Today in the Contrarian News

Item 1 - The political left is always more open, accepting and tolerent:

(A) 19-year-old St. Cloud man told police he has found small baggies of dog feces in the back of his pickup truck for the past few weeks. Donald Esmay tells KNSI-AM the feces started appearing in his truck right after he put a 2-foot-by-4-foot McCain sign there. They confronted the 45-year-old man, who admitted to it and said it was childish. When police later spoke with the neighbor . . .he told officers he did it because he "hates McCain."

Item 2 - Glaciers started receding after the US Congress rejected the Kyoto Accords.

Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.

"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.

When the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay. There was simply a wall of ice across the north side of Icy Strait. From the 1800s until now, the Muir Glacier just kept retreating and retreating and retreating. It is now back 57 miles from the entrance to the bay, said Tom Vandenberg, chief interpretative ranger at Glacier Bay.

Does it mean anything? Nobody knows. Climate is constantly shifting.

Item 3 - Republicans are trying to spin the vote in swing states like Ohio:

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said a preliminary review showed that 200,000 of the 666,000 voters who have registered since Jan. 1 must have their eligibility verified to comply with a federal court order. Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien confirmed that he is investigating alleged voter and registration fraud involving 13 newly registered voters who came to Columbus for a get-out-the-vote campaign and used the same address, a small East Side home.

O'Brien told The Dispatch that he is investigating allegations that 13 out-of-state residents recently registered to vote, all listing their address as 2885 Brownlee Rd. They apparently were in Columbus working for Vote From Home, a group working to increase young-voter turnout in Ohio and using the house as their base of operation, O'Brien said.

When a reporter visited the three-bedroom, 1,175-square-foot home, a middle-aged woman answered the door and immediately turned the conversation over to a young woman, who declined to identify herself and would say only that she didn't think the reports of potential voter fraud are accurate. "Everyone who is registered to vote here is within the parameters of the law," she said, as the woman behind her shouted, "Just shut the door!" Then, the door closed.