Crockford says the current polar bear population is "almost certainly" at a level "well above" the official estimate of 20,000-25,000, and could be as high as 27,000-32,000. She told the meeting that even those producing the official figures had admitted to her in an email that the numbers were "simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand."

While hunting was a major threat to polar bear populations in the past, current popular concern focuses on the impact of shrinking sea ice on their habitat. But Crockford argued the animals can cope better with change than many think.

Of course if the colder trend continues they may be in trouble.

Sometimes the ice can be too thick, she said, preventing the ring seals on which they prey from drilling holes in the ice. Polar bear numbers in the Beaufort Sea have suffered large declines for this reason in periods including 1974, 1984, and 1992 at times of exceptionally thick sea ice, although their numbers have bounced back a few years later.

After all, it was less than a century ago that the Ku Klux Klan dominated much of Colorado politics, even claiming then-Gov. Clarence Morley a member.

heh

"The image is pretty disturbing, especially if they have real assault rifles in their hands," University of Colorado-Boulder ethnic studies professor Arturo Aldama told Fox 31 Denver. "Not to mention, the Confederate flag and its legacy of white supremacy, Klan violence and the Jim Crow South."

And along with you neither  the professor nor HP do.

And those aren't assault rifles.

Other than I'd say we have some stupid kids doing some stupid things and using a terrible stupid war as a prop.

BTW - Speaking of students and mean nasty things, just heard on the TV where a teacher gave a student a zero on four papers because the student wouldn't write, "Jesus was a myth."

I really had no idea how awesome a filmmaker Welles actually was in his heyday, until I was introduced to his movies in college. If I had to name one as a favorite, it would have to be "Touch of Evil."

In a scene where they have a conversation across a table, the scene was shot with one or the other of the actors, and a stand-in on each side, because they would not appear on the set at the same time.

Be nice if mid-terms had better D turnout, as it looks like they can't seem to find a rational person on the right . . .   they have NO bench when it comes to POTUS, so it would be nice to turn the tide in the 'off' years.

During both his short tenure as archbishop (1977-80) and posthumously, Romero had been regularly demonized and denounced by both U.S. and Latin American wingbats as a Communist sympathizer and Socialist enabler. So were Catholic lay worker Jean Donovan and three American nuns, who had been invited to the country by Romero to help tend to the poor and alienated, and who ultimately met a similar fate only eight months after his assassination, after first being kidnapped and raped by D'Aubisson's goons. In fact, on the eve of his beatification, the archbishop's still being criticized in certain conservative circles.

(Donovan's story and eventual martyrdom are beautifully recounted in the acclaimed 1982 documentary Roses in December. As for D'Aubisson, he remained at the helm of his country's Nationalist Republican Alliance party until his own smoking-induced death from esophogeal cancer in Feb. 1992, at age 48. Only after he was finally gone, could El Salvador begin to breathe easier and tamp down the internecine violence which had plagued the country during his reign of terror.)

Speaking as someone who came of age during that time, I had always found Liberation Theology to be one of the most embraceable and meaningful of all Catholic doctrines. Pope John Paul II alienated a lot of Catholics when he rejected its legitimacy upon his ascension to the Throne of St. Peter.

As The Vatican's head of state, JP2 was certainly one of the most influential world politicians of our times. But I'm also of the opinion that as Priest-in-Chief, the man's innate political conservatism clearly led the Roman Catholic Church astray from a theological perspective.

Because as the late pontiff repudiated Liberation Theology, he also embraced the odious likes of Fr. Marcial Maciel, the thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt founder of the Legion of Christ, he authorized various covers-up of clergy-related crimes both at The Vatican and abroad, and he ignored the money laundering shenanigans taking place at the Vatican Bank under his watch. In all too many respects, the Church is still dealing with the heavy fallout from JP2's papacy.