Livingston Group Sues Candidate for Defamation for Revealing Ties to CACI

A Washington lobbying shop filed a $1 million defamation suit Friday against the Democratic Party of Virginia and a legislative candidate over an ad that links the firm to the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The ad in question said, “Tim Hugo’s lobbying firm represents the ones who were responsible for torture abuses at Abu Ghraib.”

The Livingston Group said it formally represented CACI International, which provided civilian interrogators to assist military personnel at the notorious Iraqi prison. The firm said CACI hired Livingston to lobby Congress on a different issue and has not been a client since 2004, a year before Hugo joined the lobbying shop.

“The Livingston Group was extremely upset that anyone would link them to companies involved in the Abu Ghraib incident,” said Ben DiMuro, a Livingston attorney.

Apparently they were hoping to keep it a secret.

I CAN HAZ COLLECTORS ITEM?

J.K. Rowling has completed her first book not to feature teen wizard Harry Potter -- an illustrated collection of magical fairy stories titled "The Tales of Beedle the Bard."

Only seven copies of the book are being printed, Rowling said Thursday. One will be auctioned next month to raise money for a children's charity, while the others have been given away as gifts.

Rowling drew the illustrations herself and provided the handwriting for the five stories that make up the collection of fairytales.

It's Official: Hollywood Writers Will Strike

This afternoon leaders of the Writer's Guild will send out a press release announcing the strike and details of how the strike will work, which includes picketing for several hours per day by members.

The Screen Actors Guild supports the strike.

The Teamsters may support as well.

At issue: residuals over DVD sales, internet broadcasts, and other new sources of revenue.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I was an English professor who became a psychiatrist
and a driving force behind it was my awareness that
James Joyce had a daughter who had schizophrenia."

Link to full story

GREAT MOMENTS IN BUSINESS

Supermarket loses $10 million in online scam

A supermarket chain received e-mails supposedly from Frito-Lay and American Greetings asking to change their bank accounts. They did--but no one checked.

Supervalu, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the US, which owns the Albertsons chain, was told to wire all future payments to new bank accounts. So they did. Now they're trying to get it back.

HEAD TURNING QUOTE OF THE DAY

Tony Snow:

"If You Make the Mistake
of Lying to the Press, You're Dead"

Okay....

SHINING A LIGHT ON FASCISM IN ARIZONA

A Maricopa County Superior Court will hold a hearing on Wednesday to decide if the the records of a grand-jury investigation into the Phoenix New Times newspaper should be unsealed.

The County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, says he has closed the investigation and dropped the underlying charges against the alternative weekly newspaper. This was only after newspaper writers, lawyers, bloggers, and people interested in freedom in general made a fuss.

Thomas said he will not contest the public-records request by The Arizona Republic and Channel 12 to have the case unsealed.

"The application to unseal the grand-jury material is intended to help the public understand what in the world necessitated this protracted investigation of a newspaper on a misdemeanor charge," said Republic attorney David Bodney. "We hope to determine if there was a misuse of process or power by the special prosecutor. And if there was abuse, to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Well put.

PUSHING BACK AGAINST CREEPING FASCISM

Apparently papers which are members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) are now providing links on their Web sites to websites which list the home address of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

They are doing this in solidarity with the Phoenix New Times, whose founders were arrested and jailed last week.

An excerpt from a press AAN release:

Last week, Phoenix New Times' founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were arrested and jailed after the paper published a story about the grand jury and subpoenas they had received that demanded detailed Internet records of any person who had visited the newspaper's website since 2004, as well as all notes and records from any reporter who had written about the sheriff in the preceding three years.

After Larkin and Lacey were arrested an outpouring of shock and anger accompanied widespread media coverage of the case. The response created a groundswell of support for New Times. The charges were dropped less than 24 hours later after Thomas admitted that his office had made "serious missteps" in the case.

"The actions of Mr. Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio in this case are beyond outrageous," said AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel. "They abused their offices by engaging in Gestapo-like tactics designed to silence a newspaper that has been highly critical of them in the past."

Added AAN First Amendment Chair Tim Redmond, executive editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Our association and its members won't tolerate this sort of attack on the right of a member paper to publish information that is and ought to be public record."

"This was a victory for the First Amendment, the constitution and for our readers right to read our newspaper without the government spying upon them," said Larkin and Lacey in a joint statement. "As the Federal press shield legislation moves from the House to the Senate, we hope people will remember what happened to reporters, editors and readers in Phoenix."

Virgin of the Rocks

Bidding on a pebble picked up on a New Zealand beach reached $26,700 after the owner declared she wouldn't take less that $50,000 for the small rock.

The 1 cm stone was discovered last year by Christchurch woman Lisa-Marie Corlet on Kaikoura's South Beach.

According to stuff.co.nz, she didn't realize the significance of the find until she got home, when she saw an image of Mary on the stone.

Corlet, however, decided to hang onto the Holy Mother as a "good-luck charm". She confirmed: "I got it and I started having an awesome run of luck."

She now says: "I won't take less than $50,000 for it. If someone is willing to pay $28,000 for a piece of toast, I'm sure someone out there would pay at least that for rock."

HI, TECH SUPPORT?

This month, Timothy Scott Short allegedly stole a computer and printer used for producing driver's licenses.

However, the stolen PC has a lock that prevents its unauthorized use and its key was stored elsewhere. Without the software on the PC, the printer won't print licenses. Needless to say that this is not the kind of printer you can pick up at CompUSA.

Two days after the theft, Digimarc's tech help line got a call from someone named "Scott" who wanted to buy software for the same model of printer that was stolen. The tech staff tipped off the Secret Service, who listened to a recording of the caller's voice and recognized it as Short's from another, unrelated investigation.

A Secret Service agent said the printer's only use is the manufacture of licenses, and added that the personal information for as many as 500 Missouri residents was on the PC.

Short was charged with felony possession of "document-making implements" Short faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

CNET News Story

SWEEPING SENATE BILL IMMUNIZES IPS, SEARCH ENGINES, E-MAIL PROVIDERS FOR SPYING

"A new Senate bill would protect not only telephone companies from lawsuits claiming illegal cooperation with the National Security Agency. It would retroactively immunize e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging services too.

Link to story on CNET

The broad language appears in new legislation that a Senate committee approved by a 13-to-2 vote on Thursday during a meeting closed to the press and public. It enjoys the support of the panel's Democrats and Republicans.

It goes further in crafting an impenetrable legal shield than similar proposals in the House of Representatives, such as the so-called Restore Act (PDF), which immunizes only "communications service providers." Bowing to pressure from President Bush, House Democrats postponed a vote on the Restore Act last week.

The broader Senate bill (PDF) would sweep in Web sites, e-mail providers and more. "My suspicion is the scope of the immunity provision is the most revealing way to assess the scope of the underlying authority," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center."

MIKE HUCKABEE AND A CULTURE OF TRUTH

Via Josh Marshall's TPM:

"presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governoer Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, actually told a crowd yesterday that "most" of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "clergymen."

"As these folks at Politifact.com point out, one out of 56 were clergymen."

Isn't lying a sin?

NASA TAKES CUES FROM AIRPLANE II

Buck Murdock:

"Lieutenant...How would you handle this?"

Lieutenant:

"We could try ignoring it, sir."

Buck Murdock:

"I see..... Pretend nothing has happened and hope everything's all right in the morning?"

Lieutenant:

"Just a thought, sir."

Buck Murdock:

"I've considered that. There's got to be a better angle."

*****************************************************************

NASA WITHHOLDS SAFETY INFORMATION

(AP) -- Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

Link to AP Story

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results ''present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry.''

GIGANTIC TRASH ISLAND FLOATING IN PACIFIC

An enormous island of trash twice the size of Texas is floating in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Chris Parry, with the California Coastal Commission, said the so-called 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch', "has been growing a brisk rate since the 1950s," The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.

The floating pile of trash is 80 percent plastic, and weighs more than 3.5 million tons.

Link to story

HYDROGEN CARS ROLL OUT NY, LA & DC

This is interesting.....

Chevrolet is in the midst of launching "Project Driveway," an ambitious program where more than 100 fuel cell electric vehicles will be put in the hands of select consumers for the largest market test ever of its kind.

Link to CNET story

Testing will take place over the next several months in the Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. metro areas. Drivers range from average consumers to business owners to policy makers. Chevy reps also promise that some cars will go into the hands of "celebrities," but no names have been dropped yet.

The Equinox fuel cell cars run solely on hydrogen, which, at this point in time, is a drawback for the average consumer. Although we produce 40 billion kilograms of hydrogen globally every year -- enough to power 130 million fuel cell-powered cars -- hydrogen fueling stations are still scarce.

he three test metro areas were chosen, in part, because drivers have access to hydrogen filling stations within a reasonable radius of their homes and/or places of business. General Motors reps say building a hydrogen fueling station infrastructure wouldn't be as difficult as some might think; they say the initial investment of about $10 to $15 billion required to put 12,000 stations within two miles of the top 100 urban areas is close to the amount of money being currently spent on maintaining existing oil pipelines and gasoline manufacturing equipment.

Tiki

Tiki Barber on MSNBC, as an expert on football, and giving his insight on the New York Giants

Question he is unlikely to be asked:

"Are the Giants a better team without Tiki Barber?"

Laura Bush in Middle East

Laura Bush on ABC's Good Morning America, is traveling to the Middle East to "use her popularity to boost the popularity of the United States."

Bush says "the UAE and Kuwait and all those other countries" are strong friends and allies - also she is angry that Myanmar does not have free speech.

Robin Roberts quotes Tom Friedman to Laura Bush.

Laura Bush agrees with Tom Friedman that "we should export hope."

But first we may have to attack Iran.

what's up der?

FASCISM IN MARICOPA COUNTRY

This story, out of Phoenix, is a big deal, if you care about press freedom, blogging, or individual rights.

Basically, the Phoenix New Times was investigating the Sheriff's real estate holdings, and in the course of doing so they published his home address. He's been on a vindictive tear ever since:

New York Times, (by David Carr):
"Two executives from Village Voice Media — a company that owns a number of alternative weeklies including The Village Voice, The LA Weekly and The Phoenix Times — were arrested Thursday night in Phoenix on charges that a story published earlier in the day in The Phoenix New Times revealed grand jury secrets.

Michael Lacey, the executive editor, and Jim Larkin, chief executive, where arrested at their homes after they wrote a story that revealed that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, its reporters and even the names of the readers of its website had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor had been appointed to look into allegations that the newspaper had violated the law in publishing the home address of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s home address on its website more than three years ago.

The weekly and its leadership has been in a long running battle with Mr. Arpaio, after the weekly published a series of stories about his real estate dealings.

"They did not have a warrant, but they told me that I was being arrested for unlawful disclosure of grand jury information," Mr. Larkin said by phone from his home early this morning, after he was released from jail. Mr. Lacey remained in jail early this morning. Captain Paul Chagolla, a spokesman for the sheriff did not return a call for comment.

Steve Suskin, legal counsel for Village Voice Media, said that the arrests on misdemeanor charges of the newspaper executives represent an escalation in the conflict between The Phoenix New Times and Sheriff Arpaio, who has received national attention for his reputation for running tough jails.

"It is an extraordinary sequence of events," Mr. Suskin said. "The arrests were not totally unexpected, but they represent an act of revenge and a vindictive response on the part of an out of control sheriff."

Grand jury proceedings are secret. In the story about the ongoing case, Mr. Larkin and Mr. Lacey suggested that the publication of the subpoenas might be viewed as illegal.

"It is, we fear, the authorities’ belief that what you are about to read here is against the law to publish," they wrote. "But there are moments when civil disobedience is merely the last option. We pray that our judgment is free of arrogance.

The subpoena asks for information not only about the newspaper’s reporting, but also the information on readers who may have seen material deemed confidential published on the newspaper’s website, including the internet domain names and browsers used, and any other information about online readers of the publication since Jan. 1, 2004."


From the Arizona Republic:

"It really is overbroad," said Kenneth Fields, a retired Superior Court judge. "And it touches on privacy issues of a lot of people who cannot be the subject of a grand-jury investigation. This is potentially thousands of people."
James Weinstein, professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University, called the subpoena "exquisitely overbroad" and "outrageous."

Weinstein said he has never seen or heard anything like the subpoena, which orders New Times to produce computer records of every person who has visited the New Times Web site in the past four years. "It has got to be unconstitutional," he said.

The Phoenix Times

By Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin:

In a breathtaking abuse of the United States Constitution, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and their increasingly unhinged cat's paw, special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik, used the grand jury to subpoena "all documents related to articles and other content published by Phoenix New Times newspaper in print and on the Phoenix New Times website, regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio from January 1, 2004 to the present."

Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years.

In addition to the omnibus subpoena, which referred to our writer Stephen Lemons directly, reporters John Dougherty and Paul Rubin were targeted with individual subpoenas.

More alarming still, Arpaio, Thomas, and Wilenchik subpoenaed detailed information on anyone who has looked at the New Times Web site since 2004.

Every individual who looked at any story, review, listing, classified, or retail ad over a period of years.

The seemingly picayune matter of Sheriff Arpaio's home address getting printed at the bottom of an opinion column on our Internet site — and the very real issue of commercial property investments the sheriff hid from public view — have now erupted into a courtroom donnybrook against a backdrop of illegal immigration disputes, Mexican drug cartels, the Minutemen, political ambition, and turf disputes between prosecutors and the judiciary.

And given the diva-like drama that Arpaio attaches to even the mundane, you can add to the grand jury tension the paranoia of a Keystone Kops assassination "plot" against "America's toughest sheriff."

Behind these operatic and public developments, an ethical stain has spread over the secret proceedings of the grand jury.

Special prosecutor Wilenchik has sabotaged the integrity of the investigation.

Not content with using the hidden power of sweeping grand jury subpoenas, the government's lawyer attempted to get the ear of the sitting judge — out of earshot of New Times' attorneys.

Special prosecutor Wilenchik used a politically potent emissary in a behind-the-curtain attempt to set up a meeting between the judge overseeing the grand jury and Wilenchik.

In a hastily called hearing October 11, the judge labeled Wilenchik's attempt to set up an ex parte discussion "absolutely inappropriate."

In our humble opinion, Wilenchik's clumsy intervention behind the scenes with the judge was well beyond "inappropriate." Wilenchik's behavior raised the issue of an attempt to rig a grand jury already veiled in official secrecy.

In our deliberations, we faced the obvious: A grand jury investigation is a fearsome thing; a tainted grand jury is a tipping point.

We intend now to break the silence and resist."

In a grandiose insult to the Constitution, Arpaio, Thomas, and Wilenchik used the grand jury to subpoena the online profiles of anyone who viewed four specific articles on the sheriff.

The pertinent section of the secret grand jury subpoena reads, in part: "All internet web site information for the Phoenix New Times internet site related to the web pages . . . [four specific articles on the sheriff]. The information should include, but not be limited to: The Internet Protocol addresses of any and all visitors to each page of . . . [four specific articles on the sheriff]. . ."

Energized, perhaps, by this mugging of Constitutional safeguards, Arpaio, Thomas, and Wilenchik then shot the moon. The grand jury subpoena also demands Web site profiles of anyone and everyone who visited New Times online over the past two and a half years, not merely readers who viewed articles on the sheriff.

The actual subpoena is available here: Subpoena on the Phoenix New Times

DIDN'T RUSH GO DEAF?

FDA to warn Viagra users of hearing loss

It's not clear that Viagra and other impotency drugs truly trigger hearing loss, but the FDA decides to add a warning about the possible risk after counting 29 reports of the problem since 1996.

PS3 SOLVES MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

Wired Magazine:

"Suffering from its exorbitant price point and a dearth of titles, Sony's PlayStation 3 isn't exactly the most popular gaming platform on the block. But while the console flounders in the commercial space, the PS3 may be finding a new calling in the realm of science and research.

Right now, a cluster of eight interlinked PS3s is busy solving a celestial mystery involving gravitational waves and what happens when a super-massive black hole, about a million times the mass of our own sun, swallows up a star.

As the architect of this research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing his so-called "gravity grid" of PS3s to help measure these theoretical gravity waves -- ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light -- that Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted would emerge when such an event takes place.

It turns out that the PS3 is ideal for doing precisely the kind of heavy computational lifting Khanna requires for his project, and the fact that it's a relatively open platform makes programming scientific applications feasible."

CHRIS DODD FOR MAJORITY LEADER

That's it.

More Complete Idiocy from Republicans

Today on the House floor, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) gave us all his incredibly clever a acronym for S-CHIP:

Socialized
Clinton-style
Hillarycare for
Illegalsand their
Parents


As Teri Hatcher said on Seinfeld, "I think you're all mentally ill."

George Lucas is Looking for Writers

Sure, now he is....

George Lucas, the Star Wars creator is looking for writers to help pen a live-action series about the lives of robots, according to a story published Wednesday in Los Angeles Times.

Does this mean C-3PO and R2-D2?

Lucas isn't saying yet but the producer/director told the Times that there won't be any Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.

"The Skywalkers aren't in it, and it's about minor characters," Lucas said in an interview with Times' reporter Geoff Boucher. "It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It's completely different. But it's a good idea, and it's going to be a lot of fun to do."

Mitch McConnell and the Culture of Truth

Louisville Courier-Journal Editorial:

McConnell Versus Truth

Mitch McConnell can't have it both ways.

He can't luxuriate in a reputation for personal caution and political control, yet claim he knew nothing about the role his office tried to play in sliming a Baltimore boy and his family when they came forward in support of the SCHIP health care expansion.

By now you know the story: Twelve-year-old Graeme Frost and his sister, Gemma, suffered severe brain injuries in a 2004 car crash and got help from the SCHIP program -- all within the rules, as it turned out, much to the chagrin of would-be right-wing spoilers.

Graeme spoke out when President Bush vetoed the SCHIP expansion bill, which the Republican minority in the House is expect to kill today.

A McConnell aide, Don Stewart, admits he sicced reporters on the Frosts when "trusted" bloggers began to question their authenticity as an income-qualified CHIP program participant. But he says he quickly called off the dogs when he decided there wasn't a story there after all, because the family's situation was legitimate. Mr. Stewart told The Courier-Journal he explained all that to his boss on Thursday.

So Sen. McConnell was deliberately untruthful the next day, when he told WHAS-TV's Mark Hebert, "There was no involvement whatsoever." The senator will object to any suggestion of lying, but what else is it when you knowingly misrepresent facts?

It's clear what Mitch McConnell knew and when he knew it. It's clear he deceived the public when he answered Mr. Hebert as he did about the e-mail sent by his press agent.

Mr. McConnell is so used to Washington-style gamesmanship and inside-the-beltway rules that he has forgotten what constituents back in Kentucky want: the simple truth.

BOEHNER TO PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY HEALTH CARE

Rep. Boehner now claiming Republicans will have a plan giving "high quality health insurance" to "all Americans."

Tax credits, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a spork,
and a manual titled, "So, You've Decided to Remove Your Own Appendix."

PEOPLE STILL USE AOL?

AOL to cut one-fifth of global work force
Reuters

Time Warner Inc's Internet unit AOL will eliminate 2,000 jobs as part of an ongoing restructuring to better focus on boosting online advertising, according to a memo obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The cuts, which begin on Tuesday, amount to about one-fifth of AOL's global work force and are spread across operations in the United States and in Europe, where the company has sold off its Internet access businesses.

DEPT OF DUBIOUS TIMING

"Assassin's Creed" stalks
into stores soon

Video game centered on Crusades-era hit man is among
major releases hitting store shelves in November.

YOUR MOVE, BARACK

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s effort to deepen black
support for her presidential candidacy received a boost today
as she won the endorsement of Representative John Lewis
of Georgia, a legend of the civil rights movement.

Lewis is great American. This is a good "get" for Hillary.

WAITING TIMES FOR MEDICAL CARE???

New York Times:

"Publicly supported dental clinics have months-long waiting lists even for people who need major surgery for decayed teeth. At the pediatric clinic managed by the state-supported University of Florida dental school, for example, low-income children must wait six months for surgery.

In some cases, the results of poor dental care have been deadly. A child in Mississippi and another in Maryland died this year from infections caused by decayed teeth."

Yes, and you thought waiting times for medical care only happened in horrible countries like North Korea, Myanmar, or Sweden.

Seriously, though, there is no shortage of dentists - for people who care afford to pay them.

But since, unlike even other forms of medical care, there are no means for poor people to pay, or get it covered, they simply do without. Only we're not talking about luxuries like an SUV, cable tv, or diabetic check ups. It's basic medical care - and we're leaving a whole group of people behind. These are Americans, if not compassion, how about self-interest and patriotism?

If only the Pentagon could invent a bomb that fixed people's teeth. There'd be no limit to what would we spend...

IT'S CALLED A LIFE: GET ONE

Google draws fire over special logos
They honor Sputnik but not U.S. troops, note critics.

.

HAIL CESAR!!!!!!

Embracing epic scope and a broad spectrum of social issues, writer-director-actor Ed Begley Jr.'s well-performed musical tribute reviews the life of late farmworkers' union organizer Cesar Chavez and the late journalist Ruben Salazar.

.

MACARTHUR PARK REPORT DUE

Chief Bratton this morning will present a long-awaited report
on the MacArthur Park clash that left protesters injured.
Sources say he will blame unknown persons who left his cake out
in the rain. "It is particularly infuriating, because I will
never have that recipe again," Bratton is quoted as saying.


.

TRIBE CIRCUMSCRIBES WANG

Awwww......

A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline after hearing its cries. Honey hadn't given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself playing mom.

"She started licking her and loving her. Within a couple of days, Honey started naturally lactating," said Kathy Martin, Jimmy's wife. "The kitten took right to her, and she started nursing her."

Jimmy Martin noticed the kitten, whom the family dubbed "Precious," about six weeks ago, when she ran in front of his concrete truck. After following her and realizing there was no mother cat in sight, he took her home.

The kitten refused to drink from a bottle, and Jimmy's mother, Ruth Martin, feared Precious would die.

The family initially tried to keep Precious and Honey apart, fearing the dog would play too rough with the little gray-striped kitten. But Honey was elated at Precious' presence, wagging her tail and prancing all over the house trying to sneak a peak at her. Eventually, the family let Honey approach Precious, and the dog immediately took to her.

BRODER STILL RULES THE VILLAGE, DAMMIT!

SOUNDS VAUGELY FAMILIAR

New York Times:


Gen. Pervez Musharraf swept the presidential
vote today, but the Supreme Court will have the
final word on whether the balloting was valid.

*******************************

DO YOU HAVE THE BALLS?

Iran College Asks Bush To Speak

An Iranian university has invited US leader George W Bush to speak following his Iranian counterpart's hostile reception at a US college last week.

"We're not taking it too seriously," said a White House spokeswoman.

She said Mr Bush might have considered the invitation if Iran allowed freedom of expression, did not have nuclear ambitions, and did not threaten Israel.


.

The Chris Matthews Show - September 30, 2007

******************************************
The Chris Matthews Show
September 30, 2007
******************************************

Matthews: omg hillary is going to attack iran!!!

Kay: omg she's very calculating and as a wommin she has to kill someone to prove she's strong!!

Brooks: the silent majority who are tough not weak i luv toughness so i'm going to keep saying toughness voters are toughness they aren't weak cowards like bloggers

Tucker: omg teh dems won't get us out of iraq so crazeee!!

Tweety: she's a shrill harpie -- she's a sharpie

Ignatius: i'm going to put on my serious voice and say Americans understand the world is complex and we must be cautious and invade many countries around the world

Brooks: there is an iran psychosis it's all about jimmy carter - i'm david brooks and I say must not kowtow to iran!! - by which i mean not bombing the shit out of the country - hell you might as well surrender

Tweety: omg is Hillary another George W Bush???

Brooks: luckily she is a very serious person she wants to invade iran which is as well now a very cautious prudent approach

Tweety: are going to war?

Ignatius: we're on a collision course no on can stop it - it's a mystery to me

Matthews: i want a new war!!!

Kay: can we calm down

Matthews: no we must be tough - ergo invade iran

Brooks: Toughness tough

Matthews: tough toughness

Tucker: tough tuff enuf

Ignatius: loud shrill

Matthews: Iran prez says we have no gays

Tweety: omg all the GOP are gay Mahmoud should learn they're everywhere!

Baghdad Bob: Sadaam, you're doing a heck of a job

Ignatius: ha ha no wonder we thought it would be a cakewalk - it's not my fault!!

Tweety: omg black voters might vote democrat this time!!!! cynthia tucker yur black what do u think?

Tucker: dood the real problem is that repbuic party hates blacks that's how they got popular but they have to reach out to black and brown voters and its really really stupid

Matthews: why didn't Mitt and Rudy and McCain show up to the debate

Tucker: they're fucking assholes

Katty: they didn't decide to write off teh black vote - it just comes naturally

Tweety: Maccaca!

Ignatius: sadly that made my buddy george allen look stupid - the GOP need black votes

Tweety: well that's not good news for them is it

Brooks: dood just show up at the debate i mean it was tv face time you think i would turn it down - oh no i wouldn't

Ignatius: iran has no nukes

Tweety: i luv it!

Tucker: Dems feel good but the voter ID laws could be a killer

Brooks: omg NCLB is a total failure!

Tweety: wow who would have thought!

Matthews: SCOTUS election issue?

Katty: no

Ignatius: yes cause now we have a majority to end abortion

Brooks: not an election issue

Tucker: only if the court takes on a hot button case but they're not stupid they'll wait until 2009 to take away the rest of your rights

ISN'T THERE LIKE, A WAR GOING ON?

Prompted by parents' complaints about sex and violence in in-flight movies, two congressmen introduced legislation Tuesday calling for airlines to create kid-friendly zones on planes.

***********************************************

CAN I STILL SEARCH FOR "STUPIDITY"?

EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini says he is working on plans that would block Web searches for bomb recipes and oblige Internet service providers to prevent access to sites containing them.

At present, crude bomb-making guides are readily available.

"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector...on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like 'bomb,' 'kill,' 'genocide' or 'terrorism,'" Frattini told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

**************************
Because terrorists are always Googling "genocide" for tips

MORE BAD NEWS FOR LARRY CRAIG

John McTiernan, director of films such as "Die Hard," "The Last Action Hero" and "Medicine Man," has been sentenced to four months in prison after a judge refused his request to withdraw a guilty plea.

McTiernan, 56, pleaded guilty last year to making false statements to FBI agents investigating detective to the stars and super-wiretapper Anthony Pellicano.

He tried to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming insufficient legal representation.

His new legal team argued that "he had just returned from a long trip to Asia when he spoke to an FBI agent, was on antibiotics and had come off anti-depressant medication."

But the judge said the arguments were "completely lacking in credibility".

Source: BBC News

Maybe Larry had jet lag too?

Cat Blogging!

Good Morning, Patriots!

Vitamins and Minerals!

Hundreds of thousands of lunchboxes given away by California state health officials were designed to promote healthful habits, bearing slogans such as "Eat Fruits & Vegetables and Be Active."

There is just one small problem: they contain dangerously high levels of lead.


The California Department of Public Health said Thursday that it was recalling 300,000 green and blue canvas lunch coolers made in China and distributed throughout the state at health fairs and other events since 2004.

I DIDN'T KNOW HARRY WHITTINGTON WORKED FOR MATTEL

"U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China today over the recall of Chinese-made toys."

*

Scenes From A March

John Roberts to Citizens: Stop Hitting Yourself

During the dedication ceremony of a new building at the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Journalism, which has the words of the First Amendment etched into its windows, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts addressed the budding young reporters:

"The greatest threat to the rights you see spelled out in front of us is irresponsible use of them. My message to you is very simple: Don't blow it."
...................................................................

Right back at ya, Jack.

ANALOGY OF THE DAY

Today Show, NBC:

"Letting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visit Ground Zero is like
letting Osama bin Laden visit Ground Zero."


***

Pirate Cat Blogging

UNSEEN PHOTOS OF AUSCHWITZ

New York Times:

"In the Shadow of Horror,
SS Guardians Frolic"

Rather than showing the men performing their death camp duties, the photos depict, among other things, a horde of SS men singing cheerily to the accompaniment of an accordionist, Höcker lighting the camp’s Christmas tree, a cadre of young SS women frolicking and officers relaxing, some with tunics shed, for a smoking break.

The album also contains eight photos of Josef Mengele, the camp doctor notorious for participating in the selections of arriving prisoners and bizarre and cruel medical experiments. These are the first authenticated pictures of Mengele at Auschwitz.

The photos provide a stunning counterpoint to what up until now has been the only major source of preliberation Auschwitz photos, the so-called Auschwitz Album. Those photos depict the arrival at the camp of a transport of Hungarian Jews, who at the time made up the last remaining sizable Jewish community in Europe."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/ 1...g+HKlWGHH8h+Kxg

GREAT MOMENTS IN INSCRUTABILITY

"Greenspan says U.S. not headed for recession"
- Reuters, Monday Sept. 17, 2007 1:07pm EDT

"Greenspan: Recession risk up"
- Reuters, Monday Sept. 17, 2007 4:45pm EDT




*************************************

CHIQUITA FACES $25 MILLION FINE FOR PAYMENTS MADE TO PARAMILITARY GROUPS

Judge Royce Lamberth has confirmed a $25 million fine on banana company Chiquita for having given protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups.

In March, Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying $1.7 million to the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The firm said its only motive was the safety of its Colombian workers.

DOJ prosecutors said Chiquita Brands International paid the money between 1997 and 2004 to the AUC in return for "protection".

The AUC, which is listed by the US and EU as a terrorist organisation, has carried out massacres and assassinations, although it is now engaged in a peace process in Colombia.

Prosecutors said Chiquita also made payments to Colombia's main left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Is Chiquita a victim, virtually forced to pay off armed gangs to protect its workers, or is it a soulless corporation, willing to do business with any violent or extremists group in order to sell its prodcut? I do not know.

CREEPING FASCISM IS OF NO INTEREST, GOVERNMENT SAYS

The White House and U.S. Department of Justice hired Mark McKinnon’s public relations firm to handle the Bush administration’s varying responses to the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, but the subject “is not a matter of widespread and exceptional media interest,” so the DOJ [claims that it] does not have to release 171 emails and other documents about it, according to a federal [FOI] lawsuit.

New Magazine for the Underserved Class

Next year, The Wall Street Journal will introduce Pursuits, a glossy monthly magazine about the lifestyles of the rich, in hopes of drawing more ads for expensive consumer goods.

Just what we need.

BADGE OF HONOR?

"Being attacked by the Democratic character assassination machine MoveOn.org is something Rudy Giuliani will wear as a badge of honor."
- Giuliani campaign spokeswoman Katie Levinson


“I wear their scorn as a badge of honor.”
- Vice President Dan Quayle on the media

It's no purple heart, but you take what you can get.

PEACE, BITCH!

FRIDAT CAT BLOGGING

********************************************

WEAKEST. POWER PLAY. EVER.

Arrested Woman Told Cops:

'I Don't Have To Move, My Uncle Is Tom Tancredo"


:)

LARRY CRAIG FLYING AGAIN

"Northwest's Detroit air terminal
closed by suspicious package"

.

H20 Tiger

Thanks to Plush Life

DOES RUDY GIULIANI ADVOCATE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON NEW YORK CITY NOW?

Apparently Rudy Giuliani has chosen to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks on America, specifically the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, by spending them with someone who has advocated massive, violent attacks on buildings in New York City, with goal of killing as many innocent people as possible.

What word would Rudy use if it were someone else advocating terrorism?

Disgraceful?


Yes, Mr. former Mayor, you are an uttter disgrace to humanity.

**************************************************************

UPDATE: Apparently, he also supports mass murder in Oklahoma City, and smearing widows of heroes killed on September 11, 2001.

Gray Whale Population Greatly Reduced

Reuters

The Pacific gray whale population, thought by some experts to have rebounded fully from the ravages of whaling, actually is back to a mere fraction of historic levels, scientists said on Monday.

***

Extreme Family Planning

BERLIN (Reuters)

A German public television network Sunday sacked a popular talk show host and former news presenter after she had praised the Nazi's family policies at a news conference for her new book on child-rearing.

******************************************

Now we know what will get you fired from a network news job in Germany. In America, we are still conducting a long-form experiment in network-news craziness.

Cat Blogging Returns

THE DAILY SHOW: ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

"A new hub for Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Jon Stewart headlines a slate of two dozen sites that Viacom's MTV Networks will launch by the first quarter.

TheDailyShow.com, which is set to launch in the fourth quarter, will archive the entire video history of the show including headlines, interviews and the "Back in Black" feature.

TheDailyShow.com will present episodes in their entirety an hour or two after broadcast."

Remember when you had tell TiVo what you wanted to watch? Or when you had to program your VCR? Or just watch The Love Boat?

Good times.

FROM THE CHAMPAGNE UNIT TO CAMP CUPCAKE: BUSH AT WAR

Washington Post's Dan Froomkin:

More than four years after declaring " Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, Bush still can't make an announced visit to the war-wracked country.

But his supposed "visit to Anbar Province" was in some ways even more cynical -- and accepted even more gullibly by the media -- than his June 2006 visit to Baghdad. There, at least, he actually set foot on Iraqi soil.

This time, Bush visited Al-Asad Air Base -- an enormous, heavily fortified American outpost for 10,000 troops that while technically in Anbar Province in fact has a 13-mile perimeter keeping Iraq -- and Iraqis -- at bay. Bush never left the confines of the base, known as " Camp Cupcake," for its relatively luxurious facilities, but nevertheless announced: "When you stand on the ground here in Anbar and hear from the people who live here, you can see what the future of Iraq can look like."

TAKING THE FREE RANGE ZOO CONCEPT LITERALLY

A lion escaped from its cage at a Kazakh zoo over the weekend, the second such incident in a month.

The six-year-old lion called Adam sneaked out of his cage through a door that had been accidentally left open, Kazakhstan Today news agency reported.

The lion roamed around freely for half an hour before zoo workers lured it back to safety.

Just a month ago, three bears broke out of their enclosure in the same zoo in southern Kazakhstan.

Steve Fossett Missing in Nevada Desert

Plane carrying Steve Fossett is missing

A small plane carrying aviation adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing since Monday night, federal officials said Tuesday.

Fossett was last seen taking off from the private airfield at the Flying M Ranch near Yerington, Nevada, on Monday evening.

Bush: Dead Certain

Stories from the new book on Bush called Dead Certain include one that John Roberts suggested Harriet Miers for the Court, which two experts have alrady called a lie, and another that Bush was so exhausted from a one hour bike ride that he couldn't pay attention to the hurricane Katrina briefing.

In other news, even Col. Jack Jacobs is calling George Bush a liar for all his rhetoric about insurgents following us home from Iraq.

Labor Day Cat Blogging

*************************************************************************

FBI SURVEILLANCE MUCH MORE POWERFUL THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE

Via Wired News and the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system...connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

Details of the system and its full capabilities were redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Together, the surveillance systems let FBI agents play back recordings even as they are being captured (like TiVo), create master wiretap files, send digital recordings to translators, track the rough location of targets in real time using cell-tower information, and even stream intercepts outward to mobile surveillance vans.

FBI wiretapping rooms in field offices and undercover locations around the country are connected through a private, encrypted backbone that is separated from the internet. Sprint runs it on the government's behalf.

The network allows an FBI agent in New York, for example, to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California, and immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. With a few keystrokes, the agent can route the recordings to language specialists for translation.

The numbers dialed are automatically sent to FBI analysts trained to interpret phone-call patterns, and are transferred nightly, by external storage devices, to the bureau's Telephone Application Database, where they're subjected to a type of data mining called link analysis.

SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE: MARK CUBAN ON DANCING WITH THE STARS

Yes, that's right.

Other sem-celebrity dancers include people you may not have heard of:

* Floyd Mayweather Jr

* Wayne Newton

• "Scary Spice"

• Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves.

• Actress Jennie Garth ("Beverly Hills, 90210")

• Marie Osmond

• Model Albert Reed

• Actress Jane Seymour ("Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman")

CHINESE MINERS ATE COAL TO SURVIVE

Reuters
Chinese brothers who tunnelled their way out of a coal mine collapse after being trapped for nearly six days survived by eating coal and drinking urine, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Brothers Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou were trapped while working at an illegal mine in Beijing's Fangshan District late on Saturday, August 18, the latest in a series of disasters to strike the world's deadliest coal mining industry.

Two days later, rescue efforts were called off and relatives began burning "ghost money" at the entrance of the mine for the dearly departed.

"At first there was no feeling, but then I was so hungry I couldn't crawl any more," Xianchen told the Beijing News. "I got so hungry, I ate a piece of coal, and I thought it quite fragrant.

"Actually, coal is bitter and unsmooth but you can chew up pieces the size of a finger. In the mine, we picked up two discarded water bottles, and drank our urine. You can only take small sips, and when you've finished, you just want to cry."

DEPARTMENT OF OVERREACTIONS: BULLETPROOF BACKPACKS

From CNET News blogger Leslie Katz

For all your back to school needs:

Bulletproof Backpacks

Some people will call the invention an overreaction, while others will view it as a wise protective gadget. It's sad--and sobering--to think that a bulletproof backpack could prove a practical back-to-school purchase, but it's not so far-fetched an idea in these days of campus violence.

MJ Safety Solutions, a Massachusetts company run by three dads, has developed what it says is the first full-size, lightweight ballistic protection backpack that's affordable and practical for kids. The $175 My Child's Pack contains a 20-ounce bulletproof panel that the creators say can ward off 97 percent of bullets. The packs can be used to offer upper torso coverage on the back or as a shield for frontal protection of the head and upper body.

A video ad on YouTube shows the bags undergoing tests at the shooting range--to the tune of Neil Young's "Four Dead in Ohio."

***********************************************

DEUTSCHE BANK UPDATE

From the New York Times

"Investigators have determined that the broken equipment found in the basement of the vacant skyscraper was in fact part of a defective sprinkler system, not part of the standpipe, as originally believed. The finding means that an entire part of the standpipe was evidently missing, for reasons that are not clear.

It was previously announced that firefighters had been unable to get water above the fifth floor because of a shut valve and that parts of the standpipe system had cracks and other defects.

The Fire Department failed to visually inspect standpipes in the building every 15 days as required by city rules for buildings being demolished and had not done any inspections at the Deutsche Bank building since November 2006."

God love the FDNY, but someone seriously dropped the ball with regard to the Deutsche Bank building.

TINY CONSTITUTION

I am squishing yur konstitushunHugo Chavez holds new tiny red Constitution that allows him to be Leader For Life

Tiger Vs. The Purple Dinosaur

Doing Battle with The Purple Dinosaur of Doom!!!!!
Where Did Purple Dinosaur Go?????
Oh No, He's Getting Away!!!!!
Tiger Achieves Victory Over The Purple Dinosaur!!!!!

Brzezinski Offers Support for Obama

New York Times:

Right on the heels of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertion that she could handle the political ramifications of a terrorist attack better than her Democratic rivals, a major foreign policy figure associated with Democrats endorsed her archrival, Senator Barack Obama.

In an interview with Al Hunt that will air on Bloomberg’s “Political Capital” at 11 p.m. tonight, Zbigniew Brzezinski said that Mr. Obama is “clearly more effective and has the upper hand.” The national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter continued, “There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs, and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.'’

He called Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy “very conventional.”

“I don’t think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago,” Mr. Brzezinski said.

HOW MUCH YOU WANT FOR STEALTH BOMBER?

As you may know, there is a big airshow going on in Russia right now. People have come from all over the world to gawk at the latest in airplane technology, as well as the old favorites. It's like any collection of geeks and their hobby, except this involves multimillion dollar hardware, some of which are advanced weapons.

On hand for view was a stealth bomber, which is, sadly, not actually invisible.

Apparently an "unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards," went up to the group of Americans guarding the bomber and asked if he could buy the stealth bomber, that according to Komsomolskaya Pravda.

One of the Americans told the guy it would cost at least $500 million.

"That is no problem. It is such a cool machine," the Russian was quoted as saying by Pravda, which said its reporter overheard the conversation.

It is a cool machine, it's true. Remember when we were at war with the Russians? I guess this is what is meant by the world is flat. Planes, too.

Senator Warner Urges Withdrawal

Senator John Warner
of Virginia






Senator John Warner, of Virginia, and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called on President Bush to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq by Christmas, beginning in September.

Warner said Thursday that a pullout was needed to spur Iraqi leaders to action.

"In my humble judgment, that would get everyone's attention that is not being paid at this time," said Warner.
***********************************************************************

GREAT MOMENTS IN CORPORATE BEHAVIOR

REUTERS:
"The head of one of the leading insurers in non-standard, high-risk personal auto insurance apologized on Thursday for some substandard behavior - spying in church on people who had the sued the company.

Progressive Corp Chief Executive Glenn Renwick apologized for the use of private detectives, who went undercover to join an Atlanta church group in order to discredit a couple suing the insurer.

"What the investigators and Progressive people did was wrong - period," Renwick, head of the third-largest U.S. auto insurer, said in a statement. "I personally want to apologize to anyone who was affected by this."

The statement was issued a day after the story appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The newspaper reported that a pair of detectives hired by Progressive became members of the Southside Christian Fellowship Church in August 2005 in order to get damaging information on two church members involved in a 2004 traffic accident.

The detectives talked their way into a private support group where members discussed abortions, sexual orientation and drug addiction, and taped the sessions, the newspaper said."

DEPARTMENT OF INEFFECTIVE PROTESTS

"A member of a Japanese right-wing group was arrested Thursday after he sent his severed little finger to the ruling party's headquarters in protest at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's failure to visit a Tokyo war shrine.

The 54-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of making threats after he sent his finger to the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo, said a police official in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan.

The envelope also contained a letter of protest and a disk showing images of the man cutting off his finger, the official said.

"I thought they would ignore me if I just sent the letter, so I put my little finger in as well," Kyodo news agency quoted the man as telling police."

CAESAR INTERRUPTUS

"Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world."
-Philip Atkinson
The Family Security Foundation, Inc.

Um, dude - they killed Caeser.

BLOGGER PZ MYERS SUED FOR BOOK CRITICISM

According to Wired Magazine, PZMyers, the brilliant science blogger Pharyngula, is being sued for libel by a guy named Stuart Pivar because of critical remarks he made about a book Pivar wrote called "Lifecode: From egg to embryo by self-organization."

Wired quotes a press release on Lifecode as describing it as

"... an alternative theory of evolution which contends that the embryo is formed by self-organization, as are crystals, rather than by a genetic code subject to natural selection. Accompanying illustrations depict hypothetical construction blueprints for the various body forms. Biological Self-organization has long been a contending alternate theory for the code of life; recent proponents include evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Brian Goodwin."

I'm not qualified to judge if that's nonsense or has some validity, though anything that presents alternatives to evolution raises all kinds of red flags.

Here's what Myers wrote Pharyngula on that got Pivar peeved.

"The doodles in this book bear absolutely no relationship to anything that goes on in real organisms, but after staring at them for a while, I realized what this book is actually about.

This book is a description of the development and evolution of balloon animals."

I am qualified to judge the merits of his legal case. I haven't read the whole brief, but it sounds like Pivar doesn't have a leg to stand on. (Maybe he could grow one, like a crystal.) I would go so far as to call him an idiot and a moron, but he might sue me.

Or he might not be so dumb. Wired suggests, plausibly, that the whole thing is a publicity stunt. (Pivar is apparently rich or something). If true, this would be a great abuse of the legal system - not to mention a threat to bloggers of whatever political belief or ideology.

WE B LOOKN 4 2 DOODS

The FBI is asking the public for help in identifying two men who were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries. The Seattle Post Intelligencer is not publishing the photos because neither man is considered a suspect nor has either been charged with a crime.

QUESTION OF THE DAY

Who are Liz and FLo?

(A) Jenna's bridesmaids

(B) Two of the four identical quads

(C) The designated names of the next two hurricanes

(D) Malaysian dogs who catch pirates

NAZI FILES DIGITIZED, TRANSFERRED

BBC NEWS:

"The keepers of a vast archive of Nazi documents on the Holocaust have transferred copies of millions of files to museums in Israel and the US.

The electronic transfer is part of an agreement to open up the Bad Arolsen archive, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The files, kept in Germany, were found in concentration camps and other Nazi prisons at the end of World War II.

The ICRC says the archive has now transferred many documents from the archive to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US and to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre in Israel.

The 47 million files stored in the spa town of Bad Arolsen hold meticulously recorded information on forced labourers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners. They take up 26km (16 miles) of shelving.

Historians believe many more details about the Nazis' murder and brutal exploitation of millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and other victims will be revealed.

So far, 12 million documents have been digitised for electronic transfer, the ICRC says.

In grey, bureaucratic language the Nazis kept records on the smallest details - from the number of lice on a prisoner's head to the exact moment of their execution."

Rove on Meet the Press

For the David Gregory - Karl Rove interview, click here, and scroll down: The Bobblespeak Translations

************************************************************

ASHCROFT WAS "BARELY ARTICULATE"

"Notes taken by Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. say that Attorney General John Ashcroft was “barely articulate,” “feeble” and “clearly stressed” shortly after a hospital-room meeting in March 2004 in which two top White House aides tried to persuade him to sign an extension for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

Mr. Mueller’s notes, based on a visit to Mr. Ashcroft’s room and released Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee, provide a fuller picture of the events surrounding a March 10, 2004, confrontation over the surveillance program. They go beyond the account that Mr. Mueller gave the committee in July and reinforce an account by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general who testified in May.

In providing corroboration for Mr. Comey’s version of events, Mr. Mueller’s typewritten entries served to rebut the suggestion of some Bush administration officials who have privately dismissed Mr. Comey’s account of the hospital standoff as an overwrought and one-sided description.

Mr. Mueller said in the notes that he had gone to the hospital after receiving a call from Mr. Comey, arriving at 7:40 p.m. and departing at 8:20. His notes said Mr. Comey had told him that Mr. Ashcroft, who had undergone gall bladder surgery the previous day, was in “no condition” to receive visitors.

Mr. Mueller said Mr. Comey had asked him to intervene with Mr. Ashcroft’s F.B.I. security detail to limit visitors.

'Comey asked me to meet briefly with the AG to see his condition,” he wrote. “He also asked that I inform the detail that no visitors, other than family, were to be allowed to see the AG without my consent (I so informed the detail).' "

Link to full story in the New York Times, Notes Detail Pressure on Ashcroft Over Spying

Cliff with Snow

***************************************************************

FOX NEWS WITH NEIL CAVUTO NAILS SUPERMODEL ANGLE TO CHINESE TOY STORY

******************************************************************
Next Up: The Housing Meltdown: What Does Naomi Campbell Think?

TOPIC OF CALCULUS

"A little known school of scholars in southwest India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Newton according to new research. Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from The University of Manchester says the 'Kerala School' identified the 'infinite series'- one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350.

The discovery is currently - and wrongly - attributed in books to Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz at the end of the seventeenth centuries.

The team from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal the Kerala School also discovered what amounted to the Pi series and used it to calculate Pi correct to 9, 10 and later 17 decimal places.

And there is strong circumstantial evidence that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century.

That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself."
**********************************************************************

Say it ain't so, Isaac!

"JOHN FROM CINCINNATI" WASHES UP

The wave has crashed for "John From Cincinnati." A day after its first-season finale, HBO on Monday canceled the dark surfing drama.

**************************************************************

Best lead-in ever and they blew it.

Worst part is I never to got blog about how it might have been the worst tv show I have ever seen.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE BUNNY FENCE

BUNNY FENCE, BITCHES!

A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.

The rabbit-proof fence — or bunny fence — in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear.

*************************************************************

NAME THAT SPEAKER!!!

“I have an employment record that I think would be attractive to any employer. I’ve worked in an industrial kitchen in a hospital; I’ve waited tables; I’ve worked in convenience stores and have been robbed at the point of a gun twice; I’ve pumped gas; I’ve babysat; I’ve cut lawns; I’ve delivered newspapers.”

*************************************************************

TROPICAL DEPRESSION?

Reuters:

"In Cape Coral, a town near Fort Myers on Florida's sun-drenched Gulf Coast, almost every other house on some of its streets has a for-sale sign outside.

With a bloated inventory of unsold homes and a growing number of homeowners forced by mortgage delinquencies to sell -- thanks to the subprime crisis and ensuing credit crunch -- southwest Florida's once warm clime for property has turned stone-cold.

Linda Setterlund, 61, owns a pristine three-bedroom, two-bath, Cape Coral house that has been on the market for about a year.

At a reduced asking price of $183,900, she said the house had been priced to match what she and her husband owed on it, after moving in three years ago with a 30-year fixed mortgage.

Setterlund said she and her husband had decided to leave the area to join family in Tennessee, but their decision was also prompted by growing real estate taxes and skyrocketing homeowner insurance rates after an active 2005 hurricane season.

"They're saying that we're heading for a recession but I think we're past that," said Setterlund, referring to the housing glut and its effect across much of south Florida.

"I think we're headed more into a depression."

********************************************************************

It's Hot

HE'S A REGULAR A-ROD

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was the "star recruit" for a Florida terrorism support cell that sent the former dirty bomb suspect to an al Qaeda camp to learn how to kill, a prosecutor told jurors in closing arguments on Monday.

"Training with al Qaeda was a crime because al Qaeda trained people to kill," he said.

Wiretapped phone conversations between Padilla and Hassoun demonstrate that Padilla was patient and secretive, Frazier said.

"This is why he was a star recruit," he said.

* The Application Form *

The main evidence against Padilla is what the government calls an al Qaeda application form bearing his fingerprints, birthdate and similar background. It was recovered in Afghanistan and says the author speaks English, Spanish and Arabic, graduated from high school and trained as a carpenter, as Padilla did.

It used a name prosecutors contend was Padilla's alias, and lists as his sponsor a man whose name was in Padilla's address book when he was arrested.

Padilla's defense is expected to argue his fingerprints could have got on the form when investigators handed it to him to examine after his arrest.

The government has presented only indirect evidence Padilla ever went to Afghanistan. In other secretly recorded phone calls, another alleged recruit tells Hassoun that Padilla has gone to Afghanistan via Yemen and has entered "the land of Osama."

**********************************************************************

In other words, they have a piece of paper with someone else's name on it.

Ironclad, gentelmen.

Cat Blogging Returns

*******************************************************************