Remember when Congress voted to expand the spying powers, and I said that, from the rumors I was hearing, they were convinced an attack on the Capitol was imminent? Turns out the Bush administration put out the bogus information. Rep. Jane Harman has gone public with the story:

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David Shuster on “Tucker” lets GOP congresswoman have it:

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I swear to God, I’m not making this up: I sprained my hand today on a ball of wax.
The wax is from the small cheeses I bring to work as a snack. I like to fidget, and for the past few weeks, I’ve been saving the wax coating they come in and kneading it all [...]

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My favorite scene:

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British physicians see an advance screening, and talk about their reactions. Pretty interesting.

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But really, it’s more like powerlessness:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, who didn’t veto a bill for nearly six years, is now embracing the power to constrain the Democratic-controlled Congress even as his popularity remains low.
The strategy has blocked Congress from forcing troop drawdowns in Iraq and given Bush substantial leverage on children’s health policies, federal [...]

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I’m surprised that Richard’s still so shocked that the national media has been so clearly co-opted. As I’ve mentioned before, I think many of them are even on the CIA payroll, just like the glory days of Operation Mockingbird. (Google it.)

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Or we can throw them in the pond, and if they float, they’re witches and we can burn them!

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Because we know our president would never lie:
The oil deal signed between Hunt Oil and the government in Iraq’s Kurdish region earlier this month has raised eyebrows, in no small part because it appears to undercut President Bush’s hope that Iraq could draft national legislation to share revenue from the country’s vast oil reserves. Making [...]

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Link:
Youth For Christ officials said Saturday the center for teenagers will be closed until further notice following accusations that the director had a sexual relationship with a girl beginning when she was 13 years old.
Martin Moore, 42, handed in his letter of resignation Thursday and was arrested later that day on sexual battery charges. He [...]

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Let’s not forget that even the vets who still have their limbs are still coming home injured:
Scientists trying to understand traumatic brain injury from bomb blasts are finding the wound more insidious than they once thought.
They find that even when there are no outward signs of injury from the blast, cells deep within the brain [...]

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How could I have forgotten?

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Glenn Greenwald on the problem with Dianne Feinstein:
As Digby said yesterday of Senate Democrats: “it surely seems true that they loathe the Democratic base as much as the Republicans do.” Hence, Dianne Feinstein funds Bush’s war with no limits while condemning MoveOn. She votes to vest vast new surveillance powers in the President. She defends [...]

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Bonnie Raitt, 1977 on her first European tour:

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Cheney and his gang:
Newsweek Magazine reported Sunday that Vice President Richard Cheney may have considered a plan for Israeli missile strikes against an Iranian nuclear site in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic.
Citing two unnamed sources the magazine [...]

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On a late June morning, Ms. Loewe lay in bed, emaciated and writhing in pain. Her left arm and hand were swollen to three times their size from lymphedema, a side effect of her breast surgery. Embarrassed by her appearance, she hid the huge black scar left on the top of her head by her [...]

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It’s gotten to the point where I don’t especially trust the official version of anything in this administration, but here’s their explanation of what happened with those nuclear warheads that ended up in Louisiana:
Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by The Washington Post point to security failures [...]

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When I read stories like this, I think about Michael Moore’s question in “Sicko”: Who are we?
Who are we that our sick elders, the most vulnerable among us, are left to the mercies of for-profit corporations? What does that say about us? What does it say about this nation’s unquestioning adoration of the free market [...]

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You know, the members of the Beltway Village who are all so cozy when it come to money and power:
The idea of granting blanket retroactive amnesty for private companies and high government officials who repeatedly broke the law in how they spied on Americans is the stuff of tin-pot third-world dictatorships. It is so corrupt [...]

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This one leaves me speechless:
“America’s Grandma,” Barbara Bush, is at it again. No, she is no longer advising us that half-drowned African American’s who survived Katrina should be comfortable in their distress because they are accustomed to living in squalor, today she is offering up advice on how to raise our children - based I [...]

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What an interesting story. A human rights attorney who writes for Harper’s has received information that the White House targeted John Edwards and Hillary Clinton several years ago - to criminalize any irregularities in their campaign fundraising. (Can you say “Norman Hsu”?)
This ties in nicely with the wholesale firing of prosecutors who wouldn’t play ball, [...]

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Your Love Life is Like Annie Hall

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.”
You believe that love (if you even believe in love!) is a very complicated thing.
Maybe love is pain. Or maybe it’s all a big therapy session. You’re still figuring it out.
Your [...]

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As it turns out, we were never quite paranoid enough for these people:
The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, [...]

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Michael Kinsley:
Goodness gracious. oh, my paws and whiskers. Some of the meanest, most ornery hombres around are suddenly feeling faint. Notorious tough guys are swooning with the vapors. The biggest beasts in the barnyard are all aflutter over something they read in the New York Times. It’s that ad from MoveOn.org — the one that [...]

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Why, it just oozes from them.

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Ain’t they?
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh, N.C., where Blackwater is based, is handling the [...]

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Krugman asks: Is this the Wile E. Coyote moment?

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Lutton looks at Blackwater vs. the German Freikorps.

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And why oh why can’t we ever have a serious debate on public policy in this country by anything other than bumper-sticker slogans?
In spite of knowing her ideas probably won’t get the open debate they deserve in America’s major media, I’m really looking forward to cracking open Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” this weekend.

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This is awfully fun to play with (sound card needed).

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