Weeks the Patriot Act allowed the government this year to delay the
ACLU's announcement of a suit over the Act itself : 3 [ACLU (N.Y.C.) ]

~odd, when you copy/paste it adds the source

Seconds it took a Maryland consultant last winter to pick a Diebold
voting machine's lock and remove its memory card : 10 [Raba
Technologies LLC (Columbia, Md.) ]

Number of states where a shift of no more than three seats this fall
could change party control of a legislative chamber : 23 [National
Conference of State Legislatures (Denver) ]

Percentage of state legislative seats*  that Democrats controlled in
1980 and today, respectively : 60, 50 [National Conference of State
Legislatures (Denver) ]

~ (* I assume they mean state legislative chambers.)

Last year in which deaths due to terrorism in Israel and the Occupied
Territories exceeded those in Kashmir : 2001 [RAND-MIPT Terrorism
Incident Database (Oklahoma City) ]

Percentage of deaths due to terrorism last year that took place in
South Asia : 49 [RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database (Oklahoma City)
]

Percentage change since 2002 in the annual number of attacks by
pirates on ships worldwide : +20 [International Maritime Bureau Piracy
Reporting Centre (Kuala Lumpur) ]

Estimated number of guns that the U.S.-led force in Haiti has
confiscated since Aristide's departure last February : 100
[Multinational Interim Force (Port-au-Prince) ]

Months it took the force to start a program offering cash for tips
leading to weapons seizures : 2 [Multinational Interim Force
(Port-au-Prince) ]

Ratio of deaths of U.S. contractors worldwide in the last three months
to those between April and September last year : 2:1 [U.S. Department
of Labor ]

Value of the "political risk insurance" that the U.S. government is
providing two private investors in Iraq : $30,000,000 [Overseas
Private Investment Corporation (Washington) ]

Number of U.S. companies whose applications for such insurance are
pending : 34 [Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Washington) ]

Estimated percentage of U.S. corporations that paid no federal taxes
between 1996 and 2000 : 61 [General Accounting Office (Washington) ]

~ Why your taxes are so high.

Percentage change between 2001 and 2002 in the number of Teamster
officials earning six-figure salaries : +20 [Teamsters for a
Democratic Union (Detroit) ]

Number of publications on women's rights that the Labor Department has
removed from its website since 1999 : 25 [The National Council for
Research on Women (N.Y.C.) ]

Number of days this year that the Small Business Administration's
largest loan program shut down for lack of funds : 8 [U.S. Small
Business Administration ]

Percentage increase in the SBA's travel budget requested by the White
House last year : +107 (see page 79) [U.S. Small Business
Administration ]

Percentage of his salary Minnesota senator Mark Dayton spends on bus
trips for seniors buying drugs in Canada : 100 [Minnesota Senior
Federation (St. Paul) ]

Ratio of U.S. and Canadian spending on pharmaceuticals last year to
the amount the rest of the world spent : 31:32 [IMS Health (London) ]

Average amount an American spent on pharmaceuticals in 2002 : $202.81
[U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ]

Annual spending on the Marshall Plan, per European it was meant to
serve : $96.45 [George C. Marshall Foundation (Lexington, Va.) ]

Amount the United States allocated this year for Iraq's
reconstruction, per Iraqi : $727.27 [U.S. Congressional Budget
Office/U.S. Census Bureau ]

Minimum number of prisoners under the age of 17 or over the age of 70
held by coalition forces in Iraq last April : 79 [Coalition Press
Information Center (Baghdad) ]

Minimum portion of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison destroyed by May 2003 :
4/5 [Management & Training Corporation (Centerville, Utah) ]

Amount the U.S. spent partially reconstructing it : $1,900,000
[Management & Training Corporation (Centerville, Utah) ]

Number of times after prison-abuse photos aired in April that the
President boasted of freeing Iraq of torture chambers : 13 [Harper's
research ]

Amount NBC's parent company, General Electric, stands to earn from
Iraq's reconstruction : $600,000,000 [General Electric (Fairfield,
Conn.) ]

Price of a bleepinator, a device for TV broadcasters that "surgically
removes indecent words and phrases" : $9,995 [Enco Systems, Inc.
(Southfield, Mich.) ]

Number of individual "songs" for sale in Apple's iTunes Music Store
that consist of utter silence : 17 [iTunes Music Store (Cupertino,
Calif.)/Harper's research ]

Percentage change in Mattel's first-quarter earnings last winter, when
Barbie and Ken's "break-up" was announced : -73 [Mattel, Inc. (El
Segundo, Calif.) ]

Percentage by which average earnings of a major U.S. film with no sex
in 2003 exceeded those of one with graphic sex : 120 [The Christian
Film and Television Commission (Camarillo, Calif.) ]

Average number of "smoking incidents" per hour in major U.S. films in
1950 and 2002, respectively : 10.7, 10.9 ["Back to the Future: Smoking
in Movies in 2002 Compared with 1950 Levels," by Stanton A. Glantz,
Ph.D., Karen W. Kacirk, and Charles McCulloch, Ph.D., February 2004
American Journal of Public Health ]

Ratio of ambient fine-particle emissions from gasoline-powered
vehicles to those from cooking meat in Houston in summer : 5:4 [Prof.
Matt Fraser, Rice University (Houston) ]

Days after McDonald's CEO died of a heart attack last April that the
firm's ex-CEO for Japan did the same : 2 [McDonald's Corporation (Oak
Brook, Ill.) ]

Years after symptoms of his deranging genetic disorder appeared that
King George III held the throne in England : 56 [Prof. Martin Warren,
University of London ]

Average inches by which a British man's height fell short of an
American man's in the eighteenth century : 3.1 [John Komlos,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (Munich) ]

Average inches by which an American man's height falls short of a
British man's today : 0.4 [John Komlos,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (Munich) ]

Number of fried chocolate sandwiches served at a British hotel chain
in April after their debut : 1,256 [Jarvis Hotels Ltd. (High Wycombe,
England) ]

Last year in which French frogs were served at the Brotherhood of the
Frog Thigh Tasters' annual fair in Vittel, France : 1977 [Comite de la
grenouille (Vittel, France) ]

Gary Denton

~#1 on google for liberal news for a tiny bit longer
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