"I was not a witness to the incident requiring the evacuation and have no first hand or personal knowledge regarding the incident."

The second says: "I was not injured as a result of the incident or evacuation."

Meanwhile, staffers who have survived a series of draconian layoffs report that snakes and mice have slipped into the newspaper’s building because the owners can’t afford exterminators to combat the infestations.

“There was a three-foot-long black snake in the main conference room the other day,” said reporter Julia Duin. “We have snakes in the newsroom.”

Labels: humor, Propaganda, Washington Times

Labels: grumpy old men, hypocrisy, hysteria, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, terrorism

But at about 12:30 p.m. on Monday, more certain that Mr. Shahzad was the suspected terrorist, investigators asked the Department of Homeland Security to put him on the no-fly list. Three minutes later, the department sent airlines, including Emirates, an electronic notification that they should check the no-fly list for an update. At about 4:30 p.m., more information was added to the list, including Mr. Shahzad’s passport number, officials said.

Workers at Emirates evidently did not check the list, because at 6:30 p.m., Mr. Shahzad called the airline and booked a flight to Pakistan via Dubai, officials said. At 7:35 p.m., he arrived at the airport, paid cash for his ticket and was given a boarding pass.

Airlines are not required to report cash purchases, a Homeland Security official said. Emirates actually did report Mr. Shahzad’s purchase to the Transportation Security Administration — but only hours later, when he was already in custody, the official said.

Mr. Shahzad had evaded the surveillance effort and bought his ticket seven hours after his name went on the no-fly list. But the system gives security officials one more chance to stop a dangerous passenger.

Labels: civil liberties, terrorism

A judge in Detroit ordered their release, despite prosecutors' objections, imposing strict conditions including electronic tagging.

The suspects - eight men and one woman - were detained in a series of FBI raids across the Mid-West in March.

They are said to belong to a Michigan-based militia called the Hutaree.

It is alleged they planned to kill a police officer in Michigan and then stage a second attack on the funeral, using landmines and roadside bombs.

Defence lawyers say it is just a case of hate-filled, irrational speech.

Labels: American terrorists, hypocrisy

About 10:30 Monday morning, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), an ardent foe of big government, posted a blog item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "I strongly believe BP is spread too thin," he wrote.

The poor dears. He thinks it would be a better arrangement if "federal and state officials" would do the dirty work of "protecting and cleaning up the coast" instead of BP.

About an hour later came word from the Pentagon that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi -- all three governed by men who once considered themselves limited-government conservatives -- want the federal government to mobilize (at taxpayer expense, of course) more National Guard troops to aid in the cleanup.

That followed an earlier request by the small-government governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (R), who issued a statement saying he had called the Obama administration "to outline the state's needs" and to ask "for additional resources." Said Jindal: "These resources are critical."

About the time that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi were asking for more federal help, three small-government Republican senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama and George LeMieux of Florida, were flying over the gulf on a U.S. government aircraft with small-government Republican Rep. Jeff Miller (Fla.).

"We're here to send the message that we're going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this," Sessions said after the flight, "to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they're made whole."

Sessions, probably the Senate's most ardent supporter of tort reform, found himself extolling the virtues of litigation -- against BP. "They're not limited in liability on damage, so if you've suffered a damage, they are the responsible party," said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns.

All these limited-government guys expressed their belief that the British oil company would ultimately cover all the costs of the cleanup. "They're not too big to fail," Sessions said. "If they can't pay and they've given it everything they've got, then they should cease to exist." But if you believe that the federal government won't be on the hook for a major part of the costs, perhaps you'd like to buy a leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

It may have taken an ecological disaster, but the gulf-state conservatives' newfound respect for the powers and purse of the federal government is a timely reminder for them. As conservatives in Washington complain about excessive federal spending, the ones who would suffer the most from spending cuts are their own constituents.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, hypocrisy, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, corporatism, greed

The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It‘s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.

[snip]

Accidents have occurred before in which oil has gushed from damaged wells, he said. But he knew of none in water so deep.

And "everything is bigger and more difficult the deeper you go," said Andy Bowen, a research specialist who works with undersea robotics at the Woods Hole center. "Fighting gravity is tough. It increases loads. You need bigger winches, bigger cables, bigger ships."

An analogy, he said, is the difference between construction work on the ground versus at the top of a mile-high skyscraper.

To BP falls the daunting task of trying to stop the gush before it becomes the most damaging spill in American history. If the flow is not stopped, it will exhaust the natural reservoir of oil beneath the sea floor, experts say. Many months, at least, could pass.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, FUBAR

The Obama administration said on Monday that it remains "premature" to rule out including additional offshore drilling as part of comprehensive energy legislation, even as Senate Democrats warn that such a provision would make the bill "dead on arrival."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the president will determine whether to stay with or abandon his call for additional drilling off various parts of the coast once he gets the findings of an investigation into the massive oil spill in the Gulf.

"The president was specific in ordering [Department of Interior] Secretary [Ken] Salazar to look at all the possible aspects of what could go wrong in this instance [and] to report back to him in that thirty day period," Gibbs said in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "This is an administration that is going to take any information we can get from that and have that dictate our decision making going forward. I think it would be premature to get too far ahead of where Secretary Salazar's investigation is."

While the White House declines to fully abandon offshore drilling in light of the current spill, others in the Senate are ramping up their opposition. On Friday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.) said any energy bill that included such exploration in its legislative language would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate. His office went even further, speculating that larger energy bill itself was now all but impassable in the Senate.

"It's dead on arrival if it contains oil drilling," an aide said, "if it doesn't have offshore drilling then you don't have Republicans."

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Barack Obama, oil, spinelessness

No motive had been determined in the attempted bombing, and federal and local officials said there was no evidence to support a claim of responsibility issued Sunday by a Pakistani Taliban group that has a reputation for making far-fetched attempts to take credit for attacks.

Labels: bloggers

Alabama Attorney General Troy King said tonight that he has told representatives of BP Plc. that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians.

The agreements, King said, essentially require that people give up the right to sue in exchange for payment of up to $5,000.

King said BP's efforts were particularly strong in Bayou La Batre.

The attorney general said he is prohibited from giving legal advice to private citizens, but added that "people need to proceed with caution and understand the ramifications before signing something like that.

"They should seek appropriate counsel to make sure their rights are protected," King said.

By the end of Sunday, BP aimed to sign up 500 fishing boats in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to deploy boom.

BP had distributed a contract to fishermen it was hiring that waived their right to sue BP and required confidentiality and other items, sparking protests in Louisiana and elsewhere.

Darren Beaudo, a spokesman for BP, said the waiver requirement had been stripped out, and that ones already signed would not be enforced.

"BP will not enforce any waivers that have been signed in connection with this activity," he wrote in an e-mail.

But King said late Sunday that he was still concerned that people would lose their right to sue by accepting settlements from BP of up to $5,000, as envisioned by the claim process BP has set up. He said BP's push was particularly strong in Bayou La Batre.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, British Petroleum, corporatism, greed, scumbaggery

If you thought my sons, especially 11-year-old Gabriel, were excited before, the confirmation ratcheted up the tension. In fact, among local baseball lovers of a certain age — a very wide range as far as I can tell — Mr. Bay’s move here was more thrilling than when Timothy F. Geithner, also a Larchmont resident, was selected by President Obama to become his Treasury secretary.

Gabriel and his friends went into high gear. Every time they passed Mr. Bay’s house, they sought a glimpse of him. Once there was a near miss: they saw him driving off. A friend of Gabriel’s suggested bringing brownies as a welcome present. They also wondered whether Mr. Bay’s two children would play in Little League, and they were not discouraged when they found out he has two little girls. Maybe he would come to one of their games and give hitting tips!

The possibilities seemed endless.

And as time passed, the buzz grew. At dinner parties, adults argued about which house was Mr. Bay’s. (“It’s the green one near the library.” “No, it’s the one with all the windows.”) The village seemed more speckled with Mets shirts than in years past.

For his part, Gabriel decided to write Mr. Bay a letter and wrap it around a baseball. I quote in part: “I am a huge Mets fan (like die-hard even in the years when they weren’t so good!) Here is a baseball. Can you sign it and return it to your mailbox this week between 2:25 and 3:15 (so I can retrieve it).” He was going to put it in the Bays’ mailbox, but it was locked, so he stuck the letter and baseball between boards in their white picket fence.

I found something sweetly old-fashioned about all this. Gabriel wrote the note without any parental interference. He and his friends could walk past the home of a player on their favorite team, and it wasn’t a fancy mansion behind security gates. With the various scandals and multimillion-dollar salaries that sour many people on professional sports, it was redeeming to see their enthusiasm and hopes.

Gabriel went back to Mr. Bay’s house the day after he left the ball in the fence. It was gone. I assumed it had either been taken by someone else or simply tossed out.

The following day he checked again. This time he was wearing his Mets T-shirt with “Bay” on the back and No. 44. Again, no ball. I was rapidly losing interest and figured this would be another one of life’s sad little lessons.

On the third day he and a friend went by — and the ball was in the fence! Signed! Gabriel was overjoyed, and his friend immediately asked if he had another paper and pen, to leave his own message.

“This is the greatest day of my life,” Gabriel told my husband.

I’m sorry, Mr. Bay, if your fence will now look like the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where people leave notes to God. But thank you for answering a little boy’s prayers. And welcome to the neighborhood.

Labels: New York Mets, sheer awesomeness

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

Labels: breaking news, CNN, hack journalism

In addition to having taken a break recently in order to work on his book, it is no secret that he has been grappling with PTSD, brought on from the hellish years he worked in Baghdad. I was told that, unfortunately, when he needed more time off in order to deal with things, his request was denied. So he will not be returning.

While it is a huge loss for us (and for CNN) I am extremely relieved that he chose to take care of his own needs first. And while I sincerely hope that he will return to US television someday on another network, it is far more important that he gets the care he needs.

His work for CNN over the past four years has been an astonishing and brutally honest look at the causes and results of war. Not easy subject matter to watch… but he made us care. His urgency and passion burst through our television sets and made us pay attention, made us want to understand.

Personally, I will never forget the first time I heard him, speaking with Anderson Cooper via telephone to discuss Saddam Hussein’s trial as well as an article he had just written about an embed he had been on in Ramadi. It wasn’t even five minutes of airtime, but it was riveting. When it was announced that he would be joining CNN, I was delighted, because it meant we would be getting even more insight from him. And that we did — he worked like a stevedore, appearing on CNN at all hours of the day and night to make sure that we knew what was really going on in Iraq. As a viewer, you could tell that it mattered to him that the American people understood the issues in this far-away war of ours. He didn’t give a damn about the politics; he cared about what the grunts were going through and what the innocent Iraqi citizens (whose blood, he had to keep reminding us, is no less valuable than ours) were suffering.

His work was always insightful and informative, and on the too-rare occasions when he was able to do longer-format programs for them, it was like being in a classroom. He knew the material cold and presented it in a way that made it easy to comprehend. He is far from the average buffed-and-polished pretty boy posing for the camera. He’s real. He’s a guy — sorry; a bloke — you’d want to sit down and have a beer with, to ask how he’s doing and how he copes with all the craziness he reports on. And want to ask more about what he knows, what he’s seen, what he’s witnessed … no matter how unpleasant the answers would be to hear.

And exactly how does a news organization justify (to themselves, even!) not giving their war correspondents whatever they need in order to deal with their wounds, whether they are visible ones or not? If ABC had treated Bob Woodruff so callously, there would have been hell to pay. I don’t doubt they wanted him back in the field ASAP — doubly so after losing Christiane Amanpour — but don’t force him to make a choice between getting better and getting paid. That just sucks. Surely it would be better to have him off the air but still yours once he is ready to come back than to have him off the air and someone else’s upon his return? So not only has CNN made a callous move here, they have made a stupid one, as well.

Labels: CNN, Morning Sedition, real journalism, This. Just. Sucks.

Arizona has not repealed its pre-Roe abortion ban, which is unconstitutional and unenforceable.

The ban provides that any person who supplies to a woman any substance or employs other means with the intent to induce an abortion, unless necessary to preserve the woman's life, will be imprisoned for two to five years. A woman who submits to the use of any means with the intent to cause an abortion, unless necessary to preserve her life, will be imprisoned for one to five years. Any person who advertises abortion services is guilty of a misdemeanor. Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 13-3603 (Enacted 1901; Last Renumbered 1977), 13-3604 (Enacted 1901; Last Renumbered 1977), 13-3605 (Enacted 1901; Last Renumbered 1977).

Arizona outlaws a safe second-trimester abortion procedure with no exception to protect a woman's health. H.B. 2400, 49th Leg., 2009 1st Sess. (Ariz. 2009) (Enacted 2009) (to be codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. §13-3603.01).

The Arizona law makes the provision of certain previability, second-trimester abortion procedures a felony and imposes a criminal penalty of imprisonment for up to two years and/or fines including statutory damages of three times the cost of the abortion unless the procedure is necessary to save the life of the woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. H.B. 2400, 49th Leg., 2009 1st Sess. (Ariz. 2009) (Enacted 2009) (to be codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. §13-3603.01).

In 1997, a court held that an earlier version of Arizona's ban was unconstitutional because it was void for vagueness, was an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose, and had no exception to preserve the woman's health. Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-3603.01 (Enacted 1997). The court issued a permanent injunction prohibiting its enforcement. Planned Parenthood of S. Ariz., Inc. v. Woods, 982 F. Supp. 1369 (D. Ariz. 1997). In 2009, the Arizona legislature enacted an amended, enforceable version of the ban. H.B. 2400, 49th Leg., 2009 1st Sess. (Ariz. 2009) (Enacted 2009) (to be codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. §13-3603.01).

Arizona has a partially unconstitutional and unenforceable law requiring that a woman may not obtain an abortion until at least 24 hours after the attending physician or the referring physician tells her, orally and in person: (1) the name of the physician who will provide the abortion; (2) the nature of the proposed procedure; (3) the immediate and long-term medical risks of the procedure; (4) the alternatives to the procedure; (5) the probable gestational age of the fetus; (6) the probable anatomical and physiological characteristics of the fetus; and (7) the medical risks of carrying the pregnancy to term.

In addition, at least 24 hours prior to the abortion, the attending physician, a referring physician, another qualified physician, a physician's assistant, a nurse, a psychologist, or a licensed behavioral health professional must deliver to the woman, orally and in person, a state-mandated lecture that includes: (1) that medical assistance benefits may be available for prenatal care, childbirth, and neonatal care; (2) that the "father" is liable for child support even if he has offered to pay for the abortion; (3) that public and private agencies and services are available to assist the woman during her pregnancy and after the birth of her child if she chooses not to have an abortion; and (4) that she can withhold or withdraw her consent to the abortion at any time without affecting her right to future care or treatment and without the loss of any public benefits. H.B. 2564, 49th Leg., 2009 1st Sess. (Ariz. 2009) (Enacted 2009) (to be codified at Ariz. Rev. Stat. A 36-2153).

Labels: abortion, bigotry, demographics, sexism