GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
Oh, I’m sure it’ll all be fine:
WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration misled the public about its role in obtaining personal information about 12 million airline passengers to test a new computerized system that screens for terrorists, according to a government investigation.
The report, released Friday by Homeland Security Department Acting Inspector [...]

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SAVIORS
I predict we’ll see more of this:
FAIRVIEW — A man accused of placing a bounty on the head of Michael Schiavo and on a judge who recently denied a request to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was arrested Friday in Buncombe County.
Richard Alan Meywes of Fairview was charged in a federal complaint in the Middle [...]

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INSPIRATION
Get Your War On looks at feeding tubes.

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HIGH NOON
Via Kevin, something that shows “Jeb Bush is now certifiably batshit insane”:
MIAMI - Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn’t to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted - but they stopped short when local [...]

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IF NEWS WAS PRINTED IN SUPERMARKET TABLOIDS
[Via Are We Still A Democracy.]

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A DIFFERENT VERSION
More questions about the Giuliana Sgrena shooting in Iraq:
One of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it’s often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is treated as a [...]

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ROUNDING THEM UP
Wonder how many more there are?
WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators will look into whether the Bush administration violated any laws when it paid syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative, Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg said.
The Government Accountability Office told the two senators, who had requested the inquiry, [...]

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ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
When things are at a standstill in my life, I start to wonder if it isn’t time for these boot heels to be wandering. Lately, I’ve been toying with the idea of moving to Texas, maybe getting a job on a small newspaper.
I mean, think about it: Everything’s bigger in Texas. And writing about [...]

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IF THEY WERE ANIMALS ON A MOVIE SET, THEY’D HAVE MORE RIGHTS
Where do workers get the idea they’re entitled to anything these days?
Catherine Landolt didn’t know it when she accused her boss of depriving her of lunch breaks, but she was about to be swept into a political tempest over employees’ rights to catch a [...]

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DIAGNOSIS
Wolcott:
Two prominent neurologists who have asked to remain anonymous have examined CNN behind closed doors and determined that the network is irreversibly brain-dead, as flooded with cerebral fluid as the hull of the S.S. Poseidon. It still retains some primitive reflexes and signs of animation, but a brain-scan revealed the sort of minimal activity usually [...]

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FRIDAY FUN
This game is eminently pointless, yet lots of fun.

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THOSE WHO CAN, DO
Via Metafilter:
The New York City Department of Education has recalled 3rd-7th grade basic math prep materials after finding multiple errors.
Like what? Multiplication errors, addition errors, poorly worded questions, and incorrectly spelling Fourth on the cover of the Fourth Grade Book. “The fact is, ifthird- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made [...]

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TABLE TALK
This morning, I made an omelette with cheddar cheese and marinated artichokes. It was perfect.
So what did you eat for breakfast today?

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RESURRECTION
An Easter thought, via Mark Kleiman:
A prominent American Jesuit argues that “don’t remove the feeding tube” is merely the opinion of an extremist faction in the Vatican, and not the doctrine of the Church. He claims that Florida’s bishops are on his side.
Moreover, he makes the obvious argument that Christians, of all people, should not [...]

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CONFRONTING THE DRUG COMPANIES
Brazil draws a line in the sand:
Bolstering its reputation as a world leader in price wars over AIDS medications, Brazil is threatening to break antiretroviral drug patents unless drug companies allow it to manufacture generic versions of four major AIDS drugs.
A spokesperson for the Brazilian health ministry offered no comment when reached [...]

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THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY
Bob Herbert:
All the budgets contain more than $100 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, which makes a mockery of the G.O.P.’s budget-balancing rhetoric. When Congress returns from its Easter recess, the Republican leadership will try to reconcile the differences in the various proposals. Whatever happens will be bad news for [...]

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SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER
Over at Daily Kos, one of the regulars posted her notes from a speech Sy Hersh gave yesterday:
There is a separate wing for women prisoners. They send messages out–please come and kill me, I’ve been defiled.
There is increasing squeezing of prisoners. There have been 10 investigations of what went on there. [...]

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UNDER MY THUMB
Interesting story:
The appointment of George Bush’s leading hawk as head of the World Bank was heading for a crisis over his relationship with a senior British employee.
Influential members of staff at the international organisation have complained to its board that Paul Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is so besotted with Oxford-educated [...]

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RUNNING IN PLACE
I can’t tell whether this is good news. Carter, yes. But Jim Baker?:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President Jimmy Carter will lead a bipartisan commission to examine problems with the U.S. election system, American University’s Center for Democracy and Election Management said on Thursday.
Carter, a Democrat whose Carter Center has monitored more than 50 [...]

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CORPORATE WELFARE
Why don’t we just create a national healthcare plan and be done with it, instead of playing these shell games?
Wal-Mart Corp., which is getting millions of dollars in state incentives to create jobs in Florida, has more employees and family members enrolled in Medicaid than any company in the state.
The giant retailer, which has [...]

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FACTS OPTIONAL
GovExec.com:
The top Democrat on a House Homeland Security subcommittee joined a leading civil-liberties organization Thursday in calling on the Bush administration to delay the summer launch of a system to screen airline passengers because they said the system is not ready.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California said [...]

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REASONS
For the first time, Billmon explains why he stopped blogging - and why he’s back:
So what are you supposed to do when high officials in your own government – in power, right now – brag publicly, if anonymously, about committing (or at least enabling) bestial war crimes? What do the Nuremberg Principles have to say [...]

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WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: “It’s Not,” Aimee Mann, Lost In Space.

I keep going round and round on the same old circuitA wire travels underground to a vacant lot Where something I can’t see interrupts the currentAnd shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot And from behind the screen, it can look so perfect But [...]

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NEWSPAPERS
From a poster over at DU:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people whorun the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who thinkthey run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who thinkthey should run the country and who are very good atcrossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read [...]

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FOOTLOOSE, IRAQI STYLE
From Doug Ireland, some more of that democracy we imported to Iraq:
The Bush administration and the supporters of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq keep telling us what a “success” they’ve been having in creating “democracy” in the country post-invasion. Well, here’s a “success” story from today’s Times of London that gives a rather [...]

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PROGRESS?
So far, so good:
The Federal Election Commission revealed yesterday that it plans to take what one of its commissioners termed a “relatively nonintrusive” approach to regulating political campaigns on the Internet.
The agency, which is beginning to consider how and whether to restrict blogs, e-mail and other online activities, released a document describing the legal [...]

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SHADY
Daily Kos has some stuff on Jeff Gannon and his apparently bogus military service.

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There goes my baby, off to her glamorous new life in the Big Apple. *sniff*  

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IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY SAFE
Must have been some other “safest city in Iraq” they were talking about:
But violence carried on Thursday as bullets flew in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, a Sunni town west of the Iraqi capital, a defense ministry official said, without giving a toll.
An AFP reporter said [...]

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CONNECTING THE DOTS
Via Cursor:
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan decries what he sees as “the growing influence of right wing conservative foundation[s]” on bioethics, and reprints a finding that “many of the attorneys, activists and organizations working to keep Schiavo on life support all these years have been funded by members of the Philanthropy Roundtable.”

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