OK Bush...Explain this...

88 members of Congress want to talk to Bush about he and Blair okaying war on Iraq in 2002 according to the London Times procurement of the official memo. So they sent Bush a letter.
RAW STORY printed it.


The letter follows.
###
May 5, 2005
The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:
We write because of troubling revelations in the Sunday London Times apparently confirming that the United States and Great Britain had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action. While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your Administration. However, when this story was divulged last weekend, Prime Minister Blair's representative claimed the document contained "nothing new." If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own Administration.
The Sunday Times obtained a leaked document with the minutes of a secret meeting from highly placed sources inside the British Government. Among other things, the document revealed:
* Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq.
* British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."
* A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war.
* A British official "reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of this recent disclosure, we would like to know the following:
1) Do you or anyone in your Administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?
We have of course known for some time that subsequent to the invasion there have been a variety of varying reasons proffered to justify the invasion, particularly since the time it became evident that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. This leaked document - essentially acknowledged by the Blair government - is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion as well.
Given the importance of this matter, we would ask that you respond to this inquiry as promptly as possible. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Members who have already signed letter:Neil AbercrombieBrian BairdTammy BaldwinXavier BecerraShelley BerkleyEddie Bernice JohnsonSanford BishopEarl BlumenauerCorrine BrownSherrod BrownG.K. ButterfieldEmanuel CleaverJames ClyburnJohn ConyersJim CooperElijah CummingsDanny DavisPeter DeFazioDiana DeGetteBill DelahuntRosa DeLauroLloyd DoggettSam FarrBob FilnerHarold Ford, Jr.Barney FrankAl GreenRaul GrijalvaLouis GutierrezAlcee HastingsMaurice HincheyRush HoltJay InsleeSheila Jackson LeeJessie Jackson Jr.Marcy KapturPatrick KennedyDale KildeeCarolyn KilpatrickDennis KucinichWilliam Lacy ClayBarbara LeeJohn LewisZoe LofgrenDonna M. ChristensenCarolyn MaloneyEd MarkeyCarolyn McCarthyJim McDermottJames McGovernCynthia McKinneyMartin MeehanKendrick MeekGregory MeeksMichael MichaudGeorge MillerGwen S. MooreJames MoranJerrold NadlerGrace NapolitanoJames OberstarJohn OlverMajor OwensFrank PalloneDonald PayneCharles RangelBobby RushBernie SandersLinda SanchezJan Schakowsky Jose SerranoIke SkeltonLouise SlaughterHilda SolisPete StarkEllen TauscherBennie ThompsonEdolphus TownsStephanie Tubbs JonesChris Van HollenNydia VelazquezDebbie Wasserman SchultzMaxine WatersDiane WatsonMelvin WattRobert WexlerLynn WoolseyDavid WuAlbert R. Wynn
To read the letter in PDF format, including signatures, click here.
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About damned time..

Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned. http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502

Of course that doesn't mean he'll pay any attention to them whatsoever. Rove will, however. He'll get his demonizing spin revved up and going soon as possible. Like tonight.

Absolutely disgusting to have installed an administration that's so filthy.
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Don't mess with NSA..

This is from The Independent Clearing House...and #1 on this list... There are no limits to the length this BushCo admin will go to. That item is just beyond the pale.

1. NSA has recorded tactical communications intelligence—overheard on a speaker system in the NSOC—that demonstrates that United Flight 93 was shot down by U.S. fighter planes over Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, and the Bush administration concocted a phony "patriotic" cover story about the passengers and crew deliberately crashing the plane into the ground.

2. NSA conducted telephone surveillance of phone calls between Secretary of State Colin Powell and New Mexico Democratic Governor and former ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson concerning a visit by a North Korean UN delegation to New Mexico to meet with the governor in an attempt to reinstate direct negotiations with the U.S. government over nuclear issues.

3. NSA possesses communications intelligence that proves the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring in Pakistan was also selling nuclear components to Saudi Arabia.

4. Intercept evidence of Chinese intelligence penetration of U.S. intelligence services is not being acted upon by the Bush administration. Similarly, signals intelligence data involving Israeli intelligence operations inside the United States and deep within the Bush administration are being covered up.

5. That NSA's poorly managed, fraudulent, and wasteful Trailblazer and Groundbreaker technical upgrade and reorganization contracts have resulted in massive intelligence failures. For example, fratricide or "friendly fire" incidents have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan because faulty and outdated SIGINT/ELINT (signals intelligence/electronic intelligence) threat/non-threat data was retained in databases distributed to field military units. Such erroneous data was responsible for the Patriot missile shootdown of the British RAF Tornado and death of its two crew members near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border shortly after the outbreak of the war, the four Canadian troops killed by a USAF F-16 in Afghanistan, the Navy F-14 attack on a Kurdish convoy in northern Iraq, and numerous other fratricide incidents. Trailblazer and Groundbreaker also involve questionable and possibly illegal procurement conflicts of interest between certain NSA officials and contractors such as SAIC, Booz Allen, Computer Sciences Corporation, and CACI.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He served at the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration.Copyright © 1998-2005 Online Journal™.

There's more in this article that involves John Bolton and Negroponte.

Decent, ethical, honorable people do not behave in such a manner.
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A Rock and a Hard Place

Would I love seeing this happen? Do birds fly? Problem is, I doubt anything...anything whatsoever could cause it to occur. Check this article out:

IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
Special to BuzzFlash
Thursday, May 5, 2005
By Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor." And if this ain't it, nothing is.

The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony. A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives. Here's more.

"Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.

Read on: The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections."

Mission accomplished. You should parse the entire memo -- posted on my website -- and see if you can make it through its three pages without losing your lunch.Now sharp readers may note they didn't see this memo, in fact, printed in the New York Times. It wasn't. Rather, it was splashed across the front pages of the Times of LONDON on Monday. It has effectively finished the last, sorry remnants of Tony Blair's political career. (While his Labor Party will most assuredly win the elections Thursday, Prime Minister Blair is expected, possibly within months, to be shoved overboard in favor of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a political execution which requires only a vote of the Labour party's members in Parliament.)

But in the US, barely a word. The New York Times covers this hard evidence of Bush's fabrication of a casus belli as some "British" elections story. Apparently, our President's fraud isn't "news fit to print."My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press nada, bubkes, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that's a story for "over there."

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else.Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do.-----------

Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Read the memo in its entirety at www.GregPalast.com
You may reproduce this report without fee but with attribution.

Bush has more than earned impeachment. He's also committed war crimes, in my opinion, and should be sent...with his cohorts...to the International Court at the Hague for prosecution. It ain't gonna happen. We have a conundrum. If Bush should be successfully impeached, we'd get Cheney. Only the House Judiciary Committee could vote for impeachment, and being GOP ruled, they won't do it. Even if they did, the GOP owns the House, Senate, Presidency and a good chunk of the Supreme Court. They will do nothing that will threaten either their power nor their money.
Talk about "sittin' pretty"! This crew will not impeach Bush. But come the 2006 elections....
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FEAR!!!!! thanks bushco :(((

Now this really torques me. The repercussions of the Bush/Cheney/neocon scheme to get people to buy into the Iraq war after 9/11 and Afghanistan just go on and on and on and this is the kind of thing that results. Just infuriating. See this from the AP:

Police Called To Church Because Bald Marines Attend Services
Authorities Notified After Veterans Attend Twice
POSTED: 5:38 am PDT May 4, 2005
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. -- The strangers with shaved heads weren't skinheads -- they were leather necks.

Parishioners at a Catholic Church in the Los Angeles area were a little nervous when three tough-looking guys showed up during services the past two Sundays.
Sheriff's deputies were called to the church after the men visited the second time.
But San Bernardino County sheriff's Sgt. Frank Gonzales said there was nothing to worry about. The three men are Marines who had just returned from Iraq. He said the men were very polite and explained they were just looking for a friend.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Our very own Berlin Wall

This from a writer friend in www.voiceofsandiego.org today:

The Price of a Secure Border
By KEITH TAYLOR, Contributing Voice
Published May 2, 2005

I recently received an e-mail from an old Navy buddy in Tucson. He was concerned about an article my friend Dipsey Dumpster wrote about the four congressmen who held a press conference at the border. These guys showed up to celebrate a resolution they'd pushed through Congress. The resolution urged that Homeland Security be allowed to waive all laws, including federal and state environmental protections in order to finish a 14-mile stretch of fence along the border.
The fence would require nearby hills to be cut down in order to fill an environmentally sensitive place called Smuggler's Gulch. Then the erstwhile gulch would become a huge slab of concrete complete with bright lights, all to deter folks from illegally crossing the border. I'm afraid my friend Dipsey made fun of the press conference, not that the four congressmen weren't funny enough in their own right.
"But what about the border?" my Arizona friend asked. "Don't you think control of it is essential to our security?"
I'll have to answer for Dipsey. He is in a petulant mood today. He gets that way whenever his radio gets stuck on 600 AM. I think I can do justice to his ideas because we think so much alike.
I do indeed think it's important that we protect our borders. I also think we should cure the common cold, but in our effort to do so we ought not kill the patient, not even if his sneezing annoys us. Some "cures" are worse than the disease.
Our border with Mexico runs 1,275 miles, separating two nations that are officially friends, but not always warm friends. Take the war that took place from 1846 to 1848. Our neighbors to the south lost much of their territory during that war. Losing a huge hunk of property seldom engenders a warm friendship with the folks who took the property.
Talk show hosts on this side point to a plethora of sins caused by the folks south of the border -- the illegal immigrants for example. The immediate result of a sealed border would be to deter them from coming across. Although everybody seems to resent their being here, they are greeted with open arms by employers who want to save money on labor costs.
We get cheap labor. The cost of producing food is reduced. The Mexican and Central American workers get more money than they can make at home. It looks like a win-win situation.
In the 1980s, an economics professor at the University of Illinois and Julian L. Simon often wrote favorably on immigration, including illegal immigration. He is the author of "How Do Immigrants Affect Us Economically."
Simon's contention was that the most immigrants, including illegal ones, contributed much more to our economy than they took out. Similar studies tend to support Simon's contentions.
But the law is the law and what are we going to do about it? I suppose we can erect a wall 500 feet high, line it with machine guns and searchlights and we will achieve the dubious feat of controlling our borders. But at what cost?
Lost in this entire argument is some understanding of what our country is supposed to be all about. The freedom we laud so highly is fragile. We can lose it. We can even destroy it. If we allow the administration, through a cabinet post, to override the court system, we will be pulling a key card out of a house of cards.
Soon, there will be little reason to worry about our freedom being destroyed by evil people. We will have done it ourselves.
Keith Taylor is a freelance writer living in Chula Vista. He can be reached at KRTaylorxyz@aol.com.

Since the advent of the Bush admin and 9/11, many in this nation have lived in fear. There has never, in my memory, been an administration that has used and used and used fear! and crisis! so effectively, nor produced so many scapegoats as it's objective in order to put its ideology in power. The self-proclaimed "Uniter, Not A Divider" lied in his teeth and continues to do so, providing targets for our anger as he goes. Little did we know that the only groups he wants to unite and keep united are his religious base, his neocon believers, and his money men. The title that most suits this individual is that of "Destroyer".
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From Drudge...

**EXCLUSIVE** MSNBC TO CHANGE ITS NAME, THE DRUDGE REPORT HAS LEARNED. THE ALL-NEWS CABLE NETWORK, WHICH WAS FOUNDED AS JOINT EFFORT BETWEEN MICROSOFT AND NBC, WILL SIMPLY BECOME 'THE NBC NEWS CHANNEL'... TOP SOURCE EXPLAINS: 'THE NEW NAME IS CLEANER, LESS CONFUSING... REPRESENTS THE PROGRAMMING'... DEVELOPING...
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Lawdy, Lawdy!!!

Friend of mine is goin' down to the hot place for this one. (Laughing here)

From a priestly friend of mine

Hans Grapje was raised in a Catholic orphanage in The Hague and as a young man, he aspired to become a priest. However, he was drafted into military service WWII and spent two years co-piloting B17s until his aircraft was was shot down in 1943 and he lost his left arm. Captain Grapje spent the rest of the war as a chaplain, giving spiritual aid to soldiers, both Allied and the enemy.

After the war, he became a priest, serving as a missionary in Africa, piloting his own plane (in spite of his handicap) to villages across the continent. In 1997, Archbishop Grapje was serving in Zimbabwe when an explosion in a silver mine caused a cave-in. He went down into the mine to administer last rites to those too severely injured to move. Another shaft collapsed and he was buried for three days, suffering multiple injuries, including the loss of his right eye. The high silver content in the mine's air gave him purpura, a life-long condition characterized by purplish skin blotches.

Although Cardinal Grapje devoted his life to the service of God as a scholar, mentor and holy man, church leaders agree: he will never become Pope. No one wants a one-eyed, one armed, flying purple Papal leader.

I'm not saying another word. Know that after this, I'm in a state of disgrace! (Still laughing)
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Holier Than..Say What?!!

Hop right over to this morn's NY Times and read the rest of Frank Rich's column! And no, I'm not about to define "copraphilia". Google it. Ack!!!

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Conservatives ♥ 'South Park'By FRANK RICH Published: May 1, 200

Op-Ed Columnist: Conservatives ♥ 'South Park'

Conservatives can't stop whining about Hollywood, but the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too. It's not easy. In the showbiz wrangling sweepstakes of 2004, liberals had Leonardo DiCaprio, the Dixie Chicks and the Boss. The right had Bo Derek, Pat Boone and Jessica Simpson, who, upon meeting the secretary of the interior, Gale Norton, congratulated her for doing "a nice job decorating the White House." Ms. Simpson may be the last performer in America who can make Whoopi Goldberg seem like the soul of wit.

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Bush decides.

That individual said, flatly, "I don't second guess myself." So once he's decided, there's little chance of talking sense to him. Like the spoiled brat he is, he's not gonna listen.

New U.S. intelligence director takes over daily Bush briefings despite advice against it
By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer
(AP) - WASHINGTON-

For the first time, new national intelligence director John Negroponte stepped into the Oval Office this week to present President George W. Bush with his classified daily intelligence briefing.
The Wednesday morning session came as the administration is rethinking the way the government handles intelligence information following a series of reports critical of the way spy agencies collect and share information.
It also underscored that the White House is not immediately heeding the advice of a presidential commission on intelligence, which recommended last month that someone other than Negroponte brief the president each day.
The briefing, previously conducted by the CIA director, is coveted because of the time and potential influence the briefer has with the president. Yet it also requires significant preparation on issues, such as the potential for a North Korean nuclear test or the latest al-Qaida threat.
As a result, the presidential commission said in the report last month that the director of national intelligence, or DNI, should not "prepare, deliver or even attend every briefing."
"For if the DNI is consumed by current intelligence, the long-term needs of the intelligence community will suffer," the commissioners wrote in a letter to Bush that accompanied their report.
But Bush had said in February when he chose Negroponte to be intelligence chief that he would handle the briefing. It's not clear whether Negroponte alone presented the information this week or shared the task with other intelligence officials.
In the past, the briefing has been a matter of presidential preference.
A former senior intelligence official said Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, had his briefings delivered by a senior analyst. President Bill Clinton generally got his briefings in writing and would send them back with notes in the margins.
In 2001, then-CIA Director George Tenet went to the first couple of briefings when Bush took office, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy which surrounds the briefing. Bush liked the interchange with the Tenet and let it be known that he wanted the director or his deputy present as often as possible for the President's Daily Brief, or PDB in Washington-speak.
"It takes a lot of time, but the president is the most important customer and if he wants you there and values your input ... you want to comply with his wishes," the official said.
Laurence Silberman, the Republican and senior appellate judge who co-chaired the commission, said at a recent American Bar Association breakfast that Bush was surprised to learn that when he asked a question, "There is an enormous amount of effort that goes into answering that question."
Porter Goss, the current CIA director, seems to agree. Goss, who delivered the reports after taking the post in September, told an audience in California last month that he spends five hours a day preparing for the briefing.
"I'm a little amazed at the workload," Goss said.

A great deal of what is said to Bush is wasted breathe. If he'd listened, he'd have been more than a C student at Yale. But no. Wasn't then, isn't now, won't be in the future. There's a lesson in there....Never elect a C student to the Presidency.
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Lordy!!!

This guy just cracks me up! I don't know how he survives. Here he goes:

1. Slammed my finger in my car door

2. Drop kicked a cantaloupe

3. Decapitated several gummie bears

4. Poked my dad in the eye

5. Pee-pee tortured a spider that was in the urinal

6. Crashed a going away party for a coworker that I didn’t know

7. Ate all of the sushi at the going away party

8. Had to pull 3 fuses to get my car alarm to turn off

9. Ate a bowl of Life cereal for lunch

10. Put the milk in the cupboard

He can be found at: http://10thingsididtoday.blogspot.com (maybe the "10" is spelled out. Not sure.) Enjoy!
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The Gentleman.

The guy who backed into the side of my car phoned about an hour ago. Said he'd done an accident report, called his insurance company, and wanted to reassure me that either his or his company's insurance would definitely see to it that my car is repaired. He even read me the statement he'd given them about how the accident occured. Absolutely accurate. A very considerate, honest and ethical man. A gentleman in all the best senses of the word.

So see? The good people in this world do indeed make up, I believe, the majority.
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Nightmare time.

Genetic Mingling Mixes Human, Animal Cells
By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology WriterFri Apr 29, 8:44 PM ET
On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.
The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago.
"It's mice on a large scale," Chamberlain says with a shrug.
As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.
In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.
Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.
But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent.
In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.
Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head?
The "idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered," the academies report warned.
In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.
Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.
The Academies' report recommends that each institution involved in stem cell research create a formal, standing committee to specifically oversee the work, including experiments that mix human and animal cells.
Weissman, who has already created mice with 1 percent human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also need to authorize the experiment.
Few human-animal hybrids are as advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.
Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in his experiment contain about 10 percent human liver cells, though a few have as much as 40 percent, Zanjani said.
Because the human liver regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting partial organs into people whose livers are failing.
Zanjani must first ensure no animal diseases would be passed on to patients. He also must find an efficient way to completely separate the human and sheep cells, a tough task because the human cells aren't clumped together but are rather spread throughout the sheep's liver.
Zanjani and other stem cell scientists defend their research and insist they aren't creating monsters — or anything remotely human.
"We haven't seen them act as anything but sheep," Zanjani said.
Zanjani's goals are many years from being realized.
He's also had trouble raising funds, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the university over allegations made by another researcher that the school mishandled its research sheep. Zanjani declined to comment on that matter, and university officials have stood by their practices.
Allegations about the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. First, human stem cells were injected into bacteria, then mice and now sheep. Such research blurs biological divisions between species that couldn't until now be breached.
Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have crossed yet, the Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even that policy recommendation isn't tough enough for some researchers.
"The boundary is going to push further into larger animals," New York Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. "That's just asking for trouble."
Newman and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin have been tracking this issue for the last decade and were behind a rather creative assault on both interspecies mixing and the government's policy of patenting individual human genes and other living matter.
Years ago, the two applied for a patent for what they called a "humanzee," a hypothetical — but very possible — creation that was half human and chimp.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevents the patenting of people.
Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning people into commodities.
And that's a point, Newman warns, that stem scientists are edging closer to every day: "Once you are on the slope, you tend to move down it."

All I can say is that they'd damned well better watch their steps.
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Los Alamos speaks...

http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com ... Here is the blog, with mostly anonymous comments, from the folks at "lanl". That is, the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory who are doing their level best to get rid of their Director. Following is the header on the blog, and who, finally, is paying attention to their blog:

LANL Director George P. Nanos shut down the entire laboratory in July, 2004, citing "egregious" security and safety violations. The results of the shutdown include a cost to the taxpayer of approximately $850 million, an exodus of highly talented staff members, and the loss of untold millions of dollars of funding from customers who have taken their business elsewhere. This blog provides an uncensored LANL forum. See the link named "Posting Guidelines" below for posting instructions.

Saturday, April 30, 2005
LANL Blog in the news
From Anonymous:
Doug:Thought you might like to see this:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/national/01alamos.html?pagewanted=1&oref=login

May 1, 2005
At Los Alamos, Blogging Their DiscontentBy WILLIAM J. BROAD
blog rebellion among scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, the federal government's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, is threatening to end the tenure of its director, G. Peter Nanos.

Yep. William J Broad of the NY Times has had his attention caught. This is good. But not half as good as reading the blog itself. The brilliant people who work there have a tendency to not mince their words...nor conceal their feelings. They're very upset.

This is an important facility, to say the least. For the nation's sake, I hope the powers that be are listening to them.
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Rush, who knows all...

There's nothing quite like opening your mouth and putting your foot in it when you don't know what you're talking about. That's Limbaugh, all right. Today and every day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAPRIL 28, 20054:26 PM
CONTACT: Interfaith Alliance Don Parker, 202.639.6370, ext. 111

Limbaugh's Religious Hate Talk Blasphemes Religion, Interfaith Alliance President Says

WASHINGTON -- April 28 -- Today, in response to Rush Limbaugh's statement that "the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism," the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance, released the followingstatement:
"All people of faith in the most religiously diverse nation on earth should be insulted by the uninformed religious pronouncements of a vitriolic radio host," said Rev. Dr. C Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance. "Mr. Limbaugh has repeatedly demonstrated his ignorance and insensitivity to the religious communities in this nation.
"Mr. Limbaugh demeans the very spirit of Christianity as well as the faithful Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Baha'i, and other religious communities. Unfortunately Mr. Limbaugh's words echo the recent misuse of religion by politicians. We remain gravely concerned about the continuing manipulation of religion for partisan political purposes. The fusion of partisan politics and religion arrogantly blasphemes religion and aggressively threatens the vitality of democracy.
"The Interfaith Alliance remains committed to the healing role of religion in America and stands with all people of faith and good will who remain dedicated to common values that enhance our lives together."
According to Media Matters, on the April 27 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Mr. Limbaugh said:
LIMBAUGH: "I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country. "And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, 'This is right and that is wrong.'"

A credit to the GOP, Rush is.

Wrap...

Go ahead.Hang yourself.

There's nothing quite like opening your mouth and putting your foot in it when you don't know what you're talking about. That's Limbaugh, all right. Today and every day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAPRIL 28, 20054:26 PM
CONTACT: Interfaith Alliance Don Parker, 202.639.6370, ext. 111

Limbaugh's Religious Hate Talk Blasphemes Religion, Interfaith Alliance President Says

WASHINGTON -- April 28 -- Today, in response to Rush Limbaugh's statement that "the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism," the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance, released the followingstatement:
"All people of faith in the most religiously diverse nation on earth should be insulted by the uninformed religious pronouncements of a vitriolic radio host," said Rev. Dr. C Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance. "Mr. Limbaugh has repeatedly demonstrated his ignorance and insensitivity to the religious communities in this nation.
"Mr. Limbaugh demeans the very spirit of Christianity as well as the faithful Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Baha'i, and other religious communities. Unfortunately Mr. Limbaugh's words echo the recent misuse of religion by politicians. We remain gravely concerned about the continuing manipulation of religion for partisan political purposes. The fusion of partisan politics and religion arrogantly blasphemes religion and aggressively threatens the vitality of democracy.
"The Interfaith Alliance remains committed to the healing role of religion in America and stands with all people of faith and good will who remain dedicated to common values that enhance our lives together."
According to Media Matters, on the April 27 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Mr. Limbaugh said:
LIMBAUGH: "I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country. "And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, 'This is right and that is wrong.'"

Hah. Look who's talking! Such a moral and ethical mortal..a credit to the GOP!
Wrap.

Insult to injury...

One of the writers, JJ, emailed:

YET ANOTHER QUOTE: (I just looked at the tape to verify it)

Bush says to the press as he ends his press conference: "Thank you for all your answers, and God bless our country. Goodnight."

I guess when you're that stupid, maybe press questions (at least those not set up beforehand)
do seem like answers.

Tom Blair writes in San Diego Magazine:

:Anne Rice, queen of the vampire thrillers, has given birth to her first book since moving her base to a new home in La Jolla. CHIRST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT is due in November from Knopf.

Whoa! Quite the jump from Lestat, the vampire, to Christ.... I just wonder what kind of Christ she has going in that book. The lady has imagination to spare. This is gonna be interesting.

So this morn, I drive into the one-way driveway at the hotel, when a guy backs out of a parking space on my left and right into me. Between trying to exchange info and calming him down, I like to never got on the patio to enjoy that wonderous first cup of black coffee which B and JJ had ready. B was outside the minute that guy's rental car nailed mine, and had his license # written down. Did that after he checked the damage to left front fender and driver's door. Hell, half the hotel staff had either seen or heard about it before I even hit the lobby on the way to the patio.

One of the worse parts, for the guy, had to be that he was at the hotel for a small conference, and of course they were just off the patio too. He did manage to get the door open so I could get out of the car, with me pushing from inside and he pulling from outside.

Only the second time I've been involved in an accident in my entire life, and in neither one was I at fault....and glad of it! But to have one before I even got near my first cup of coffee this morn was a bit much. Sheesh!
Wrap...

My skin tone or else!

MEDIA – WITH PRESS, WHITE HOUSE NOT COLOR BLIND:

Breaking with standard practice, the Secret Service has requested racial information on journalists and guests scheduled to attend a reception for White House correspondents tomorrow with President Bush. The Washington Post reports that White House reporters were offended that "after furnishing the customary information – name, date of birth and Social Security number – they were also asked for the race of each person expected to attend the small reception scheduled before the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner." Such policy "has not been applied universally," and anecdotal evidence "suggests the Secret Service is more frequently asking for racial information from journalists." Just last month, for example, "the Orange County Register reported that Cheney's staff requested race and gender information before the vice president would meet with the newspaper's editorial board."
Wrap...

Running scared???

What the hell is this?!!!

MEDIA – WITH PRESS, WHITE HOUSE NOT COLOR BLIND:

Breaking with standard practice, the Secret Service has requested racial information on journalists and guests scheduled to attend a reception for White House correspondents tomorrow with President Bush. The Washington Post reports that White House reporters were offended that "after furnishing the customary information – name, date of birth and Social Security number – they were also asked for the race of each person expected to attend the small reception scheduled before the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner." Such policy "has not been applied universally," and anecdotal evidence "suggests the Secret Service is more frequently asking for racial information from journalists." Just last month, for example, "the Orange County Register reported that Cheney's staff requested race and gender information before the vice president would meet with the newspaper's editorial board."
Wrap...

Counting the Cost...

We are entering the third year of the war in Iraq.

Increasingly, many Americans believe that the war is over. They think that relatively few civilians and soldiers have died. They think that U.S. interests and Iraqi interests are best served by the continued occupation of Iraq.

This is not the reality. We now know that over 100,000 Iraqi citizens have died since the beginning of the war. Over 1,500 U.S. soldiers have died. Countless others have been wounded and maimed. And, although the pictures are not shown on TV, large numbers of Iraqi citizens and U.S. soldiers continue to die.

Let’s tell the truth about the war and continuing occupation in Iraq.
MAY 15:
COUNTING THE COST
STOPPING THE WAR
On May 15, in protest of the rising death toll and the on-going occupation, wear a number representing one of the over 100,000 Iraqi citizens, U.S. soldiers, coalition soldiers, and other international civilians who have died in Iraq. Join one of the local actions being planned in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and other locations. Organize an event of your own, such as candlelight vigil at a local war memorial or a demonstration in your town square. Or, simply spend the day wearing your number and talking to your neighbors about it.
SIGN UP NOW and we will send you your number to wear on May 15. We will ask you to donate $10 to cover the costs of packaging and shipping, and to make sure that everyone who wants to can participate, even if they can’t pay. The remainder of your donation will help fund humanitarian aid in Iraq and continued anti-war work.
Together we can show that the cost of this war is too high. Together we can convince our communities that NOW is the time for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops, the establishment of a transitional force not dominated by U.S. interests, and a commitment on the part of the U.S. to provide financial assistance for rebuilding Iraq.

Check the links on the left for detailed information about the death toll in Iraq, a list of local actions already being planned, and ideas to help you and your group plan an action of your own.

Don’t forget to tell a friend who can join us.
Our organizational and fiscal sponsor is:
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Project Description Buy a Number Become an Area OrganizationFind a Group in Your Area Make a Contribution The Johns Hopkins StudyGet Program Ideas Join our E-Mail club Sponsors Links Contact UsThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.









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Friends Betrayed....

Now that these three writers have generously given permission to post their email conversation, I will. From my position, it's a given that you don't kick your oldest and best friends in the teeth for not agreeing with your disastrous ideology. But that's what BushCo did. So here is an important conversation that began with just one word. May I present Leif, Ed, and Barb:

Leif:
Years ago my professional reason for being (in French it is something like "raison detre," but try as I have, I cannot pronounce it properly, so I don't use it) was creative thinking and creative problem solving laced through the K-12 curriculum. I spoke about it from the platform, I wrote about it, and I demonstrated it in K-12 classrooms. But the public wasn't so much interested in whether the next generation could think as it was in whether the next generation could read pap before their Hungarian age-mates could. So, being that "public" in "public schools" means ownership, we went with early pap-reading.

Ed:
For whatever it is worth, the very useful phrase raison d'etre ("reason for existence") is pronounced--if you will buy my half-assed explanation--"raise on deytra." Most people today, of course, avoid French like the plague--fearful of being dubbed a Francophile, (which is just below Pedophile as I understand it)--which is why I try to use it often. I love to see the necks get redder.

Leif:
Many thanks. I will practice the pronunciation, and use it ruthlessly, because I also want to tweak the morons. I have another reason for that. I'm a section short of finishing Cokie Roberts' Founding Mothers, a very different history of about 1740-1790 than we get in our history books. One of the conclusions is making clear that we wouldn't have made it had it not been for the dreaded French. They saved our collective behind, with troops, certainly, but most critically, with cash when it was most needed, for example when we defaulted on Spain's loan. I had heard about that, but Roberts made the instances so human that what I took into the read became part of the story rather than chapters in history books. We may never be able to repay France for its contribution.

Ed:
I really do hate it when large groups of people decide to hate some other group (or nation)--and who then try by every possible means, subtle and unsubtle, to shove everyone else into conformity, into accepting their "party line." The current villification of the French people, and of anything "French," is just another prime example of the booboisie (Mencken's word, of course) in action. This trend is marked, of course, by a collective boycott of French wines and products, by "American fries," by a refusal to travel to France, by making fun of any use of the French language, of any reference to the art or culture of that country, and--perhaps especially--by depicting anyone who expresses any admiration for anything French in the most vile terms one can call upon (in their minds)--"queers," pansies, debauched liberals, cowards, dupes, and so on. (That is an issue Kerry--he and Teresa both being known as Francophiles for years--should have taken head-on in his campaign, but which he ducked and swerved to avoid like the plague. I'll bet now, in retrospect, he wishes he had been more forthright on that issue, as well as others.)

I say all this, by the way, despite the fact that my wife and I were often treated very shabbily by a lot of the French merchants on our visits to that country. We were treated wonderfully, however, by many others that we met. It is certainly true that a lot of the French who, through their business activities have to deal with tourists on a daily basis, have come over many years to despise Americans (and other "rich" tourists). Travellers, like ourselves, can, indeed, catch the brunt of that. There is a history to these resentments, however, that we ought to be big enough, and sophisticated enough, to understand.

In WW II, we were not bombed, economically devastated, and humiliated, as the French were, by having jack-booted Nazis running around like schoolyard bullies shoving us around and looting our country. At the end of that war, the French had a lot of rebuilding to do--but the American business class was already booming, and we, of course, were the "arrogant winners" who singlehandedly won the war, and saved their bacon. We were all over Europe and France in the next ten years reminding them of how great and rich and wonderful we were. Our language was making inroads on theirs, horrifying the traditionalists (and "dumbing down" their culture as our "awesome" language so often dumbs down our own). And we were spending money over there for years like there was no bottom to the well. It's not that we weren't generous: quite the opposite--but think of the effect on them, struggling to rebuild and going without a lot of their pre-war niceties and even essentials, when we would casually throw down on the table as a "luncheon tip" an amount equal to a half a week's French wages (for the typical French working man). That is not how to win friends and "affection."

At the same time we didn't hesitate to "plunder" the country of the things we could see were valuable--often at cut-rate prices because they so desperately needed the money. And, of course, we (especially the "nouveaux riche" Americans who had no background in how to handle themselves) took pains to carefully explain to all the poor Froggies how much better everything we had back in the states was than the awful, second-rate crap they had to deal with.

And, of course, we deplored everything that was different from what we had very recently become used to at home. Almost everything French, let's face it, was "cheap, dirty and tawdry." And let's not even mention their sculpture, art, books and movies. ("I tell you Gertrude, I couldn't take the kids anywhere with all those filthy statues and pictures just everywhere! All they think about, those people, is sex!" )

Yes, there is a long history of deplorable conduct on both sides that intelligent Americans and French citizens have to recognize, deal with, and overcome to appreciate the best that each society has to offer to the other.

A good place to start is with the long history of friendship between our countries that dates back to our very inception as a nation (as you, and Cokie, so correctly point out, Leif). It's also easy to depict an entire people as a nation of cowards because they had to surrender in WW II to a force that completely overwhelmed and outgunned them in every way. That is like depicting the surviving Americans who finally surrendered at Bataan (finally outgunned and overwhelmed by superior Japanese forces) as cowards--when, indeed, as we know, exactly the opposite was true. The fact that the French defenses collapsed so quickly was not a measure of French courage or cowardice (as so many Americans believe today): it was a measure of the total bankruptcy of the entrenched military and political thinking of the bureacracy that dominated that pre-War country and who, by the stupidity of their decisions, undermined any chance the common French soldier had of defending against the German war juggernaut that rolled over and around them.

One last personal note: when Aaron Bank, my former commanding officer in Special Forces, was a young US army officer in the OSS, he jumped behind the lines into occupied France in 1944 as part of a three-man Jedburgh team--and the other two members were both Frenchmen trained in England for the mission. For months Bank and his team, and the forces they armed and raised, fought behind the lines as part of the French resistance, carrying out a variety of covert espionage and then other open assaults on the German forces. During that time, Bank knew that to be caught meant torture of the most vicious kind (as only the Gestapo could do such things) and almost certain death--and he also knew that his daily life and security was in French hands. Any French person he had contact with could have been the instrument of his capture--but no one ever gave him up. (Interestingly, he was in his late 90s before he first learned the real identity of one of his chief guerrilla leaders in those days--so tight was the security they all worked under.)

In 1944, Aaron Bank was in French hands, and he was in good hands, and he formed some friendships there that lasted his entire life. I really think it is time we grew up as a people--really grew up--and it is more than time for us to look around and recognize who our real friends are--or could be, if we used some common sense--in a troubled world.

Barb:
Beautifully put, Ed. Unfortunately, too many Americans are politically unsophisticated, see everything as black or white/my way or the highway, and are put off by all things foreign. Would like to take all those people and sprinkle them around the world in a situation that would make them totally dependent on the locals. Might make our country grow up a bit. Maybe.

They've all traveled a lot, these three. I haven't, but I know where our Statue of Liberty came from, and I know that during the Revolutionary War, LaFayette was boots on the ground when it counted. Not only that, I'll defend our French Bakeries and those pastrys that nobody else can match for pure ecstacy in the mouth.

Take care of our libraries and, as Barb said, maybe some of our idiots can learn some history.
Wrap.

Lousy news...

Don't like this one damned bit. Not everybody can afford to go out and buy those $25 and up books...which is a major reason libraries exist in the first place. Do we want people to be able to continue educating themselves in this country or not? Apparently not. Sheesh!

The Threat to Libraries

Many library systems are severely challenged, too, by continuing cuts in funding. The Dallas Morning News reports: "From coast to coast, budget strains and tax pressures are forcing cities to make hard choices about how to spend limited money, and libraries, much to many residents' dismay, are taking the hit."

Figures from the ALA says budget cuts nationwide over the last 18 months have totaled over $110 million, comprising "as much as 50 percent in some states." ALA president Carol Brey-Casiano says, "We have seen in the last several years more reductions in library budgets than any other time in our history"--even as demand for services rises. Libraries were visited more than twice as much in 2002 as they were in 1990.Dallas News

Thanks to BushCo's damned tax cut first, and their damned war second.
Wrap.

Waiting game...

Have a post I'm working on, but can't post it just yet. If all goes well, it will be the next one up. This weather is gonna drive me nuts. Absolutely unpredictable. Last weather report said there'd be rain today. No. Perfect San Diego weather. The nice thing is, that's usually the way it turns out, month after month. Pleases me no end. So until I next post, I'll leave you with this tidbit from Independent Clearing House:

"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its' citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen.

There is none that disperses its' control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media - none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.":

Howard Zinn, from 'A People's History of the United States,' first published 1981

Geez....

This doc is quite a guy. Right now, I'm really feeling for him:

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Emotionally drained...
Was oncall again last night. Wasn't too bad a night, but my junior and I both felt really emotionally drained. So did the nurses. Mainly because of that one patient, young middle-aged male who tried to kill himself after losing his job (and other personal issues). Drank rat poison, weedkiller, paint stripper, hydrochloric acid and sleeping pills. Kept seizing, and was just drooling like crazy (effects from the weedkiller). He was intubated before he was flown to us.
The thing that did us in was his suicide note he left for his wife. I suppose he didn't expect to be found until after he was dead. And I felt like I was reading a personal letter to his spouse (which I was, but we had to document everything). And it just tore into our hearts and minds, reading about how torn and guilty he felt, how much he loved his family but felt like there was no way out but this.

He's young. In many ways I'm praying that we can save him. But somewhere deep inside, we were thinking too that it may be best that he died, because when someone decides to ingest corrosive chemicals like that, it just burns and scars the esophagus and gut so badly that even if they survive, everything else needs to be surgically taken out, and they live a life of misery (sometimes on IV nutrition lifelong). But, we do all we can. And pray for the best.

Have seen patients threaten suicide (usually to get attention) by taking some things. But some things people should never take just to seek attention (obviously, people should never attempt suicide just for attention. That's beyond stupid). Acetaminophen is one, coz if they come in too late for us to help them, it's a slow ugly death and it gives them plenty of time to regret and cry. Chemicals are another; they can cause irreparable GI damage. Burns a hole in the gut.
Days like this, I wish family or loved ones were near. Then again, it's often hard to explain to someone outside of medicine what we feel. So sometimes it's better to just be alone until one gets out of the dumps.
wrap.

Oh Yeah?

In an interview with USA Today, White House political advisor Karl Rove said he expects House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to keep his job: "He's going to continue to be an effective and strong leader."
Link

To which I say, Says who? This guy seems to think he's infallible. My dad would say that "he's got too big for his britches" and he'd be right. Time he got knocked down to size. Sooner the better.
Wrap.

Soon...

This book's rights have just been sold to a publisher. It will be on bookshelves some time before 18 months have passed. Can only watch for it:

Former war correspondent who has written for the NYT and others and author of Rembrandts in the Attic David Kline's THE HUMAN ELEMENT: Blogs and the Transformation of Business, blending a "big picture" view of the transformative impact of blogging on corporate America with a practical guide for using blogs to competitive advantage in every functional unit of the enterprise, to John Mahaney at Crown Business, at auction, by James Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world). jlevine@levinegreenberg.com

Wrap...

SLOW...

Gallup: 50% of Americans Now Say Bush Deliberately Misled Them on WMDs : Half of all Americans, exactly 50%, now say the Bush administration deliberately misled Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Gallup Organization reported this morning. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000894970

Is that 50% living in caves, or what? Where do they get their information? Do they not have access to newspapers, TV, radio? I know! The "Used Car Salesman" tells them all they need to know. Or maybe they do have a radio, but listen only to the great bloviator, Rush. Or maybe they just don't give a damn about what's going on outside their houses. It's a puzzle to me.
Wrap.

Used Car Salesman speaks...

I guarantee this will turn your stomach. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042605B.shtml
It sure did a job on mine.
Wrap...

Why Fundie Christians AIN'T!!!

Have long wondered why the Fundie Christians...of which mess Bush is a strong member...are such nutcases that every other religion shies away from them. www.bop.com put up that explanation, and it makes perfect sense. These people are dangerous and the GOP uses them like a weapon. Very effectively.

The Gospel of John tells Christians that "because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." This concept, and the entire notion of martyrdom, is tricky for nonbelievers to fully grasp. What do Christians do when representatives of their faith, a faith forged in opposition to this world and its powers, acquire overwhelming political might? Unless they are deeply spiritual, they will continue to look for oppressors, for enemies, for the earthly forces that supposedly "hate" and oppose them.

This is why we continue to see fundamentalist Christians, their hands on all the levers of government, vilify liberals and secularists as if these hapless minorities were brutal occupying forces. This dynamic informs and motivates the battles of the Religious Right. Democrats and liberals fail to understand it at their own peril.

The concept of the Trinity means for believers that God Himself took human form, came to Earth, suffered terrible tortures, and died for us. It also means - simultaneously - that God sent his only beloved Son and watch him suffer and die as a result of our sinful natures. Despite that, He'lll forgive us if we only ask. To return such generosity with hostility or indifference seems for believers to be a particularly harsh kind of ingratitude.

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you," Jesus tells his followers in John. And who populates this "world", in today's politics? For Red-Staters, carefully schooled by the Conservative/Religious elite, it's now the Other - the liberal, the secular humanist, the Eastern elite, the New York Times reporter, Dan Rather, the Muslim 'raghead', Michael Moore, the activist judge. All these figures, some of them fictional, populate that hostile terrain that must be created in order to replicate the way of sorrows - the "Via Dolorosa" - that Jesus Himself walked.

This all misses the point, of course. Those oppressors, those haters, the ones who condemn and torture and execute - they're not the Other at all. They're us. But that's deliberately forgotten when politics and religion mix. The Gospel of John was written when Christianity was a despised sect, and its democratically-organized followers were hunted by an oppressive government. The Gospel of Jerry (Fallwell) has been created to secure and keep earthly power - a state that early Christians would consider sinful.

In other words, Jesus created the miracle of the loaves of bread, supernaturally multiplied to feed the starving crowds. Falwell and the Republicans, on the other hand, are saying "let them eat cake." Is there a new Democratic message there, somewhere?
I struggle with all of this, and am still looking for the right response, the right tone. The best I can come up with is, first, to respect the followers and condemn the leaders. The followers are, like so many of us, just people who are looking for something - for meaning, for a purpose, for an answer. They can be reached with the Democratic message, I'm sure of it - but not if it's delivered with the slightest hint of condescension. I keep reminding myself that these were the Kennedy voters, and before that the Roosevelt voters. The other Christian message - of sacrifice, of idealism, of service to the poor - could still touch them.

John again: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own." That's partially where the resistance to Ivy League degrees and other achievements comes from. It might help if Democrats hammered away at the theme that rich and powerful preachers, along with rich and powerful politicians, are "of the world" and are "its own." Let's not be afraid of saying "that rich preacher doesn't speak for you, or for God." We should look for - and promote - sympathetic ministers, evangelicals, and lay Christians like Jim Wallis, Anne Lamott, and even Willie Nelson. Their work is important.

Lastly, it's worth remembering that many Christians know the verse from John that reads "He that hateth me hateth my Father also." Expressions of contempt for fundamentalist ministers, if they appear elitist or too personal, look like attacks on God. There's no need to fall into that trap.

Religious belief shouldn't be a prerequisite for the political life, but where it exists it shouldn't be limited to one side of the aisle. When Democrats truly feel it, they should use it. Even when they don't, they should be know its terrain. "Be of good cheer," it is written in John. "I have overcome the world." All Democrats have to overcome are James Dobson and Tom Delay.

Piece of cake.Permalink
by RJ Eskow Apr 25 , 7:51 PM Comments (5) , Trackback (0)

Perhaps we should all feel sympathy for a group of people so incredibly misguided. It's very sad when people have lost the ability to think for themselves, to examine what they're being told. But then, the religious sects will always be with us. Remember Jim Jones and the suicides in Africa? The people who committed suicide so they'd be transported up to the tail of Haley's Comet? All the hell they needed was an evil s.o.b. who could talk a good game...a silver-tongued devil, so to speak. Don't believe those Fundies are even aware of the idea of "hidden motives" of their foul leaders. "Sheeple" really does apply to them.
Wrap...

Tell it my way...or no way!

Where the hell are we living? Russia? China? This report from American Progress gives a very good example of how BushCo intends to rule the public mind. And damned if they aren't doing it. Just put the right people on the boards, and they'll see to it that opposing opinions to their propaganda is eliminated. That's freedom of the press? Do they give a damn about freedom? Not hardly.

MEDIA
The Privatization of PBS

According to people within the Public Broadcasting Service, the supposedly politically independent PBS "is being forced to toe a more conservative line in its programming" by its oversight agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is being stacked with right-wing appointees. Over the past few years, President Bush has attempted to flood the CPB board with partisan political operatives. The result, according to a senior FCC official, is that today CPB "is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS. It's almost like a right-wing coup. It appears to be orchestrated."

STACKED BOARD: Created in the 1960s, CPB was purposefully designed as an independent body in order to provide a buffer between the independent public broadcast networks and the partisan government. In fact, Congress funds CPB two years in advance to "shield it from momentary bursts of partisan anger" and keep PBS safe from the muck of daily politics. That was then. Now, the chairman of the CPB board is Kenneth Tomlinson, a close friend of uber-strategist Karl Rove and an individual who has contributed thousands to Republicans over the past decade. President Bush also nominated Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, individuals who have given more than $816,000 to conservative causes over the past 14 years, to the CPB Board of Directors. Interestingly enough, Gaines was a key fundraiser for Newt Gingrich back when the House speaker campaigned to "zero out" CPB funding and privatize PBS.

A CORPORATION IN HIS OWN IMAGE: In recent months, at least three senior CPB officials – all of whom had left-leaning associations – have departed or been dismissed, making the effects of the stacked deck even more apparent. Last week, CPB's board decided not to renew the contract of its chief executive, Kathleen Cox, choosing instead to replace her with Kenneth Ferree. Before becoming the chief executive of CPB, Ferree was at the Federal Communications Commission, where he "played a significant role in the failed effort to loosen rules" for giant media conglomerates to consolidate their empires. (It was backlash from the American public that defeated his efforts.) Now Ferree is at CPB, but not because of his love for public broadcasting. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Ferree admitted to not watching much PBS, not even its flagship show, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which he called "slow." In Ferree's own words, "I don't always want to sit down and read Shakespeare, and Lehrer is akin to Shakespeare. Sometimes I really just want a People magazine."

THE LYNN CHENEY SHOW: In addition to stacking the board of CPB, the administration hired Michael Pack, a producer with close ties to the Bush administration. How close? In 2002, Pack greeted outgoing PBS President Pat Mitchell at Vice President Cheney's house with an "inappropriate" proposal for a children's series featuring the vice president's wife, Lynn Cheney.

DESPERATELY SEEKING CENSORSHIP: The Public Broadcasting Act prohibits CPB from interfering with public TV's programming, but someone may need to remind its Board of Directors. During her confirmation hearings, new board member Cheryl Halpern advocated a policy of "aggressive" censorship and suggested CPB should be allowed to penalize and "remove physically" broadcasts it decides are unbalanced. In fact, media watchdog groups accused the Bush administration of using a "litmus test" to select board members; the White House reportedly sunk the candidacy of a nominee who stated CPB should intervene in programming only in "extraordinary circumstances." And now the current board is starting to do the job for which it was apparently hired, tightening its grasp over programming content. Earlier this year, for the first time in its history, the CPB insisted on tying any new PBS funding to "an agreement that would commit the network to strict 'objectivity and balance'" in its programs. But its supposed quest for "objectivity and balance" is decidedly subjective. On its website, the CPB claims it'll listen to the opinions of public officials and keep them under wraps: "These opinions may be expressed in … private conversations with CPB board members and other officials."

TILTING AT "LIBERAL" WINDMILLS: CPB's own research shows that there is already "objectivity and balance" within PBS. According to two different national polls and a series of focus group sessions, the American public thinks there is no real bias in PBS. The group Fairness and Accurate Reporting claims CPB has it wrong – public broadcasting isn't designed to balance a right/left tilt: "If anything, PBS (and public broadcasting in general) is theoretically designed to balance the voices that dominate the commercial media." The national media watchdog group continues on to point out, "As the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act proposed, public broadcasting should have 'instructional, educational and cultural purposes' and should address 'the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.'"

So how do you like them apples? Nevermind the law. Nevermind the Constitution.
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And so it goes...

...in the on-going Mayoral mess in San Diego!

Voice of San Diego News Alert: April 25
Murphy Resigns
San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy announced his resignation Monday morning effective July 15, paving the way for a mayoral election to be tacked on to this November’s anticipated special election.
Murphy, a former Superior Court judge first elected San Diego’s 33rd mayor in 2000, succumbed to mounting pressures brought about by a $1.37-billion pension deficit and pending federal and local investigations into City Hall. Further worsening the situation, he won last November’s election with only 34 percent of the vote and amid challenges to the victory’s legitimacy.
“What the city needs is a fresh start,” Murphy told reporters.

Immediately, Councilwoman, Donna Frye, said she was now running. Gonna be a hellava battle between now and the Nov 8th special election. One small problem: the Mayoral election, in which Frye was a write-in candidate. She got 5,000 more votes than Murphy, but that many voters didn't fill in the blasted bubble too, when they wrote her in. The decision on whether or not those votes should be counted is still in the court system. Fun! What if the court says those votes should be counted? Would Murphy lose office instantly and Frye move into that chair? Heaven only knows what that monkey wrench thrown into the works would do!

Ain't life grand?
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Pacific Hwy bridge #2..

So S went down today to do more photos of the bridge demolition. There he talked to one of the construction guys who is part of the demo crew. And the guy told him that his dad was one of the guys who built the bridge 52 years ago...and he died two days ago.

I asked if his dad knew the bridge was coming down. Yeah, he did. Hope his son told him it was still as sturdy as the day it was built....in spite of what the city said. And sturdy it is. Half of it is still over half the highway, even after all they'd done. Now they're cleaning up debris. Then they'll tackle the other side...next weekend.
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Another party heard from...

In case you missed this in either the NY Times or Drudge, here is the opening:

April 25, 2005
A Boldface Name Invites Others to Blog With Her
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
LOS ANGELES, April 23 -

Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere.

Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.

She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls "the most creative minds" in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion. It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the clock. It is to be introduced May 9.

Having prominent people join the blogosphere, Ms. Huffington said in an interview, "is an affirmation of its success and will only enrich and strengthen its impact on the national conversation."
Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

"This gives me a chance to sound off with a few words or a long editorial," said Mr. Cronkite, 88, the longtime "CBS Evening News" anchorman. "It's a medium that is new and interesting, and I thought I'd have some fun."

Hah! This should prove to be both fun and interesting indeed. Go to Drudge.com and read the rest.
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What came before...

http://bouphonia.blogspot.com says:

"The fact that Bush's tawdry, heartless counterfeits of family and community and spirituality appeal to so many Americans isn't necessarily proof that they're stupid. More likely, it's proof that they're so starved for these things - and for the sense of belonging they engender - that they'll swallow anything. Because just as starving explorers used to eat strips of leather and splinters of wood while straggling through some wasteland, starving hearts will swallow lies."

I believe the man has a point. S went down on Pacific Hwy today to do some photos of the dismantling of a bridge. Made for sadness. The bridge had been built in 1945 with obvious care. The builders intended for that bridge to last. They'd done a beautiful construction job.

Men passing stopped to watch a bit and comment, "That bridge looks mighty solid to me."

They were responding to the city's comment that it was getting unstable.

The bridge turned out to be anything but unstable. They've had two of those huge machines that bite chunks out of concrete working on it all day, and until now they've managed to chunk out a small part of the middle. They'll be working all night.

S thinks of the men who designed it, built it, were proud of their work, and constructed it to last for a whole lot longer than just to this time. And now it will be gone.

As are so many many buildings, homes, yards, that were part of our memories, our heritage, that Bush uses to pretend those things are still with us. ... knowing full well he intends any vestige of them to be gone, thus to be replaced.

How can you replace a redwood forest?
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Given' 'em hell....

"I don't know who said it, but I thought it was most apt for the moment: 'Too many Christians, not enough lions.'"

Only one guy would have thrown that remark in at the end, and that's Morialefaka, one of my favorite bloggers. For an anthropologist, he has one wicked tongue. He is, of course, speaking of BushCo, et al.

This morn he has such a list of BushCo outrages on his blog as to boggle the mind. And there he is, living right in the red center of one very red state. No matter. Nothing is gonna stop him from speaking his mind. More, when he's so disgusted he can't talk politics for the moment, he writes wonderful short-short stories instead.
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Um...Spirits?...

Weird thing this morning. C and I drove off to have breakfast on Marie's patio. Parked. C went in to secure a table while I remained in the car long enough to sort the morning papers out. LA Times was done. The San Diego Union-Tribune, however, has a mass of blow-in ads most mornings and this morning was no different. I just gather them up and throw them in the trash next to the building on my way in.

I took out a handful--about half an inch thick--and laid them up on the dashboard. While getting the different sections of the paper in order, two more advertising pages--slick paper--slid out and fell on the passenger's side floor. I finished getting the Times and U-T squared away, leaned over, picked up the ads on the floor, reached for the stack on the dashboard.

Man, they were gone! Disappeared. Looked all over inside the car. How they went, where they went, I have not a clue. Doors were closed, windows were closed.

Tell you what...those suckers reappear and I'm gonna have a flippin' fit!
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Keep A Sharp Eye on This One....

Below is a perfect illustration of the Bush Admin's penchant for secrecy and underhanded dealings. Edmonds continues to try to do what she can to safeguard the country but the harder she tries, the more BushCo thwarts her, punishes her, tries to derail her. They're all kinds of upset...she's not "loyal" enough to help cover their asses. Read it and weep.

The Silencing of Sibel Edmonds By James Ridgeway The Village Voice
Thursday 21 April 2005

Court won't let public hear what FBI whistleblower has to say.

Washington, DC - The unsettling story of whistleblower Sibel Edmonds took another twist on Thursday, as the government continued its seemingly endless machinations to shut her up. The US Court of Appeals here denied pleas to open the former FBI translator's First Amendment case to the public, a day after taking the extraordinary step of ordering a secret hearing.

Edmonds was hired after 9-11 to help the woefully staffed FBI's translation department with documents and wiretaps in such languages as Farsi and Turkish. She soon cried foul, saying the agency's was far from acceptable and perhaps even dangerous to national security. She was fired in 2002.

Ever since, the government has been trying to silence her, even classifying an interview she did with 60 Minutes.

Oral arguments in her suit against the federal government were scheduled for this morning, but yesterday the clerk of the appeals court unexpectedly and suddenly announced the hearing would be closed. Only attorneys and Edmonds were allowed in.

No one thought the three-judge appeals court panel would be especially sympathetic to the Edmonds case. It consists of Douglas Ginsburg, who was once nominated for the US Supreme Court by President Reagan. He withdrew after it was revealed he had smoked pot as a college student; he later joined the appeals court. Another member, David Sentelle, was chair of the three-judge panel that appointed Ken Starr to be the special prosecutor investigating Clinton. Karen LeCraft Henderson was appointed a federal judge during the Reagan period, then put on the appeals court by the elder President Bush.

In making a plea to open the Edmonds hearing, the ACLU noted appellate arguments normally are accessible to the public.

Taking her protests to Congress, she won support from the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who exchanged letters with the Justice Department’s Inspector General's office, which said it was making an investigation. In the midst of all this, then attorney general John Ashcroft stepped in and threw down a gag order by invoking the arcane states secrets privilege, under which the government can classify whatever materials it wishes in the interests of national security. Last year, the Edmonds case was dismissed by a federal district court judge. The government had never even bothered to file an answer to her complaint.

The case that was argued this morning concerned a complaint by Edmonds that the government was denying her First Amendment rights. Only after she was fired did Edmonds go to the Congress. She is saying she played by the rules and was squashed by the government without cause or explanation. And when she went outside the official channel to reveal what was going on within the bureau, the government responded by classifying her previous attempts to speak out, including press accounts written before the classification came down. One of them was a 60 Minutes segment.

"The federal government is routinely retaliating against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU. "From firing whistleblowers to using special privileges to cover up mistakes, the government is taking extreme steps to shield itself from political embarrassment while gambling with our safety."

If it were possible, and they're working on it, the methodology they're using against Edmonds, would be in force against all of us.
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Heads Up!

I've just discovered that Blogger has changed settings on Comments. Suggest anyone using Blogger try to comment on own blog, and if you don't like what you're seeing, go change the comment settings back the way you had them. Sheesh!
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Oh, Lord....

I cannot imagine the results from this:

White House to Enforce Abortion-Fetus Law
Fri Apr 22, 6:39 PM ET

White House - AP
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Friday that it would enforce a nearly 3-year-old federal law that requires doctors to attempt to keep alive a fetus that survives an abortion.

In making the announcement, the Department of Health and Human Services Department said it was an attempt to educate the public about the little-known law. Officials said they didn't know how often a fetus survives an abortion and would not say whether there have been any complaints about a lack of enforcement.
"As a matter of law and policy, the (department) will investigate all circumstances where individuals and entities are reported to be withholding medical care from an infant born alive in potential violation of federal statutes for which we are responsible," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a statement.
"We will also take proactive steps to educate state officials, health care providers, hospitals and child protection agencies about their obligation to born-alive infants under federal law," Leavitt said.

The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act of 2002 amends the legal definitions of "person," "human being," "child" and "individual" to include any fetus that survives an abortion procedure.
Those who meet the definition of "individual" are entitled to certain protections under federal law. In particular, hospitals can't refuse to treat them.

HHS spokesman Kevin Keane said the department's action was not politically motivated. He said Leavitt had been asked about the issue at his confirmation hearing.
The National Right to Life Committee welcomed the department's move.
"The 2002 law and today's actions by the agency were both badly needed, because there are those in our society who have convinced themselves that some newborn infants — particularly those born alive during abortions, or with handicaps — are not really legal persons," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the group.

A spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America said the group had no comment and that it did not oppose the 2002 legislation because it did not impede on a woman's right to have an abortion.

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By the Secret Service?!!!...

Man, what I'd give to have been around when these two events occured! Especially the first one. Talk about getting the hell shocked out of you! In the first, it's the bad guy. In the second, it's Kutcher.

SignOnSanDiego.com News Metro -- Man arrested for driving off in taxi*

Kutcher gets 'Punk'd' by senator, Secret Service The San Diego Union-Tribune*

Now I ask you, is this the way those very very serious guys in the dark suits, sunglasses and expressionless faces usually portrayed? I don't think so.... (still laughing)
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Choo-Choo #2

In an earlier post, I mentioned the increased number of train wrecks...and lo and behold, here's what I've just read in today's LA Times!

By Dan Weikel, Times Staff Writer

Alarmed about a surge in train accidents across California, state officials unveiled an ambitious plan Thursday to improve railroad safety and fill a void, they say, in federal enforcement of industry regulations.Meeting in San Francisco, the California Public Utilities Commission endorsed the plan and its 21 recommendations that affect a wide range of rail operations, such as grade crossings and tank cars that carry hazardous materials.

The action also is part of an effort by the commission to regain some of the regulatory power it lost to the federal government after a disastrous rail accident in 1991 that poisoned almost 40 miles of the Sacramento River near Dunsmuir. After the crash, the commission issued new rules designed to prevent similar accidents, but court rulings overturned the regulations, saying it was a federal responsibility.
"We have to be really aggressive in this area," commission Chairman Michael Peevey said in an interview."The whole thing is designed to elevate the safety discussion and the heat to get a better record here."

Commission members said they were concerned about a dramatic increase in train accidents in California since 1997.Excluding rail-crossing incidents, the number of crashes has risen from 105 in 1997 to 172 in 2004.If the trends continue, the commission projects 228 train accidents in California this year, more than double the number of 1997 crashes.In their decision, commissioners noted 10 serious accidents — six involving Union Pacific trains — that occurred mostly in Southern California during the last three years. They included a June 2003 crash in which 37 Union Pacific freight cars rolled unchecked for 33 miles from Montclair to Commerce before derailing.

The new plan calls for a process to cite railroads for rule violations and for more safety inspections by the commission of track, equipment and train operations.The agency also wants broader accident investigations that recommend safety improvements, collision warning devices for trains, and better communication with the Federal Railroad Administration, which regulates the nation's passenger and freight railroads.Commissioners said their action was necessary because the federal agency had failed to adequately address the situation in California. They also said the railroads, in particular Union Pacific, had not provided the commission with satisfactory explanations for the latest rash of accidents.

John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific, said the railroad supported "all efforts to improve rail safety, like inspections and better grade crossings."But Bromley said Union Pacific wanted to avoid a proliferation of state regulations across the nation that could conflict with federal laws and complicate transcontinental rail operations.Regulating the nation's railroads has been primarily a role of the federal government — a responsibility that has been upheld in court.

Problems such as these are a direct result of the Republicans thirst for deregulation of all things.
Always looking out to protect the rich, whether individuals or corporate.
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Duct tape...

This is damned outrageous! Is there any entity, human, organization or agency that this lousy stinking dishonest, administration doesn't want to silence by intimidation or force or whatever means they can get their hands on? Slap the equivalent of duct tape over all mouths? Just look at this supreme bullshit:

Air Marshal Sues Homeland Security Chief
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press WriterThu Apr 21,10:23 PM ET
A federal air marshal on Thursday sued Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to block government rules that prevent him from speaking out about possible security lapses.
The federal complaint, filed in Riverside by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, claims the rules infringe on Frank Terreri's free speech rights.
Terreri, 38, objects to policies he believes threaten aviation security, lawyers said. Among his concerns are visible flight check-in procedures and a formal dress code that could compromise marshals' undercover status, and news stories approved by federal administrators about training and tactics.
Restrictions imposed in August 2002 prohibit airline security agents from criticizing other Federal Air Marshal Service employees, speaking publicly and releasing information about the agency, the lawsuit said.
David Adams, an air marshal spokesman, said officials had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on any pending cases.
Terreri was unavailable for comment because of the rules, his attorneys said.
Terreri, a Southern California resident based at an Irvine field office, was taken off flight duty last October after he allegedly complained to colleagues in an e-mail that a People magazine story about an air marshal posed a safety risk because it discussed operational details.
The discipline also followed strong criticism about agency policies by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, whose air marshal unit is headed by Terreri.
The organization has called for the resignation of air marshal service director Thomas Quinn, who is also named in Terreri's suit.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press.

Homeland Security's idiot decisions and short-sighted rules become more a joke as time goes by. The problem is that with things like the above, they're also becoming a danger to the nation in their own way.

What do you think, Sam?
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