Wednesday News Roundup

Nearly 700 Iraqi Shi'ites died in a stampede over a Baghdad bridge provoked by rumors of a suicide bomber on Wednesday, and an official said the death toll was expected to reach 1,000. Tensions are high among Iraq's rival religious and ethnic communities ahead of a referendum on a new constitution for the post-Saddam Hussein era.
The New York Times reports that a poll released yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
California, New Mexico and Oregon have sued the Bush administration over the government's decision to allow road building, logging and other commercial ventures on more than 90,000 square miles of untouched forests. In the lawsuit filed yesterday, attorneys general for the three states challenged the U.S. Forest Service's repeal of the Bill Clinton administration's "roadless rule" that banned development on 58.5 million acres of national forest, mostly in western states.
Duke Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky has written an op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times. "After spending the last month reading countless briefs and memos written by John G. Roberts Jr.," Chemerinsky writes, "it is clear that he would very likely change the law dramatically in key areas such as privacy rights, separation of church and state and racial justice. Democrats need to oppose Roberts for the same reasons they fought against Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. in 1969, Harold Carswell in 1970, Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991."
The Arizona Daily Star reported on Sunday that they've decided to give Ann Coulter a pink slip. David Stoeffler, publisher and editor of the Star, explained in an opinion piece that the staff has "decided that syndicated columnist Ann Coulter has worn out her welcome. Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."