In the Electronic Frontier Foundation case against AT&T for illegal spying:
In January, EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the NSA in its massive and illegal spying program. Today, a federal court denied the government’s and AT&T’s motions to dismiss the case, allowing EFF’s suit to proceed.
This is a huge step toward stopping [...]

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The theocrats in this country are busy holding funeral services for fetuses and embryos while they joyfully celebrate the falling of bombs on Lebanon (because it means Jesus must be coming).
Jesus, I suspect, would be as appalled as I am.

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Today I had lunch with Mac of Pesky Apostrophe, who’s one of my favorite bloggers. (By which I mean, one of the ones I read for sheer pleasure.) Mac has this great sense of humor - and style, which you already know if you read her.
She tried to cajole me into a bunch of stuff [...]

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I’m not linking to WorldNetDaily, so here’s the entire new column by Pat Buchanan:
My country has been “torn to shreds,” said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.
Israel must pay for the “barbaric destruction,” said Siniora. [...]

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Question posed to Al Gore in Philadelphia this Tuesday:
“Will you run in 2008?” a woman asked.
“I do not have plans to run for president,” he said, followed by moans from the crowd. “But I haven’t ruled it out 100 percent. I’m 58 years old and that’s the new 57.”

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Sorry about that. The hosting company was down again, all my files disappeared and they had to restore them manually from the backup. Just to thank you for your patience, here’s Aretha:

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The netroots hasn’t been all that generous with Chris, which is a shame - he’s a strong candidate running against an incumbent who was allegedly beating up his mistress, an Iraqi vet and all-around nice guy. He got a rare compliment from my favorite waitress (Catherine at DL) when she said with approval, “You know, [...]

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From the great Charles Pierce:
It just so happens that I have a couple of really ugly-ass dogs in this fight over embryonic stem-cell research. Not many political issues are personal with me, but this one deeply is. I have watched slow death from neurological disease once too often in my life to be anything but [...]

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Imagine, Karl Rove lied!
When White House political adviser Karl Rove signaled last week that President Bush planned to veto the stem cell bill being considered by the Senate, the reasons he gave went beyond the president’s moral qualms with research on human embryos.
In fact, Rove waded into deeply contentious scientific territory, telling the Denver Post’s [...]

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From 2005, Todd live in Liverpool - the bossa nova version:

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Don’t worry - when the media gets done prepping St. John, the public will just love him:
NEW YORK — A new Gallup poll asking Americans theirs views of 25 leading candidates for president in 2008 found that one of the Republican frontrunners, Sen. John McCain, is judged “unacceptable” by 41% of those in his own [...]

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William Kristol, who is either utterly incapable of learning from his own rather recent mistakes, or is an amoral asswipe. It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?

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Not in the least little bit is this good news:
Turkish officials signaled Tuesday they are prepared to send the army into northern Iraq if U.S. and Iraqi forces do not take steps to combat Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there - a move that could put Turkey on a collision course with the United States.

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Steve Clemons at the Washington Note talks about the new Soros book (haven’t read it yet, but I plan to, even if Mr. Soros is oblivious to bloggers):
Planning to hear George Soros this evening speak about his new book, The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror at a meeting hosted by Eric [...]

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And since our Leader insists that violence means things are getting better, things must be very good indeed:
UNITED NATIONS - Nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across Iraq in May and June, a spike in deaths that coincided with rising sectarian attacks across the country, the United Nations said Tuesday.
The report from the U.N. Assistance Mission [...]

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Which is to say, ignore long-term factors like global warming, concentrate on the next quarter returns rathen than investing in infrastructure, and paint everything as an act of God when the only God you believe in is Mammon:
LOS ANGELES — A power outage at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center Tuesday disrupted [...]

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I saw Pat Buchanan on Scarborough Country the other night, and he was ranting against the attacks on Lebanon. He said they were bombing women and children and destroying the country’s infrastructure for something over which civilians had no control, and “this is wrong, it’s just wrong.” (Fortunately, the oily Larry Kudlow was on to [...]

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But but but… this is America, where everyone has a chance to become a millionaire:
WASHINGTON, July 18 — Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year’s insurance.
The poor are also the [...]

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Real progress in Alabama. Gee, maybe Howard Dean was right:
Washington DC – July 18, 2006 – Patricia Todd made history today when voters in Alabama’s 54th legislative district voted to send the Democrat to the State House, marking the first time ever that legislature will include an openly gay Representative. The Gay & Lesbian Victory [...]

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I presume they have pictures of the judge with a sheep, because why else would embarrassment be a national security matter?
The public must be prevented from learning the contents of a conversation between Tony Blair and President George Bush about the conduct of the war in Iraq - crucial evidence in a forthcoming official secrets [...]

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I guess this is where Brownie ended up?
Officials in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, failed to issue a tsunami warning despite receiving data about Monday’s earthquake 20 minutes before the first wave struck the island of Java.
One official told the Guardian they were too busy monitoring the aftershocks of the 7.7-magnitude quake that triggered the tsunami [...]

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God must not have wanted him to win:
Former Georgia Republican Party chairman Ralph Reed lost his bid for the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor last night, the first electoral defeat this year that can be traced directly to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

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Last night, a line of storms blew through and it’s a little cooler, at least for now. But I thought this article on adapting to extreme heat was still interesting.

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Kweisi Mfume is a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maryland, and I think he’s a really good guy. Watch the video and if you can, give him a few bucks, because he’s in a dead heat with his Republican primary opponent:

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I was talking to MyDD’s Chris Bowers, who dropped by DL tonight after seeing Al Gore. We were discussing the strategy adopted by several presidential campaigns to contribute a staffer to specific targeted congressional races. This is the plan director Mary Beth Williams has already developed for DraftGore2008.org; she figures the best way to win [...]

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Those mid-term poll numbers must be really, really bad or they never would have defeated this in the House:
WASHINGTON Jul 18, 2006 (AP)— The House on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, ending for another year a congressional debate that supporters of the ban hope will still reverberate in this fall’s election. [...]

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One of those recurring bad dreams:
A proposed UN Security Council resolution would give Iran a short time to suspend uranium enrichment and construction of a nuclear reactor that produces plutonium or face the prospect of economic and diplomatic sanctions, a council diplomat said Tuesday.
It calls for the suspension to be verified by the International [...]

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Drinking Liberally at Tangier, 18th & Lombard, 6 - 9 p.m. Free wings and drink specials for the early birds (who, as you know, catch the tequila worm).

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The Beatles:

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