personal, overall impression is that there is some great stuff in there, but it is too big.

I went to see “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy” at the Woods Hole Film Festival this weekend. It is billed as a mockumentary/reality/documentary hybrid, and is basically a film about making a documentary about Global Warming.

Promoted by Brendan

John McCain has introduced legislation to the Senate to temporarily eliminate the federal gas tax. Hillary Clinton was quick to jump out in support of this “Gas Tax Holiday.” I thought her opinion was that Republicans don’t have any good ideas? Well, if she sees this as an example of a Republican good idea, then her judgment is even worse than I expected. But I suspect both McCain and Clinton know that this is not a good idea. It’s an idea that sounds good to the average American, though, so it scores them political points. At least Barrack Obama recognizes it as a bad idea. He should know, since it was tried on a state level in Illinois in 2000, while he was a Senator there. (He voted for it at the time, but when legislation was introduced to eliminate the tax permanently, Obama voted "no.")

"Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you." I think I like that formulation of the Golden Rule a bit better than the one I have heard more often, "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." For one thing, it makes it that much more difficult to justify the kind of logic that we discussed ad nauseum recently.

Promoted by Brendan -- philosophical musings for a rainy Wednesday

Does free will exist, or is it merely an illusion? This is a question that has been debated for thousands of years. For most of this time, it was largely a philosophical question, but as human knowledge has advanced, it has become more and more a question of science as well.

Promoted by Ender

Interesting article at the New York Times Freakonomics blog. They "asked a few smart people a very straightforward two-part question: What should the U.S. government be doing about global warming, and what should individuals be doing?" I think it's well worth a read. The reader comments there are next to useless, so perhaps we here at Swords Crossed might be able to generate a better discussion.