"About 30,000 workers who care for children, the disabled and the elderly at state-licensed facilities have been arrested this year, roughly double the number documented last year, state officials said."
wow - that seems like a big number

Today, the two dead Marines are the symbol for everybody who died in a war that was started because of a series of coordinated lies in Washington that said that Iraq had nuclear bombs.

It leaps out that the reason given to Americans for going into Iraq -- to stop them from blowing us up with nuclear weapons -- was an outright lie. It was told to America by President George W. Bush. And people died because of it.

A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.
The results startled even the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the surveys. How could so many people be so wrong about information that has dominated news coverage for almost two years? the mistaken belief that weapons had been found "is substantially greater among those who favored the war."

Of the 535 tigers on Capitol Hill who voted fearlessly to go to war, exactly one -- South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson -- had a son in the enlisted ranks of the U.S. military at war.
A leader who misleads his countrymen reaps the whirlwind. The leader's punishment is the people's mistrust. Mistrust breeds cynicism; cynicism breeds alienation. That could harm the United States more gravely than any "unmanned aerial vehicles" from Baghdad.

Lawmakers will be trying to determine if the spy community misled the president or the president misled the world, neither of which is the sort of conclusion that facilitates a good night's sleep.

That change bespeaks a moral malleability that is singularly unattractive. More to the point, it bespeaks a disturbing willingness to rationalize this event, as if to say, now that it is a fait accompli, it no longer matters why we did it. And if the old reason is no longer operative, it's perfectly OK to sub in a new one.
And that is obscene. Moreover, it suggests a blithe disregard for the loss of life the war entailed, as if it ultimately doesn't matter why all those people died. One cause serves as well as another,
And public opinion is a weapon of mass destruction, too.

Within weeks, the Great Iraqi Revolution had started, uniting people in the cities and the countryside. The fighting was so bad the British had to bring in reinforcements from India.
But President Bush has managed the near-impossible; he has turned Saddam Hussain, who was hated and feared by almost every Iraqi, into a potent symbol of nationhood.

Ashcroft credits his approach for the fact that there has been no major attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Last year, the Pentagon tagged hundreds of fighters captured in Afghanistan as "unlawful" or "enemy" combatants and jailed them at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The label and foreign location let the Pentagon hold the men indefinitely, question them without a lawyer, and skirt international scrutiny on POW treatment.

The Pennsylvania-American Water Co. recently got approval to keep secret its rate increase to cover security costs. It said it didn't want terrorists - let alone rate-payers - knowing its weaknesses.

The effort resulted in roughly 5,000 detentions and deportations, mostly Arab or Muslim undocumented immigrants, says Georgetown University law professor David Cole. The number of those charged with terrorism-related crimes so far: about a dozen.

The superintendent, Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, warned a small group of senior leaders that if so much as a word leaked out, "I will kill you," according to a Navy investigation into Naughton's leadership style that led to his resignation last week.

On a related note, I’m surprised that so many artistic types still oppose the war now that the full horror of the Hussein family’s art collection has been exposed.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.