All horrors...Thanks a lot, BushCo....

From American Progress Report:

*The two missing U.S. soldiers found yesterday were beheaded and showed signs of being "brutally tortured before their death." Their remains are being sent to the U.S. for DNA testing, suggesting they "had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition."

*The recently appointed head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection spoke out against a wall being built along the Mexican border. “I don’t support, I don’t believe the administration supports a wall,” Commissioner W. Ralph Basham said yesterday. "It's not practical."

*The House will vote this week on an estate tax “compromise” bill from Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA). “To lure Democratic senators from Washington state and Arkansas, Thomas included a lucrative tax break for the timber industry, pushing the total cost of the bill to nearly $280 billion.”

*Not exactly a free press in Afghanistan: “In a coordinated action this week," Afghan intelligence operatives delivered an "unsigned letter" to TV stations and newspapers "ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government."

*After revelations that AT&T set up a secret room in San Francisco that provided the National Security Agency with "full access to its customers' phone calls," Salon now reveals that AT&T has a "more integral" secret room in its Bridgeton, MO facility. "Although they work for AT&T, they're actually doing a job for the government," said a former AT&T employee.

*Jack Abramoff's lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, is calling for stricter ethics reform "that goes beyond what Congress is willing to even debate." The AP has obtained the FBI files on playwright Arthur Miller, a “longtime liberal who opposed the Vietnam War” and “supported civil rights.” (In 1956, Miller famously refused to name names before Eugene McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.) One FBI report said Miller's "religious" wedding ceremony was a "cover up" since he was a "cultural front man" for the secular Communist Party.

*The conviction of Abramoff-linked former Bush official David Safavian yesterday "could embolden federal prosecutors to seek additional indictments against cronies of Abramoff." Said one analyst, "This is the type of conviction that tends to loosen tongues."

*More media consolidation on the horizon? The FCC today "will embark on a new attempt to revamp media ownership restrictions," with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin joining large media conglomerates in pushing for increased consolidation. (Just in time, The Nation has updated their graph of the National Entertainment State.)

*Conservative alumni at colleges such as Dartmouth, Hamilton, and Colgate University, are attempting to take over alumni association boards and are pulling in right-wing bloggers to help them out.

*And finally: Doctors are investigating the deadly effects of World Cup fever. “An exciting match can cause fans’ hearts to skip not one beat, but several, leading to a rather worrying incidence of cardiac arrest among soccer die-hards.” In an ongoing study on the phenomenon, German heart attack victims “are asked precisely what they were doing at the time of the attack, whether they were following football on the radio or television, or even watching the pundits after the game.”

Wrap...