Oh, thank God. I was beginning to think we’d lost him:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Arlen Specter, R.-Pennsylvania, said Thursday that Senate Democrats were just playing politics with their attacks on the Bush administration including their request for a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
I figure he does these about-faces instead of going to [...]

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I had no idea how common this was:
“I was in the other room, and they came in and threw me on the bed,” Bonnie said. “And they all held me down.”
Bonnie never reported the rape. She says she had been told many times by her mother and other relatives that nobody was going to take [...]

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If you should want a sizable discount from your cable provider, you might want to try the following: Simply call them up and ask them how much cheaper it would be to go back to regular cable instead of digital. (They’re very, very motivated to keep you using digital cable.)
This has been another public service [...]

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If you saw Tony Snow on Hardball tonight, telling Tweety how Gonzales didn’t lie but it was too secret to talk about, yadda yadda yadda, you might have been impressed by how impassioned and credible he sounded.
He’s a press secretary. They keep him insulated from the bad stuff so he can go out and defend [...]

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Is this enough to motivate the naysayers - subverting the vote illegally?
Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his [...]

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You know, if the Senate would just call it “legislative waterboarding” and not “oversight,” I bet they could get Cheney to support it. - Ana Marie Cox.

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Oh yes:
WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.
UPDATE: Marcy is not so thrilled.

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New video from Robert Greenwald:

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Stock market and the housing market. Two plunges in one!

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When Jesus is taking the believers to heaven?
(AP) - Fewer U.S. environmental cops are tracking criminal polluters these days, their numbers steadily dropping below levels ordered by Congress. They are pursuing fewer environmental crimes in a strategy by the Bush administration to target bigger polluters.
The number of the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal investigators has dropped [...]

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Marvin Gaye:

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Booman delineates Gonzales’ problem.

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Somerby eviscerates Chris Matthews over his Michael Moore “interview”:
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman noted an astonishing fact: The Brits run a better health system ours—at only about 40 percent of the cost!
And oh yes—Huckabee said that Moore is just too goddamned fat!
Given the choice of those two critiques, which one did Matthews decide [...]

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A very informative Max Blumenthal look at the intersection of politics and “End Times” Christian radicals:

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This is why I’m happy kids read Harry Potter. God knows, they don’t see our Congressional leadership standing up very often:
Leah Anthony Libresco: I was one of 50 students to write and sign a letter asking the president to condemn torture. While I wouldn’t say Harry Potter was my only role model in speaking truth [...]

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I’m so used to Arlen Specter pulling away the football at the last second, and yet, I have this nagging feeling (wishful thinking?) he might actually do something this time. I’m not betting money or anything, but you never know:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) plans to review the Senate testimony of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice [...]

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Harry Reid tells the truth, and the RNC pulls out the smelling salts.

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Now an insured adult, and in trouble. Utterly heartbreaking:
When my son was 16, he had an abscessed tooth that was discovered only when it began to hurt. We hadn’t had regular access to health care, let alone dental care, since he was 13, and he hadn’t seen a dentist for many years because I simply [...]

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Via Avedon:
Glenn Greenwald on Gonzales: “That is what Alberto Gonzales does. He lies to protect the President. And the President will never fire him. Gonzales isn’t keeping his job despite his willingness to lie to Congress, but because of it. Congress has no choice but to act meaningfully — impeachment of Gonzales and a Special [...]

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Reacting to yesterday’s Gonazales hearing, even Josh Marshall finally discusses impeachment:
Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I’m not sure I’ve seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules which our whole system is built on just don’t apply to [...]

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The BBC has a radio documentary about the attempted right-wing coup here in 1934 against FDR:
The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell House [...]

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Iraq isn’t the problem:
WASHINGTON — A day after President Bush sought to present evidence showing that Iraq is now the main battlefront against Al Qaeda, the chief US intelligence analyst for international terrorism told Congress that the network’s growing ranks in Pakistan and Afghanistan pose a more immediate threat to the United States.
In rare testimony [...]

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James Meek with a most informative review of a book about Blackwater.

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And this was a really good dog:
A black Labrador who became a national canine hero after burrowing through white-hot, smoking debris in search of survivors at the World Trade Center site died Wednesday after a battle with cancer.
“But against all odds he became a world-class rescue dog,” said Flood, a member of Utah Task Force [...]

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I was feeling happy about the new Target opening near me - until I read this.

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You may recognize these guys from Red State Update as the pranksters who asked the question about Al Gore during the YouTube debate. CNN interviewed them; they apparently thought they were the real thing:

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When you’ve lost Fred Hiatt, there’s something terribly wrong.

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Why are Republicans so violent?

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Dr. S. on Bush promising to veto the expansion of health insurance for children:
If you think that it’s only the universally detested Bush that’s craven enough to oppose providing healthcare to children, it’s not.
Six Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voted for the SCHIP expansion, which is being heavily opposed by the tobacco industry. But [...]

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Today is the 33rd anniversary of this stirring speech, made by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan on the occasion of Richard Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors:
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that [...]

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