And obviously, we’re not invited. If they have this much to hide, they’re up to no good. Wonder when the ladies and gentlemen of the Press Corpse will admit that one piece of common sense?
The corruption scandal involving Republican former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the bribery plea of former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) have [...]

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Matt Yglesias:
At various points in his remarks, Hayden said the program targeted communications “that we have reason to believe are al Qaeda communications,” that involve “someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda” or that “we have a reasonable basis to believe involve al Qaeda or one of its affiliates.”
“Reasonable basis” here is in contrast [...]

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By Fallenmonk. Here’s my assignment, from my 23rd post ever:
Some of the intelligent, thoughtful people who reluctantly support this war would be a hell of a lot more reluctant if they saw this in the wider context of the neoconservatives’ Grand Master Plan for reshaping the Middle East.
When you’re tapped, here’s what you have to [...]

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Strange days, indeed:
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii — Officials closed the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano to the public after a snowstorm shut down access for the first time this winter season.
Clouds blanketed Hawaii’s tallest peak this weekend. A blanket of snow forced everyone to evacuate, including park rangers.
“We’ve got to make sure and keep everybody [...]

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Connecting the dots:
Washington (AP) - A former campaign manager of Rep. Tom DeLay who also ran an organization linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was subpoenaed by a Texas prosecutor Monday. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle filed documents in Austin seeking records from Robert G. Mills in connection with a probe of DeLay, who [...]

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I’m seeing things all over the place indicating the Dems are (yes, I swear, I’m not making this up) actually going to filibuster Alito. Nothing absolute, but the signs are there. Keep your fingers crossed.

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Just so you remember.

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Okay, they can still use donations over at Wampum, and since they’re the nice people who sponsor the Koufax awards, please give what you can.
The first round of Best New Blog nominees are up, and in a change from past years, they’re leaving them up without taking votes just yet. Why? Because they want people [...]

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All the days of the year. I do believe, I do believe:
“There was a discussion about what to do about Mr. Wilson,” the current State Department official said. “There was a decision to leak a story to the press - I think a few journalists - about the Wilson trip, that it was a non-issue [...]

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Click here to fax your Senators and ask them to vote against Alito’s confirmation. Don’t be shy - fax the Republicans, too!

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Gee, if there was a real reporter there, they might ask him how many members of Congress he notified:
MANHATTAN, Kan. - President Bush on Monday rejected critics’ assertion that he broke the law by authorizing domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, saying he was doing what Congress authorized him to do to protect Americans from terrorist [...]

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36.
Must be time for some terra, terra, terra!

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No Drinking Liberally at Johnny Brenda’s tonight, it’s closed for a private party. Tomorrow night as usual at Tangier, 18th and Lombard, 6 -9 p.m.
I won’t be there this week, but I plan to attend (despite my sinuses) next Tuesday so I can watch the State of the Union address with a suitably snarky crowd.

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You know what I really hate? Rebates. I just went to the local Staples to pick up some special binders for our bookkeeper - $7.98 apiece, but a $2 rebate on each one.
On a binder. Not a TV set or a computer - a binder. I suppose next we’ll have to apply for rebates [...]

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Sirius Radio to censor Howard Stern. Hey, if people wanted censored Howard Stern, why are they paying all that money?

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More good economic news. Watch those stock prices soar!
Ford says it plans to close 14 manufacturing plants in North America and cut between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs in the coming years as tries to stem it losses and adjust to its new, significantly lower market share. The nation’s No. 2 automaker says it is closing [...]

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New York Times editorial today:
The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around this nomination. But there is no reason to believe that Judge Alito is any more popular than the president who nominated him. Outside a small but vocal group of hard-core conservatives, America has greeted the nomination with a shrug [...]

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William Rivers Pitt has a message for Congressional Democrats:
You can stomp your feet and yell at the wall. You can put your head in your hands and weep. You can sit silently and be simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home, and be damned to actually doing [...]

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Oh, look. Another Bush judicial nominee with that refreshingly casual attitude toward ethical issues!
God, people are so uptight. Why wouldn’t you want a judge who’s on the side of the corporations coming before him?

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Interesting news for geeks: Oracle is releasing a free, stripped-down version that should be helpful to small businesses.

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Another disaster waiting to happen - and another example of tilting the rules in favor of the rich:
Just as with Bush’s Social Security personal accounts proposal, the president would be seeking to persuade Americans to rely less on government-provided or employer-provided safety nets and more on themselves.
He would also exhibit the kind of combativeness that [...]

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Well, come on. They have all those kickbacks to pay and if they actually provided what they’re paid for, they wouldn’t keep those healthy profit margins:
Troops and civilians at a U.S. military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year, and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton Co., could not get their company [...]

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Yeah, this has been going on for a while:
The Justice Department’s voting section, a small and usually obscure unit that enforces the Voting Rights Act and other federal election laws, has been thrust into the center of a growing debate over recent departures and controversial decisions in the Civil Rights Division as a whole.
Many current [...]

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I was reading this over at Duncan’s and I’m just shaking my head. Well, I was in this journalmalism thing myself for a while and here are what I consider to be some pertinent truths:
1. Reporters are lazy. Without sharp, demanding editors, they will do the least possible amount of work on a story - [...]

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The Medium Lobster saves the Democratic Party out of the goodness of his heart:
There’s just one man Americans trust to have the bold, tough vision to save them from the disaster of President Bush’s bold, tough vision, and that man is President Bush. Faced with opposition this strong, the Democrats’ best strategy for victory is [...]

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Via Can O’Fun, this great video of Al Sharpton putting Ron Christie in his GOP-ass-kissing place over the fabricated Hillary Clinton plantation “controversy.” (I especially like the part where he points out that the Republicans fought to keep Martin Luther King’s birthday from becoming a holiday, “and now they’re telling us how to celebrate it.”)

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I caught some of Press the Meat this morning, and I remember thinking this was odd, but I was brushing my teeth at the time and didn’t give it much thought. Then I read this on Huffington Post. Basically, Tubby Tim asked Barack Obama to explain what the other colored guy (Harry Belafonte) was up [...]

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Curiouser and curiouser:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as “bizarre” a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
“There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there,” Aziz said on [...]

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This WashPo story says businesses will eventually be offered a different class of Internet service - and explains how that’ll affect the rest of us:
But lately the issue, a matter of heated debate on obscure blogs and among analysts like me, has begun to attract the attention of the mainstream press. There are a couple [...]

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Ann Wright:
This weekend I am a juror on the Commission evaluating whether the Bush administration has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Today, Barbara Olshansky, the lead attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the persons most knowledgeable about conditions in Guantanamo Prison, told us that over 250 people are on a [...]

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