A janitor found what appeared to be a human fetus in a Dallas middle school locker Thursday afternoon, but upon examination the contents turned out to be rotten oranges, according to authorities.

Initially, police were unsure what was in the trash bag, and they turned the contents over to the Dallas County Medical Examiner.

The Medical Examiner made the determination Friday that the sample was not a fetus, but rotten fruit.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, idiocy

As long as we have a reasonable chance of success in Iraq, then I'm going to say it's worth it for us to stay...The surge is working. So you might say that, in Iraq, we've got the enemy on the run.

A deadly truck bombing in a busy market in northern Iraq has killed 105 people and injured 240, police say.
The morning blast destroyed the market in the small town of Amirli, south of Kirkuk, killing many people instantly and trapping dozens among the rubble.

It was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since April, correspondents say.

It came as 29 people were killed in separate violence, including 22 people who died overnight in Diyala province when a suicide bomber hit a cafe.

Labels: delusion, Iraq, Joe Lieberman

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They're not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I'm sure we will soon find out.

Labels: Fred Thompson, hypocrisy

Labels: idiocy, jingoism, wingnuttia

Labels: real journalism

The U.S. command in Baghdad this week ballyhooed the killing of a key al Qaeda leader but later admitted that the military had declared him dead a year ago.

A military spokesman acknowledged the mistake after it was called to his attention by The Examiner. He said public affairs officers will be more careful in announcing significant kills.

[snip]

When The Examiner pointed out that Uthman's death had been announced twice, a command spokesman said in an e-mail, "You are correct that we did previously announce that we killed him. This was a roll up to show an overall effort against [al Qaeda in Iraq]. We can probably do a better job on saying 'previously announced' when we do long-term roll ups to show an overall effort."

Labels: Administration B.S.

Labels: bloggers

Labels: corruption, hypocrisy, Rudy Giuliani

Labels: hypocrisy, idiocy

Labels: George W. Bush, hypocrisy

Labels: Maureen Dowd

“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

That—on this eve of the 4th of July—is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.

“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.

[snip]

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

[snip]

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.

[snip]

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

Labels: Democrats, Keith Olbermann, Nancy Pelosi, rant, spinelessness

Click To Play

Labels: Bush Administration, corruption, Scooter Libby, Tpny Snow

Labels: bloggers, Bush Administration, corruption, Scooter Libby

Labels: bloggers

The barrier was part of more than 15 miles of border fence built in 2000, stretching from the town of Columbus to an onion farm and cattle ranch.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the vertical metal tubes were sunk into the ground and filled with cement along what officials firmly believed was the border. But a routine aerial survey in March revealed that the barrier protrudes into Mexico by 1 to 6 feet.

James Johnson, whose onion farm is in the disputed area, said he thinks his forefathers may have started the confusion in the 19th century by placing a barbed-wire fence south of the border. No one discovered their error, and crews erecting the barrier may have used that fence as a guideline.

"It was a mistake made in the 1800s," Johnson said. "It is very difficult to make a straight line between two points in rugged and mountainous areas that are about two miles apart."

The Mexican government was notified and did what any landowner would do: They sent a note politely insisting that Mexico get its land back.

"Our country will continue insisting for the removal (of the fence) to be done as quickly as possible," the Foreign Relations Department said in a diplomatic missive to Washington.

When the barrier was built in 2000, the project was believed to cost about $500,000 a mile. Estimates to uproot and replace it range from $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

Michael Friel, the spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said the barrier was "built on what was known to be the international boundary at the time." He acknowledged the method used was "less precise than it is today."

The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint Mexican-American group that administers the 2,000-mile border, said the border has never changed and is marked every few miles by tall concrete or metal markers.

Sally Spener, a commission spokeswoman in El Paso, said the agency is generally consulted for construction projects to ensure that treaties are followed. The commission is working with the Department of Homeland Security "to develop a standardized protocol" for building fences and barriers.

"We just want to make sure those things are clear now," Spener said.

Labels: idiocy

Labels: Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, spinelessness

The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.

The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.

"From my viewpoint, the president has stepped in to short circuit the rule of law and the system of justice in our country. In so doing, he has acknowledged Mr. Libby's guilt for, among other things, obstruction of justice, which by definition is covering up for somebody in a crime. By commuting his sentence, he has brought himself and his office into reasonable suspicion of participation in an obstruction of justice. The commutation of (Libby's) sentence in and of itself is participation in obstruction of justice."

Labels: Nancy Pelosi, Scooter Libby, spinelessness

Now, as a lawyer and a legislator for most of my very long life, I have a particular reverence for our legal system. It protects the innocent, it punishes the guilty, it defends the powerless, it guards freedom, it summons the noblest instincts of the human spirit.

The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door. It challenges abuse of authority. It's a shame "Darkness at Noon" is forgotten, or "The Gulag Archipelago," but there is such a thing lurking out in the world called abuse of authority, and the rule of law is what protects you from it. And so it's a matter of considerable concern to me when our legal system is assaulted by our nation's chief law enforcement officer, the only person obliged to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

[snip]

What concerns me most deeply in sorting out the many arguments here is the significance of the oath. When the president performs the public act of asking God to witness his promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that is not trivial. Whether it's a civil suit or before the grand jury, the significance of the oath cannot and must not be cheapened if our proud boast that we're a government of laws and not of men is to mean anything. I submit it means everything. It was purchased for us by the lives of countless patriots, some of whom are resting across the Potomac River in a cemetery, but all of whom put the nation's good ahead of their own.

Labels: corruption, George W. Bush, Scooter Libby

Labels: bloggers

THE RULES
1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Labels: bloggers, memes

Labels: corporatism, greed, outsourcing

A statement from Wall Street Journal reporters:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal's long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That's why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day's news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications' integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

For more information, contact:
E.S. Browning (201) 491-8653
or Steve Yount (609) 220-5951

Labels: corporatism

On Christmas Eve 1994, Fred D. Thompson Jr. was out of a job. A 34-year-old self-described late bloomer, Mr. Thompson had graduated from law school just two years before and practiced law only for his father, Fred D. Thompson Sr., who was about to be sworn in as a senator from Tennessee.

“I was out on the street, knocking on doors,” recalled the younger Mr. Thompson, who is known as Tony.

But attending Brentwood Methodist Church in Nashville that night, Tony Thompson ran into the departing incumbent senator, Harlan Mathews, a Democrat. Mr. Mathews invited Tony to join him in a Nashville lobbying business, a job that would let him capitalize on his father’s new position.

“I don’t just believe in the tooth fairy,” Mr. Mathews said. “A lot of people were seeking access — not necessarily unfair access, but seeking access — so Tony was employed in a number of areas where his father had made a reputation or his father’s advice or whatever was going to be valuable one of these days.”

Now the elder Mr. Thompson, who also worked as a lobbyist before and after his eight years in the Senate, is aiming for an even higher post, preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination. In the folksy drawl that built him a lucrative sideline as a screen actor, Mr. Thompson is presenting himself as a reform-minded outsider taking on Washington, just as he did when he campaigned for the Senate as “Ol’ Fred” the “real live country lawyer,” and cruised Tennessee in a rented red pickup truck.

But the lobbying work that Tony Thompson and another son, Daniel, did after their father won his Senate seat suggests how far the family has traveled from Fred Thompson’s early career. Not only has he parlayed his own political background into a lobbying business — a fact his opponents have seized on to challenge his outsider image — but his sons have also made lobbying a family affair.

Labels: Fred Thompson, greed

A New Mexico lawyer who pushed to oust U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pressing for tougher voter identification laws.

Iglesias, who was one of nine U.S. attorneys the administration fired last year, said that Albuquerque lawyer Patrick Rogers pressured him several times to bring voter fraud prosecutions where little evidence existed.

Iglesias believes that he was fired in part because he failed to pursue such cases.

He described Rogers, who declined to discuss the exchanges, as ``obsessed . . . convinced there was massive voter fraud going on in this state, and I needed to do something to stop it.''

Iglesias said he only recently learned of Rogers' involvement as secretary of the nonprofit American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund -- an activist group that defended tighter voter identification requirements in court against charges that they were designed to hamper voting by poor minorities.

Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and a candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connected GOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister group played a significant role in the party's effort to retain control of Congress in the 2006 election.

That strategy, which presidential advisor Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.

THREE FRONTS

McClatchy has found that this election strategy was active on at least three fronts:

• Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and the Lawyers Association were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.

• The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.

• The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.

Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.

Labels: disenfranchisement, Prosecutorgate

A House Appropriations Committee report accompanying legislation funding the Department of the Interior shows that Bush requested 93 of the 321 earmarks in the bill. A panel report for the financial services and general government spending bill showed that Bush requested 17 special projects worth $947 million, more than any single member of Congress.

Senate appropriators have identified more than 350 earmarks in the military construction spending bill requested by the president.

Lawmakers say these lists of earmarks are inconsistent with Bush’s tough talk on earmarks this year.

During a Rose Garden speech in January, Bush called for the number of earmarks to be cut in half.

“Earmarks often divert precious funds from vital priorities like national defense,” Bush said. “And each year they cost the taxpayers billions of dollars.

“Congress needs to adopt real reform that requires full disclosure of the sponsors, the costs, the recipients, and the justifications for every earmark,” he said. “And Congress needs to cut the number and cost of earmarks next year at least in half.”

When Bush recently nominated former House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) as head of the White House budget office, he reminded Congress that he would veto bills with excessive levels of spending and curb the number of earmarks.

“It would appear the administration likes earmarks from their perspective,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (Ala.), a Republican member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Inconsistent would be a fair way to say it,” Aderholt said when asked if Bush was being hypocritical for simultaneously requesting and criticizing earmarks.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations interior subcommittee, shares Aderholt’s view.

“Hypocrisy? No, but one might call that duplicity,” said Craig.

Labels: George W. Bush, narcissism, spending

At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?

[snip]

And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker," said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. "This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

Labels: George W. Bush, narcissism

A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document.

"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.

U.S. officials have kept the information secret, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that the United States did not have "have any specific credible evidence that there's an attack focused on the United States at this point."

As ABCNews.com reported, U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft."

The warnings apparently never reached officials in Scotland, who said this weekend they had received "no advance intelligence" that Glasgow might be a target.

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff declined to comment specifically on on the report today, but said "everything that we get is shared virtually instantaneously with our counterparts in Britain and vice versa."

Unlike the United States, officials in Germany have publicly warned that the country could face a major attack this summer, also comparing the situation to the pre-9/11 summer of 2001.

Labels: Administration B.S., domestic terrorism