As I was, you were probably counting the delicious indictments poised to be handed out by Fitz. Rove, Libby, Bolton, Hadley, Rice[!],to name a few, with a dash of unindicted co-conspirators given to Dick and George. IDIOTS!

I figured who in this world knows the mind of devious republicans better than the devious republicans over in Freeperville.[no link, don't give them the hits] Could they be seeing something we're not? Something that is so far-fetched it's logical? Something so unconnected it's obvious? The answer is yes. And guess who they believe it goes back to? Were you thinking Hillary? You weren't? Well, they are. And the "logic" involved will blow your mind.

Which means - it was NOT LIBBY who gave her the information - IT WAS PROBABLY HILLARY. I believe that because Valerie Pflame Wilson and her husband were very close friends of Hillary (giving Hillary the opportunity to know that type of information - and because I believe Pflame was a stool pigeon for the Clintons - especially after Bush took office). The Wilsons were known for their fund raisers for the Clintons.

I also believe it was Hillary who prompted Valerie to suggest her husband for the trip to Niger.

Why do I think Hillary would suggest that ..?? Because of the Wilson's relationship to the Clintons, and the fact that Bubba was all over Europe trying to get other countries to VOTE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES .. and Wilson was the perfect stooge to pretend that when he went to Niger and FOUND NOTHING - thereby MAKING BUSH OUT TO BE A LIAR - ALONG WITH BLAIR.

Do you not feel like a complete simpleton after reading such a masterful and logical conclusion? What about the very real possibilty that Patrick Fitzgerald might be covering for Hillary!

So why would Fitzgerald go along with NOT questioning Miller about her other (real) sources, even if or especially if, it WAS Hillary? Is he stupid enough to try to cover for Hillary? Is he stupid enough to think it wouldn't come out eventually, thanks to inquiring minds like the Pajamadeen Freepers?

Thanks, indeed! Yes, it will "all come out", like sunflower seeds through a pigeon

By their logic, there is also someone else who is as guilty as the day is long. Did the name Joe Wilson pop into your mind? No? It should have because they have it all figured it. In fact, it's quite "simple."

It's so simple: Joe Wilson publishes his NYT op-ed, everybody in Washington says "Who the hell is this guy?" Anybody who has ever talked 5 minutes with Wilson knows he'll blab about his wife to anybody who will listen. The rumor spread throughout Washington and these reporters wanted Libby and Rove to "confirm" it even though the reporters themselves knew that Plame drove to Langley every day.

Conservatives may consider Harriet Miers the last straw.

But what will Harriet Miers consider the last straw with conservatives?

Maybe it will be Bork Borking her.
The old Supreme Court nominee reject rejected the new Supreme Court nominee, calling her "a disaster on every level" and "a slap in the face" to conservatives. Robert Bork complained to Tucker Carlson on MSNBC last night that Ms. Miers had "no experience with constitutional law whatever," that it was wrong for W. to choose a justice simply to have a woman's perspective and that conservative reaction veered between "disapproval and outrage."

WHAM! BLAM! POW!

Way to crack the gal right across the kisser, when she's already on the ropes from so much conservative wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[snip]

Conservatives are shocked to discover that President Bush has been stuffing his administration with cronies and mediocrities in important places? If Ms. Miers were a sworn foe of Roe v. Wade and an ardent advocate of originalism in constitutional jurisprudence, would the same conservatives be so sick about her qualifications? Clarence Thomas, after all, was anything but a leading light of American jurisprudence.

The New Republic this week chooses the biggest 15 hacks in the Bush administration, noting that "no administration has etched the principles of hackocracy into its governing philosophy as deeply as this one." Ms. Miers wins at No. 1.

W.'s case for her elevation is their closeness, because she is, as Alexander Hamilton put it, one of the "obsequious instruments of his pleasure."

W. is so loath to leave his little bubble - where caretakers tell him how brilliant and bold he is - that he keeps selecting the people in charge of the selection committees. It's just so much easier to choose a sycophant who's already in the room than to create one from scratch.

He used to disdain pointy-headed liberals from Yale, but now he's angry at pointy-headed conservatives demanding some sort of genius for the Supreme Court, rather than a den mother who did all of W.'s legal wet work and who prefers John Grisham to Leo Strauss.

While the Bushies have been trying to reassure the right that W. knows Harry's heart, that she's a good Christian church lady who will vote in a way that will please them, Harry is probably working herself up to a good grudge against all those meanies who are savaging her as a lightweight apple polisher. Imagine! After she rechristened herself midlife as born again and Republican for them.

Even if she was going to be a loyal conservative jurist before, why should she be now, after all the loathsome things they've said?

The old maxim goes that a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged by reality. But if you're a conservative mugged by conservatives, neo and paleo, it may have the opposite effect and turn you into ... David Souter!!!!

President Bush's pick for the second-ranking position at the Justice Department abruptly withdrew his nomination Friday after facing weeks of questions over his ties to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff as well as his role in formulating policies for the treatment of suspected terrorists.

The nominee, Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel who is now a senior lawyer at Tyco International, had been scheduled to face yet another round of questioning next week from senators who had grown skeptical about his nomination as deputy attorney general.

Of chief concern to Democrats and some Republicans was Mr. Flanigan's role at Tyco, where as its general counsel he oversaw Mr. Abramoff's work lobbying for the company, which is based in Bermuda, to retain its tax-exempt status.

On Oct. 24, 2003, the Washington Post reported that Rove and McClellan, among dozens of others, had submitted to FBI interrogation about the leaks. Two months later, the Post quoted administration officials saying that Rove had been among the very first people to be interviewed by the FBI in pursuit of information about the case.

Back then, Rove might well have assumed that the case would be buried without any undue inconvenience to him. The president had publicly predicted, after all, that the perpetrators of the leak were unlikely to be identified. There was no reason, at the outset, to think that an independent-minded prosecutor would take over from Ashcroft a few months later.

If Rove told the FBI agents the same story that he and McClellan were telling the press, then he might have set himself up for a felony charge of lying to a federal law enforcement official. And if he lied, then he need not have been under oath to have committed a crime.

Another intriguing possibility in the leaks case brings back the baroque personality of right-wing pressroom denizen Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert.

The New York Times reported Friday that in addition to possible charges directly involving the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity and related perjury or conspiracy charges, Fitzgerald is exploring other possible crimes. Specifically, according to the Times, the special counsel is seeking to determine whether anyone transmitted classified material or information to persons who were not cleared to receive it -- which could be a felony under the 1917 Espionage Act.

One such classified item might be the still-classified State Department document, written by an official of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, concerning the CIA's decision to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to look into allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. Someone leaked that INR document -- which inaccurately indicated that Wilson's assignment was the result of lobbying within CIA by his wife, Valerie -- to right-wing media outlets, notably including Gannon's former employers at Talon News. On Oct. 28, 2003, Gannon posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the Talon Web site, in which he posed the following question: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

Gannon later hinted, rather coyly, that he had learned about the INR memo from an article in the Wall Street Journal. He also told reporters last February that FBI agents working for Fitzgerald had questioned him about where he got the memo. At the very least, that can be interpreted as confirming today's Times report about the direction of the case.

Poll: Groups Unhappy With Bush Performance

Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in President Bush's political coalition are worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

[snip]

Only 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction while two-thirds, 66 percent, say it is on the wrong track, the poll found.

"There is a growing, deep-seated discontentment and pessimism about the direction of the country," said Republican strategist Tony Fabrizio, who believes the reasons for their pessimism differ for those in one political party or another.

Among those most likely to have lost confidence about the nation's direction over the past year are white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points since November, Republican women, down 28 points, Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20 points.

Bush's supporters are uneasy about issues such as federal deficits, immigration and his latest nomination for the Supreme Court. Social conservatives are concerned about his choice of Miers, a relatively unknown lawyer who has most recently served as White House counsel.

"Bush is trying to get more support generally from the American public by seeming more moderate and showing he's a strong leader at the same time he has a rebellion within his own party," Thurber said. "The far right is starting to be very open about their claim that he's not a real conservative."

The president's job approval is mired at the lowest level of his presidency — 39 percent. While four of five Republicans say they approve of Bush's job performance — enthusiasm in that support has dipped over the last year.

In December 2004, soon after his re-election, almost two-thirds of Republicans strongly approved of the job done by Bush. The AP-Ipsos survey found that just half in his own party feel that way now.

How dare you act shocked you spindly, little pimple: Dubya is doing nothing more than behaving exactly as the Evil Liberals warned all you mentally-underclocking 286 chipset Republicans he would behave.

Shit, why don’t you just do what you guys always do, George? Roll over, vomit out a few of the hundreds of gallons of Wormwood jizz that the Administration has shotgunned down your gullet, mop the Bushkkake off your face, get shakily back up on your hind legs, look owlishy all around with your hair still “Something About Mary” spikey from the latest load Dubya-mousse, stare into the camera with your haunted, blown-out, spoo-stung haint-eyes and say,

“…but...but...but...the Liberals.”

A proposed regulation which would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions based on the druggists moral views could be used to deny HIV/AIDS patients live saving medication a health advocate warns.

The Wyoming Board of Pharmacy is considering the rule change amid pressure by conservative groups opposed to the sale of contraceptives and birth control pills.

But, the regulation could be used to deny service in many other areas critics charge.

"It is so broad, that any pharmacist with any personal belief that is contrary to any particular drug is allowed to refuse to fill a legal prescription," Pamela Reamer Williams, director of the Casper-based Wyoming AIDS Project told the Star-Tribune.

"Health care professionals are supposed to help. They're not supposed to judge."

Currently, pharmacists are allowed to refuse to dispense a drug if they think a prescription may harm a patient or if the patient is being overmedicated. But Wyoming law is silent on moral conflicts.

Reamer Williams said that the rule change could allow druggists to turn away people they thought were gay.

"It's no secret to any of us that there are people in this state who have religious and moral objections to homosexuality, and it's not just homosexuals in this state or anywhere else that are living with AIDS," Reamer Williams told the paper.

"Some of these are people who never shot drugs, never had sex outside of marriage, did absolutely everything that was the moral way to behave, and they still ended up with HIV."

The board will consider the rule change when it meets next month.

Yesterday, the same day New Yorkers were warned there was a "specific threat" of a bombing on their subways, President Bush delivered what the White House promoted as a major address on terrorism. It seemed, on the surface, like a perfect topic for the moment. But his talk was not about the nation's current challenges. He delivered a reprise of his Sept. 11 rhetoric that suggested an avoidance of today's reality that seemed downright frightening.

[snip]

He seemed to be reading from a very old and familiar script as he revealed that terrorists recruit "disillusioned young men and women," some of whom build weapons based on information available on the Internet. He shared his conviction that "it is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs." He said his team was "reforming our intelligence agency" and reorganizing government for "a broad and coordinated homeland defense."

Americans have seen the Department of Homeland Security in action for several years now, under two directors. The first, a former governor with whom the president had a good personal relationship, was an inept bureaucratic and political player who had a strange obsession with color-coded states of emergency. The current one was at the helm during the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster in New Orleans, when that agency was overseen by an unqualified political appointee.

The administration is still trying to recover politically from Katrina. The hurricane was not just a bad stretch that could be cured by a promise of federal aid and a demonstration of presidential concern. The hurricane showed that despite four years of spinning, America is still unprepared for a catastrophe. It raised major questions about the caliber of people with whom Mr. Bush surrounds himself.

Ever since the terrorist attacks, the main thing Americans have wanted from Washington is a sense of safety. That takes more than hyperalertness to suicide bombing threats, important as that is. No matter what the terrorists are up to, it is not possible to feel safe if the federal government does not appear to know what it is doing on so many different levels.

[snip]

He seemed to be reading from a very old and familiar script as he revealed that terrorists recruit "disillusioned young men and women," some of whom build weapons based on information available on the Internet. He shared his conviction that "it is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs." He said his team was "reforming our intelligence agency" and reorganizing government for "a broad and coordinated homeland defense."

Americans have seen the Department of Homeland Security in action for several years now, under two directors. The first, a former governor with whom the president had a good personal relationship, was an inept bureaucratic and political player who had a strange obsession with color-coded states of emergency. The current one was at the helm during the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster in New Orleans, when that agency was overseen by an unqualified political appointee.

The administration is still trying to recover politically from Katrina. The hurricane was not just a bad stretch that could be cured by a promise of federal aid and a demonstration of presidential concern. The hurricane showed that despite four years of spinning, America is still unprepared for a catastrophe. It raised major questions about the caliber of people with whom Mr. Bush surrounds himself.

Ever since the terrorist attacks, the main thing Americans have wanted from Washington is a sense of safety. That takes more than hyperalertness to suicide bombing threats, important as that is. No matter what the terrorists are up to, it is not possible to feel safe if the federal government does not appear to know what it is doing on so many different levels.

The New York City Police Department is investigating what it deems a credible tip that 19 operatives have been deployed to New York to place bombs in the subway, and security in the subways will be increased, sources told ABC News.

While the police department is taking the threat seriously, it is also urging the public not to be alarmed because – while the source is credible – the information has not been verified.

According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, when three Iraqi insurgents were arrested several days ago during a raid by a joint FBI-CIA team, one of those caught disclosed the threat. Because it slipped out during the arrest, the plot was deemed credible.

After several days of work, sources said, the NYPD is increasingly concerned because it has been unable to discredit the initial source and additional information from the source.

The 19 operatives were to place improvised explosive devices in the subways using briefcases, according to two sources.

The police are deploying additional officers, dogs and heavy weapons teams in subways and commuter rail terminals, sources said.

Department of Homeland Security sources told ABC News they are very doubtful the threat information is credible, though NYPD sources said the information continues to come in and is disturbing.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the Associated Press, "Obviously, this is a significant threat."

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer’s leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won’t be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President George W. Bush or others.

The U.S. attorney’s manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.

Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.

The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances.

So Karl Rove is returning to testify before the grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame, and he's doing so without any guarantee that Patrick Fitzgerald won't prosecute him. How big of a development is this? "Stunning," a former federal prosecutor tells us. "There is no reason for Rove to make this appearance unless he and his counsel believe he is at serious risk of indictment. None."

It's always risky to go before a grand jury. You can't take your lawyer into the room with you, and you don't know what the grand jury knows or doesn't know. It's especially risky if you've already testified once -- or, in the case of Rove, three times -- before: The odds of introducing inconsistencies into your testimony increase each time you give it. That's why, the former prosecutor tells us, a defense lawyer would advise his client to make a return appearance before the grand jury only in extreme circumstances.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers offers a similar assessment to the Associated Press. He calls Rove's return trip to the grand jury room an "ominous sign" that suggests Fitzgerald "has learned new information that is tightening the noose" around Rove's neck. "It shows Fitzgerald now, perhaps after [Judith] Miller's testimony, suspects Rove may be in some way implicated in the revelation of Plame's identity or that Fitzgerald is investigating various people for obstruction of justice, false statements or perjury. That is the menu of risk for Rove."

It's possible, of course, that Rove is returning to the grand jury in the hope of saving someone other than himself. Conversely, it's also possible that he's testifying in the hope of implicating someone other than himself.

But what's clear, either way, is that Rove himself is now at risk of prosecution. According to the AP, Fitzgerald has sent Rove's legal team a letter in connection with his upcoming testimony in which the prosecutor says he can't guarantee that Rove won't be charged with a crime. The U.S. Attorneys Manual requires federal prosecutors to issue such a warning before anyone they consider a "target" or a "subject" of an investigation appears before a grand jury. As the manual explains, "target" is "a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant." A "subject" is "a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation."

So is Rove a "target" or at least a "subject" now? We don't know for sure, but the fact that Fitzgerald felt compelled to give him a warning suggests that he might be.

After falling for two years, the share of income going to the richest slice of Americans - the top tenth of 1 percent - grew significantly in 2003 while the share going to 99 percent of Americans fell, tax data released yesterday showed.

At the same time, the effective income tax rates paid by the top tenth of 1 percent fell sharply, declining at more than 10 times the rate reduction for middle-class taxpayers, the new report, by the Internal Revenue Service, showed.

Overall incomes rose by 2.7 percent in 2003, compared with the previous year, the I.R.S. said. A quarter of this increase went to the top tenth of 1 percent, the 129,000 taxpayers with reported incomes of $1.3 million or more, an analysis of the data showed.

Prof. Edward N. Wolff, a New York University economist who studies wealth, contended that the data could be tied to stock market gains in 2003 and a sharp rise in the pay of chief executives while most workers' pay was barely keeping up with inflation.

The top 10th of 1 percent paid almost 23.6 percent of their reported income in income taxes in 2003, down from just under 27 percent in 2002. That is a decline of 3.4 percentage points. For taxpayers in the bottom 80 percent, the effective tax rates fall by three-tenths of a percentage point or less.

Only for those Americans in the top 1 percent, the nearly 1.3 million taxpayers who made at least $327,000, did incomes increase significantly more in 2003 than the rate of inflation. And this increase was concentrated within the top tenth of 1 percent. The income of that group grew by 9.5 percent in 2003 over the previous year while the rest of the top 1 percent had a gain of 3.7 percent.

For the bottom 99 percent of taxpayers, income rose by slightly less than 2 percent, which was below the inflation rate of 2.3 percent.

The top 1 percent of taxpayers received almost 17.5 percent of all income and paid a third of all income taxes in 2003, the I.R.S. found. The top tenth of 1 percent received 7.57 percent of reported income and paid more than 15.3 percent of all income taxes.

The share of all reported income reported by the top 1 percent of taxpayers increased by 0.57 percentage point, compared with 2002. Nearly all of this increase - 0.47 percentage point - went to the top tenth of 1 percent.

The top tenth of 1 percent had more income in 2003 than the poorest third of taxpayers, a group with 330 times the number of people, analysis of the data showed. This is a sharp change from 1979, the earliest year in the I.R.S. report, when the total income of the poorest third of Americans exceeded that garnered by the top tenth of 1 percent by 2.5 to 1.

The I.R.S. data tend to understate incomes for those at the very top because of different rules for reporting wages and capital gains, meaning the actual disparity was larger than the official data show.

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Asked why he had not just killed himself when he saw debt mounting up, he explained that suicide barred him from heaven. He had a better chance of going to heaven if he murdered his family and then sought forgiveness. In fact, he fully expected not only to see all of them in heaven but that they'd have either forgiven him or would not know about the "tragedy that had happened," as he'd put it in his trial statement to the judge. He suspected they would all get along as before.

Simonson graduated from the University of Wisconsin law school in 1994 and served as legal counsel to Tommy Thompson while he was governor of Wisconsin from 1995 to 1999. Simonson then followed Thompson to Washington when the governor was appointed as head of HHS. Simonson’s bio at HHS states that “from 2001-2003, he was the HHS Deputy General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to the Secretary on public health preparedness matters. Prior to joining HHS, Simonson served as corporate secretary and counsel for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK).”

Congressman Henry Waxman has recently pointed to Simonson as an example where Bush has “repeatedly appointed inexperienced individuals with political connections to important government posts, including positions with key responsibilities for public health and safety.”

In addition to being very close to Thompson, Simonson has given generously to the Bush political machine. The website, Political Money Line’s contribution database shows that he contributed $3,000 to various Bush-Cheney committees in the 2004 election cycle and gave $250 to the RNC. (Which for a $134,000 a year job is more than chump change.)

The Washington Drug Letter published an article in its December 2004 issue in which Hauer was harshly critical of Simonson:

Speaking as part of a biodefense panel in Washington, D.C. Dec. 15, Jerome Hauer, formerly the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (ASPHEP) at HHS, said the $877 million contract awarded to VaxGen to produce a new anthrax vaccine was insufficient. He also insinuated poor policymaking has left the country vulnerable to terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction.

Hauer faulted the current management at the ASPHEP Office, including acting secretary Stewart Simonson, for not being better prepared to handle its duties. He called for the creation of a new federal office to coordinate U.S. biodefense activities.
. . .
“The decisions being made do not appear to have a sound basis,” said Hauer, currently senior vice president of government relations for consulting firm Fleishman-Hillard.

State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement Wednesday saying: "The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission."

Miller said later that the issue of regulating assisted reproduction, just as the state regulates adoption, is multifaceted. She said there was not enough time for the committee -- a panel of lawmakers that meets when the Indiana General Assembly is not in session to discuss possible legislation -- to work through all of the issues involved by its next meeting Oct. 20.

"To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate?

"I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.

In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature.

"The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.

"He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."

• Gene Armand Bridger, Elkhart, Ind. – Conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and mail fraud
  
• Cathryn Iline Clasen-Gage, Rockwall, Texas – Misprision of a felony;
  
• Thomas Kimble Collinsworth, Buckner, Ark. – Receipt of a stolen motor vehicle that had been transported in interstate commerce;
  
• Morris F. Cranmer, Jr., Little Rock, Ark – Making materially false statements to a federally-insured institution
  
• Rusty Lawrence Elliott, Mount Pleasant, Tenn. – Making counterfeit Federal Reserve notes
  
• Adam Wade Graham, Salt Lake City, Utah – Conspiracy to deliver 10 or more grams of LSD
  
• Rufus Edward Harris, Canon, Ga. – Possession and selling of tax-unpaid whiskey
  
• Jesse Ray Harvey, Scarbro, W.Va – Property damage by use of explosives and destruction of an energy facility [This is the kind of guy Bush probably hung out with during his drunk years...I mean his PREVIOUS drunk years]
  
• Larry Paul Lenius, Moorhead, Minn – Conspiracy to distribute cocaine
  
• Larry Lee Lopez, Bokeelia, Fla – Conspiracy to import marijuana
  
• Bobbie Archie Maxwell – Mailing a threatening letter [You mean like an anthrax letter? Just askin' is all...]
  
• Denise Bitters Mendelkow – Embezzlement by a bank employee
  
• Michael John Pozorski – Unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm
  
• Mark Lewis Weber, Sherwood, Ark. – Selling Quaalude tablets (one specification), selling, using, and possessing marijuana (three specifications)
  

a while ago I wrote a post about my cousin the navy pilot? We talked about the "liberal vs. patriot" theme?

Well, he got married this weekend and we went to his wedding. So did many Navy people. They're all very nice, some of their minds, however, are filled with nonsense.

My brother, the best man, was in the limo with the other groomsmen when he heard this gem from a pilot:

"Well, if Clinton had the balls to finish the job he started in Iraq, we wouldn't be in this mess now!"

My brother said something to the effect of "Clinton wasn't president during the gulf war."

"Sure was! Bush's father had to come in and clean up his mess."

Five weeks after Katrina, New Orleans is calling off the house- to-house search for bodies. Teams have pulled 964 corpses from storm- ravaged areas across southeastern Louisiana. Authorities admit more bodies are probably out there. They'll be handled on a case-by-case basis. The count is far short of the 10,000 dead once predicted by New Orleans mayor. As of today, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at just under 1,200.

Searchers and residents insist there are still plenty of dead to find in New Orleans. Once again, they say the Ninth Ward is being ignored because it is poor and black. Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: (voice- over): In pulverized portions of New Orleans's Ninth Ward, where water flows, instead of traffic, most homes bear the signs that search teams have been in to look for the living and the dead, but not in one area that spans several blocks. Here, house after house after house is unmarked.

EDWARD MENDEL, SEARCH VOLUNTEER: From here back, I estimate 100 to 150 homes that are still unsearched. And I do expect we will probably find some bodies.

MESERVE (on camera): Why do you think that?

MENDEL: You can smell them as we drive by.

MESERVE (voice-over): Federal officials say search teams came through every house and ran out of paint to mark them. But volunteer Ed Mendel believes they were not able to go where he can on what he calls swamp thing, a vehicle designed for hunting pigs and deer in the Everglades and modified for rescue work.

MENDEL: It will drive in six feet of water. After that, it starts floating like a boat.

MESERVE: Mendel is particularly concerned about the unmarked homes he passes with nice cars still parked in the driveway.

MENDEL: That's a pretty bad indicator that there may be a recovery involved there.

MESERVE: And then there are the places where houses used to be.

MENDEL: I know there's bodies under the debris piles in the sides of the road. You can -- you can tell from the byproducts that comes off of humans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay right there. I'm going to pull you up.

MESERVE: Mendel picks up Roz Kay and Adam Irvin, a brother and sister who want to take a look at their family home.

ADAM IRVIN, NEW ORLEANS EVACUEE: I don't think I will be doing any more smoking or barbecuing back here, not at this house.

An interim legislative committee is considering a bill that would prohibit gays, lesbians and single people in Indiana from using medical science to assist them in having a child.

The bill defines assisted reproduction as causing pregnancy by means other than sexual intercourse, including intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection.

It then requires "intended parents" to be married to each other and says an unmarried person may not be an intended parent.

A doctor cannot begin an assisted reproduction technology procedure that may result in a child being born until the intended parents have received a certificate of satisfactory completion of an assessment required under the bill. The assessment is similar to what is required for infant adoption and would be conducted by a licensed child placing agency in Indiana.

The required information includes the fertility history of the parents, education and employment information, personality descriptions, verification of marital status, child care plans and criminal history checks. Description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents also is required, including participation in faith-based or church activities.

parents seeking a pregnancy through medical means would also have to produce financial records, documentation of previous marriages “and an assessment of the impact of the prior marriage on the intended parents' relationship,” “the intended parents' child rearing expectations and values,” criminal records, child care plans, and a whole slew of other information, which, when taken as a whole, seems to indicate that Indiana doesn’t believe that anyone but straight, rich, Christian families with no past divorces and a stay-at-home mom are deserving of medical assisted procreation.

elina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.”

She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.”

Then they got down to his poster.

“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

“I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”

A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that.”

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period.

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.”

Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, “We ertainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.”

Health officials have warned for years that a virulent bird flu could kill millions of people, but few in Washington have seemed alarmed. After a closed-door briefing last week, however, fear of an outbreak swept official Washington, which was still reeling from the poor response to Hurricane Katrina.

The day after the briefing, led by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and other senior government health officials, the Senate squeezed $3.9 billion for flu preparations into a Pentagon appropriations bill.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats plan to introduce another bill calling for the creation of a flu pandemic coordinator within the White House and a federal buy-back program for unused flu vaccines, among other measures, according to a draft of the bill. Its authors include the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Thirty-two Democratic senators sent a letter to President Bush on Tuesday expressing "grave concern that the nation is dangerously unprepared for the serious threat of avian influenza."

Mr. Bush spent a considerable part of his news conference Tuesday talking about the risks of an outbreak and the measures the administration is considering to combat one, including whether to use the military to enforce quarantines.

"I take this issue very seriously," he said. "The people of the country ought to rest assured that we're doing everything we can."

But after the administration's widely criticized response to Hurricane Katrina, such assurances are no longer enough, several Democratic senators said.

" 'Trust us' is not something the administration can say after Katrina," Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said in an interview. "I don't think Congress is in a mood to trust. We want plans. We want specific goals and procedures we're going to take to prepare for this."

Under Democrats as well as Republicans, Washington has looked the other way as local health departments have lost funding and crucial hospital "surge capacity" has been eroded in the wake of the HMO revolution. The government has also refused to address the growing lack of new vaccines and antibiotics caused by the pharmaceutical industry's withdrawal from sectors it considers to be insufficiently profitable; moreover, revolutionary breakthroughs in vaccine design and manufacturing technology have languished because of lack of sponsorship by either the government or the drug industry.

Certainly the leading influenza researchers, from the first H5N1 outbreak in 1997, have been doing their utmost to alert medical colleagues worldwide to the urgent threat of avian flu, as well as outlining the immediate steps the Bush Administration and other governments needed to take. As befitted his position as "pope" of influenza researchers, Robert Webster of Saint Jude Hospital in Memphis tirelessly preached the same sermon: "If a pandemic happened today, hospital facilities would be overwhelmed and understaffed because many medical personnel would be afflicted with the disease. Vaccine production would be slow because many drug-company employees would also be victims. Critical community services would be immobilized. Reserves of existing vaccines, M2 inhibitors and NA inhibitors would be quickly depleted, leaving most people vulnerable to infection."

Webster stressed the particular urgency of increasing the production and stockpiling of the NA inhibitor Tamiflu. Because this strategic antiviral was "in woefully short supply"--it is made by Roche at a single factory in Switzerland--Webster and his colleagues underlined the need for resolute government action: "The cost of making the drugs, as opposed to the price the pharmaceutical companies charge consumers, would not be exorbitant. Such expenditure by governments would be a very worthwhile investment in the defense against this debilitating and often deadly virus." Failure to act would mean intense competition over the small inventory of life-saving Tamiflu. "Who should get these drugs?" Webster asked. "Healthcare workers and those in essential services, obviously, but who would identify those? There would not be nearly enough for those who needed them in the developed world, let alone the rest of the world's population."

Webster wasn't calling for miracles, just prudent action to insure an adequate antiviral stockpile. But for almost three years he and other influenza experts were ignored, as were those who argued more generally that "the best way to manage bioterrorism is to improve the management of existing public-health threats." The Bush Administration instead fast-tracked vaccination programs for smallpox and anthrax, based on fanciful scenarios that might have embarrassed Tom Clancy. In reality, the biodefense boom was designed to build support for the invasion of Iraq by sowing the fear that Saddam Hussein might use germ warfare against the United States. In any event, Washington spent $1 billion expanding a smallpox vaccine stockpile that some experts claim was already quite sufficient. Hundreds of thousands of GIs were forced to undergo the vaccinations, but front-line health workers--the second tier of the smallpox campaign--largely boycotted the Administration's attempts to cajole "voluntary" participation.

In spite of this fiasco and millions of doses of unused vaccine, the Administration pressed ahead with the development of second-generation smallpox and anthrax vaccines, as well as vaccines for such exotic plagues as ebola fever; it continued to reject the "all hazards" strategy recommended by most public-health experts in favor of a so-called "siloed approach" that focused on a short list of possible bioweapons. In testimony before the House of Representatives, Tommy Thompson explained that while "private investment should drive the development of most medical products," only the government was in a position to develop those products that "everyone hopes...will never be needed" as a protection against "rare yet deadly threats." The government, in other words, was willing to spend lots of money on biological threats that were unlikely or farfetched but not on antivirals or new antibiotics for the diseases that were actually most menacing, like avian flu.

On its front page Tuesday, The New York Times published a photo of new U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers going over a briefing paper with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch “in August 2001,” the caption reads.

USA Today and the Boston Globe carried the photo labeled simply “2001,” but many other newspapers ran the picture in print or on the Web with a more precise date: Aug. 6, 2001.

Does that date sound familiar? Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about "playing with fire". You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.

Lawyer Patrick Murphy and five other veterans of the Iraq war are asking questions about President Bush's policies in Iraq as part of their broader Democratic campaigns to win congressional seats in next year's elections.

Given their experience in Iraq, the six Democrats in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia say they are eminently qualified to pose the tough questions. Their reservations mirror public opinion, with an increasing number of Americans expressing concern about the mission and favoring a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed only 37 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, with 62 percent disapproving.

This summer, Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran, nearly defeated Republican Jean Schmidt in a special election in an Ohio district considered a GOP stronghold. Hackett focused on his wartime experience and his opposition to Bush's policies.

On Monday, with support from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other party leaders, Hackett decided to seek a higher office, the Senate seat now held by two-term Republican Mike DeWine, said spokesman David Woodruff.

"Some guys don't think it's time to question our government, but the fact is I love my country," said Murphy, 31, who fought with the 82nd Airborne Division. "We need to have an exit strategy now."

Under Miers' leadership, the firm represented

the head of a "foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme." The law-firm admitted that it "knew in March 1998 that $ 8 million in [the company's] losses hadn't been reported to investors" but didn't tell regulators.

This wasn't an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers' lawfirm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers' firm helped a now-convicted con man "defraud investors and allowed the firm's [bank] account to be used as a 'conduit.'" The suit said "money from investors that went into the firm's trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his 'expensive toys.'"

If you think Miers wasn't involved in any of this -- think again. Miers wasn't just any old lawyer at the firm. She was the Managing Partner -- the big cheese. True, she could claim she had no idea this was going on. But that would be as laughable/pathetic/transparent as the Enron executives who made the same ones after they ripped off investors.

Companies outside the three states most affected by Hurricane Katrina have received more than 90 percent of the money from prime federal contracts for recovery and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, according to an analysis of available government data.

The analysis by The Washington Post takes into account only the first wave of federal contracts, those that had been entered in detail into government databases as of yesterday. Together they are valued at more than $2 billion. Congress has allocated more than $60 billion for the recovery effort, and the ultimate total is expected to rise far higher.

But already the trend toward out-of-state firms is clear, despite pledges by administration officials that federal funds for Katrina relief will become an engine of local economic redevelopment. Among the contracts analyzed, 3.8 percent of the money went to companies that listed an Alabama address, 2.8 percent to firms in Louisiana and just 1.8 percent went for Mississippi contractors. Taken together, that amounts to less than $200 million.

The lack of contracts for firms in the devastated area has angered local political and business leaders who say they fear that even with the massive commitment of federal money, the region's recovery will be stymied if funds primarily flow into the pockets of large, out-of-state corporations. It has also raised the ire of small-business advocates, who say the government has tilted the playing field against the companies that most desperately need the work.

"The large federal agencies know the large, national corporations -- people who have access. The smaller, local companies do not have that access," said Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.). "So the large corporate players are getting the contracts. And the small, local ones that need to put people back to work are at a disadvantage."

A Texas grand jury indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) yesterday for alleged involvement in money laundering related to the 2002 Texas election, raising new and more serious allegations than the conspiracy charge lodged against the former House majority leader last week.

The surprising new indictments followed by a matter of hours a motion by DeLay's Texas legal defense team to quash last week's charge on grounds that the Texas prosecutor in charge of the case lacked authority to bring it. The lawyers alleged that the crime of conspiracy was not covered by the state election law at the time of the alleged violation.

Later on Monday, a different grand jury -- which had no prior involvement in the case -- brought the new charges, which roughly match allegations made against two of DeLay's political associates one year ago.

DeLay, who had earlier accused the prosecutor -- Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle -- of partisan zealotry, promptly issued a statement accusing him of stooping "to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse." DeLay said Earle "is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a 'do-over' since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate." The congressman added: "This is an abomination of justice."

One count of the new indictment accuses DeLay of conspiracy to commit money laundering. It says he agreed with one or more associates to launder $190,000 in corporate contributions through an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington, allowing the funds to be passed illegally into the election campaigns of Republican candidates in Texas. Texas law prohibits the use of corporate money in political campaigns.

[snip]

The other new count alleges that DeLay and the two associates "did knowingly, conduct, supervise, and facilitate" the transfer of the $190,000 to Washington and back to Texas in violation of the state's money-laundering statutes. Last week's conspiracy charge, in contrast, involved the state's election law, and it was that linkage that DeLay's attorneys challenged

White House counsel Harriet Miers has never served as a judge before, and while this career "hard-nosed lawyer" (as she is invariably described) from Texas certainly deserves some kudos for a trailblazing career as a female lawyer, she's not a legal scholar, either.

But she does know better than just about anyone else where the bodies are buried (relax, it's a just a metaphor...we hope) in President Bush's National Guard scandal. In fact, Bush's Texas gubenatorial campaign in 1998 (when he was starting to eye the White House) actually paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal pre-emptive probe of the potential scandal. Not long after, a since-settled lawsuit alleged that the Texas Lottery Commission -- while chaired by Bush appointee Miers -- played a role in a multi-million dollar cover-up of the scandal.

Whatever Miers knows about the president's troubled past, she may soon be keeping that information underneath the black robe of an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Miers, who not long ago succeeded Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez as White House counsel, is now Bush's pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:

Miers is a skilled lawyer -- mainly on behalf of big business, including Microsoft and Disney -- and the first woman elected Texas State Bar President. But her main qualifications for the highest court in the land appear to be the same as most of Bush's recent appointments: She is unfailingly loyal to George W. Bush.

Here's how Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, on July 17, 2000, described her initial foray in the morass of Bush's Guard service:

The Bushies' concern began while he was running for a second term as governor. A hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named Harriet Miers was retained to investigate the issue; state records show Miers was paid $19,000 by the Bush gubernatorial campaign. She and other aides quickly identified a problem--rumors that Bush had help from his father in getting into the National Guard back in 1968. Ben Barnes, a prominent Texas Democrat and a former speaker of the House in the state legislature, told friends he used his influence to get George W a guard slot after receiving a request from Houston oilman Sid Adger. Barnes said Adger told him he was calling on behalf of the elder George Bush, then a Texas congressman. Both Bushes deny seeking any help from Barnes or Adger, who has since passed away. Concerned that Barnes might go public with his allegations, the Bush campaign sent Don Evans, a friend of W's, to hear Barnes's story. Barnes acknowledged that he hadn't actually spoken directly to Bush Sr. and had no documents to back up his story. As the Bush campaign saw it, that let both Bushes off the hook. And the National Guard question seemed under control.

So far, intriguing...but it gets better, and more complicated. At roughly the same time all of this was happening, Miers was also the Bush-named chair of the scandal-plagued Texas Lottery Commission. The biggest issue before Miers and the commission was whether to retain lottery operator Gtech, which had been implicated in a bribery scandal. Gtech's main lobbyist in Texas in the mid-1990s? None other than that same Ben Barnes who had the goods on how Bush got into the Guard and avoided Vietnam.

In 1997, Barnes was abruptly fired by Gtech. That's a bad thing, right? Well, on the other hand, they also gave him a $23 million severance payment. A short time later, Gtech -- despite the ongoing scandals -- got its contract renewed over two lower bidders. A former executive director thought the whole thing stunk:

The suit involving Barnes was brought by former Texas lottery director Lawrence Littwin, who was fired by the state lottery commission, headed by Bush appointee Harriet Miers, in October 1997 after five months on the job. It contends that Gtech Corp., which runs the state lottery and until February 1997 employed Barnes as a lobbyist for more than $3 million a year, was responsible for Littwin's dismissal.

Littwin's lawyers have suggested in court filings that Gtech was allowed to keep the lottery contract, which Littwin wanted to open up to competitive bidding, in return for Barnes's silence about Bush's entry into the Guard.

Barnes and his lawyers have denounced this "favor-repaid" theory in court pleadings as "preposterous . . . fantastic [and] fanciful." Littwin was fired after ordering a review of the campaign finance reports of various Texas politicians for any links to Gtech or other lottery contractors. But Littwin wasn't hired, or fired, until months after Barnes had severed his relationship with Gtech.

Littwin reportedly settled with Gtech for $300,000. This all could be interesting fodder for a Miers confirmation hearing this fall. But Bush apparently went for Miers' top two credentials:

Loyalty...and a little inside information.

explosive civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed".

The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.

In return for his free holiday, DeLay - who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds - allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.

Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

"Evidence is sought from her about that meeting and her involvement in the alleged deception and violation of US criminal laws."

KUAM News broke the story in 2001 about how the Superior Court of Guam entered into a contract with California-based attorney Howard Hills, who in turn hired Abramoff to assist in the lower court's efforts to prevent the passage of House Resolution 521. That legislation would amend Guam's Organic Act by giving the local Supreme Court administrative control over the entire Judiciary.

The lower court paid more than $400,000 to Hills, who turned the money over to Abramoff.

Just last month, the Los Angeles Times reported a federal grand jury on Guam was at one time investigating Abramoff for his lobbying activities here including his alleged secret arrangement with Superior Court officials for lobbying work. During KUAM News interviews in 2002 then-Superior Court administrator Tony Sanchez initially denied claims of hiring a lobbyist, only after KUAM presented Sanchez copies of more than thirty checks worth $9,000 each written to Hills and a lobbyist registration form clearly showing Abramoff had been hired to lobby public policies related to issues of judicial and legal structures for states and possessions, did Sanchez fess up.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney's Office on Guam had refuted the allegations made in the L.A. Times article, saying Black was not demoted.

The office also alleges the newspaper article was filled with errors. As for today's New York Times article, a former Black colleague in Guam was quoted as saying, "Whatever the motivation in replacing Fred, his demotion meant that the investigation of Abramoff died."

followers of the Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan indictment story may remember that Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, whom Abramoff and Kidan bought SunCruz casinos from for $147 million back in September 2000, was murdered in a "gangland-style" hit in February 2001. This was about 2 months after Boulis stabbed Kidan with a pen, and Kidan claimed Boulis was trying to kill him. (The Sun-Sentinel has a useful timeline of Boulis' life here.) Last Tuesday, three men were charged with the murder of Boulis, and on Wednesday a fourth person was indicted whom the three tried to hire to kill Boulis. What's particularly noteworthy is that two of the three charged were on the SunCruz payroll. Anthony "little Tony" Ferrari's company was paid $95,000 for security services, and Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello's company was paid $145,000 for catering and beverage services.