I wonder if there’ll be enough room in hell for this whole gang:
LANGLEY, Va. — CIA interrogators use “a variety of unique and innovative ways” to collect “vital” information from prisoners but
strictly obey laws against torture, CIA Director Porter Goss said.
In his first interview since the clash this month between the Bush
administration and the Republican-controlled [...]

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My, Big Time’s a busy beaver, isn’t he:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the “philosophical guidance” and “flexibility” that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.
Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of [...]

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That is, the legacy of the Catholic church dumping child molesters on unsuspecting parishes - this time, on poor Eskimo villages in Alaska.

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I don’t go into much detail over stories like this, because they don’t surprise me. If you don’t know by now that BushCo did everything in its power to trump up a rationale for invading Iraq, you’re not quite bright and I doubt anything I say would convince you, anyway.

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This piece in the Weekly Standard points out that the Republican party is now made up of Sam’s Club Republicans, not the country club set. The authors suggest a broad series of sweeping initiatives to solidify that base - and a lot of them sound suspiciously like big-government Democratic programs. Hmm…
One tool that Republicans might [...]

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Via Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest:
Apparently the Republican Secretary of State in California may be stealthily REVERSING the previous Democratic Secretary of State’s decertification of Diebold paperless voting machines! Raw Story and Brad Blog have stories about this (links below). Here’s a summary: Democratic Secretary of State Shelley had decertified Diebold machines as dangerous [...]

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Biden says Alito’s views on reapportionment may spark a filibuster:
But Biden, D-Del., said he was most troubled by Alito’s comment about reapportionment under the Supreme Court when it was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The Warren Court, as it became known, ended public school segregation and established the election principle of one-man one-vote.
“The part that [...]

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Julia is truly a writing goddess:
Mr. Bush has gone through the reasoned re-evaluation of the guy whose dad bought him the best car when he find out that the rest of the school, on balance, is pretty much in sympathy with the chess team.

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So what’s new with our paragon of Christian values?
Reed, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia, has acknowledged receiving $4 million in dealings with Abramoff to whip up anti-casino campaigns in the South, but has maintained he did not know the funds came from the gaming proceeds of tribes that wanted to scuttle competition.
E-mails [...]

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The Times public editor on their policy changes for anonymous sources:
There clearly is work to be done. A Page 1 article just three days ago, for instance, offered no explanation for attributing to “a senior administration official” the assurance that President Bush and two other White House officials hadn’t told Bob Woodward about Valerie [...]

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This probably isn’t anything unusual for most of you, but when I get off the train in the morning, I now go up three flights of stairs instead of using the escalator.
When I park my car in the morning, I pick the spot farthest from the train station so I get a nice brisk walk [...]

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Is Woodward’s source Hadley - or Dick Armitage?

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The Times on the Bush pandemic flu program:
Local health departments and hospitals would have to rely on isolating infected people to limit spread of the disease and using standard medical care to reduce death and suffering. Yet this is precisely where the plan is at its weakest. The voluminous document is mostly a laundry list [...]

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I was reading this in the Times this morning and I had to laugh. It sounds like the Times Square hotel I stayed in during my honeymoon - only better.

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Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. John Stossel assures me it’s all liberal hysteria:
Greenland’s glaciers have begun to race towards the ocean, leading scientists to predict that the vast island’s ice cap is approaching irreversible meltdown, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Research to be published in a few days’ time shows [...]

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I was playing a gig in New Jersey and teasing my friend for living there. “It’s easy to get in, but when you want to get out, you have to pay,” I said of the famous one-way tolls. He dared me to use the line in a song, and by the time I got home, [...]

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I can understand why the Republicans don’t want us to leave Iraq. Clearly, it will descend into lawlessness and chaos, and we can’t have more of that.

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This is pretty cute:
After fending off question after question about a CIA leak investigation, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at a Chicago news conference Thursday was then asked the only question that to him was worse.
How did he feel about People magazine rating him one of the sexiest men alive?
“I almost enjoy going back to [...]

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Nathan says this is why we shouldn’t criminalize those who expose CIA agents.

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This could be almost as good as Fitzmas:
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is deciding whether to pursue an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing over how a division of the Halliburton Co. was awarded a contract in Iraq.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., released a letter Friday from Defense Department Assistant Inspector General John R. Crane that said [...]

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I know things like this happen all the time. But it’s so sad when they do:
HE WENT to school in the morning, worked at night and raised his baby daughter in between. Terrell Pough was so good at juggling life as a single teenage father that People magazine profiled him in a four-page August spread.
But [...]

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From one of the regulars over at Democratic Underground:
This summer I posted about a young Army Lt. my wife and I met at a wedding. He was headed to Iraq within the week. As an ex-grunt, I struck up a conversation with him. I mostly just wanted to tell him to keep his head down, [...]

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I even opened for Erin McKeown a few years ago, but I never really listened to her until recently, when someone turned me on to “Grand.” (Now I know what everyone was raving about.) “A Better Wife” is one of my favorites:
I’m just something else he tried
A catalogue of interests
In a catalogue of lives
I [...]

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The next time someone starts talking as if everyone we hold in Gitmo is a bonafide terrorist, send them this:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in “The [...]

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Seems like most European countries are less than eager to be associated with BushCo’s torture regime:
Reports that US intelligence officials have been using European airports secretly to transfer suspected Islamic extremists around the globe have unleashed a storm across Europe.
The Socialist government of Spain, one of the countries whose airports were allegedly used for the [...]

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It occurs to me after watching the Iraq war resolution travesty last night that these incumbents, Democratic and Republican alike, have a rather specific vulnerability: Since so few of them are conversant with the internets, they simply don’t understand how easily and quickly their words will come back to haunt them.
They’re the political equivalent [...]

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I’m sure there’s no connection, no connection at all:
WASHINGTON — Less than a month after Oracle Corp. hired former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s lobbying firm, the Justice Department notified Oracle that an antitrust inquiry into its proposed $5.8 billion acquisition of a rival database software firm had been dropped.
The decision, announced Tuesday by the department, [...]

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Way to go, guys:
The Internal Revenue Service is examining the tax-exempt status of a liberal church in Southern California because its former pastor delivered a fiery antiwar sermon that criticized President Bush by name on the Sunday before the 2004 presidential election.
But All Saints Church in Pasadena is more than just standing its ground. The [...]

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It’s not often that I have anything good to say about Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), but I give credit where credit is due. He defended Jack Murtha tonight on the floor of the House.
Not a transcript but live-blogged at Political Cortex:
WELDON: I’ve learned from Murtha. I want to stand up as a rep from PA, [...]

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From Roll Call:
Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.

Better be careful, fellas. That’s a double-edged sword you’re playing with…

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