Two Melbourne women who attended the same exclusive private girls school have died from a one-in-a-million fatal brain disorder within the past fortnight.

Mr. Kucinich — a slim man at 5-foot-7, 135 pounds — has become the boutique candidate for peace activists and Hollywood liberals.

Mystification. I am talking to a young American soldier from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment. He's just down from the Syrian border. "We had a problem there," he says. "A guy got hostile with our men last night. Pulled a knife. He was shot dead." A knife? The guy pulled a knife on a soldier? No information in the papers, of course. No mention of the dead Iraqi in the occupation power's usual press conference.

Mariani’s lawyer, Phil Berg, makes a point to remind people that he is not in the least bit suicidal, or given to playing with loaded guns.

At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota."
The Duluth News Tribune featured a column by Jim Fetzer, a University of Minnesota-Duluth philosophy professor and author, in November 2003. Fetzer wrote that an FBI "recovery team" headed out to investigate the Wellstone plane crash BEFORE the plane went down. "I calculate that this team would have had to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time the Wellstone plane was taking off," Fetzer wrote.
That apparent prior knowledge was similar to Dallas police putting out an all-points bulletin for accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at 12:43 p.m. in 1963 for shooting a police officer. The problem was the officer was not shot until 23 minutes later.
Electromagnetic pulses from military craft may have been responsible for several civilian airline disasters in the late 1990s, according to an article in The London Observer. In particular, Swissair 111 in 1998 and TWA 800 in 1996 both took the same route over Long Island, experienced trouble in the same region, suffered catastrophic electrical malfunctions, and were flying at a time when military exercises involving submarines and U.S. Navy P3 fighter planes were being conducted.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presidential brother Neil Bush made at least $798,218 on three stock trades in a small U.S. high-tech company where he had been a consultant, according to his tax returns, including $171,370 buying and selling the company's shares in a single day.
``Any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information,'' Bush said in e-mails to The Associated Press. ``My timing on this transaction was very fortunate.''

Recall that when it was announced that the Justice department would investigate it was made clear that the formal order requiring administration officials to save all relevant documents would come a day or two later. Imagine the heat rising from the shredder machines that weekend. And recall how the White House counsel then insisted on reviewing all documents before they could be given to the Justice department.

So, even if Fitzgerald himself is determined to launch an "unfettered" investigation, he has this company ethic to contend with. Whether or not he keeps on John Dion, the career lawyer who has been leading the investigation, will be an indication of Fitzgerald's seriousness of purpose. It is no secret in law enforcement circles that Dion has a poor record with leaks, and is reluctant even to go to the men's room without asking permission from his superiors.

Federal prosecutors acknowledged this month that they did not turn over at least two key pieces of evidence that defense lawyers said would have helped their cause. Rosen issued a rare public rebuke of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for violating his gag order and exhibiting "a distressing lack of care" in his public statements about the case.
Soles and other defense attorneys are seeking a new trial for their clients. One piece of information withheld was a December 2001 letter, obtained by prosecutors, from a convicted drug dealer who wrote that a key prosecution witness, Youssef Hmimssa, told him while they were in jail together "how he lied to the FBI, how he fool'd the Secret Service agent on his case."
Equally significant, Soles said, was an FBI interview with a former roommate of two defendants who said the men never talked about religion, were lazy, and often drank and smoked. That was in direct contrast to the picture painted by lead prosecutor Richard G. Convertino, who said they were devout Muslims. "That was the heart of our case," Soles said. "We have layers of prosecutorial misconduct."

108TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION S. 89
To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

He said there is daily seismic activity in Tehran and on average three to four identifiable tremors of up to three on the Richter scale -- every day. But there have only been two quakes as high as 4.5 in the last 100 years.

January 7, 2003
The Universal National Service Act of 2003 (direct from senate.gov)
Introduced by Representative Rangel and Senator Hollings
The Rangel-Hollings legislation (H.R. 163 in the House and S.89 in the Senate) would re-institute a draft to compulsory military or alternative national service for men and women, aged 18 to 26, who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States of America.
The bill:
*Defines "national service" as either military or civilian service as defined by the President that promotes national or homeland security.
*Gives the President authority to establish the numbers of persons to be selected for military service and the means of selection.
*Requires those not selected for military service to perform their national service obligation in a civilian capacity for the same duration as those selected for military service (two years in most cases).
*Directs the President to prescribe the regulations necessary to carry out the Act, including:
-types of civilian service eligible to meet the national service requirement;
-means and manner of induction to service;
-criteria for eligibility for service;
-criteria for exemption from service;
-all other administrative matters in connection with induction of persons under this Act and the registration, examination and classification of such persons.
*Allows the President to use for the purposes of the Act the procedures provided in the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C.App. 451 et seq.) including procedures for registration, selection, and induction but specifically requires the registration and selection for national service of women as well as men and seeks to strictly limit the grounds for exemption from national service to physical disability and consciencious objection.
*Allows educational deferments for High School, but only until age 20.

mred - this is just getting scarier and scarier.
from what i read here, it looks like *everyone* 18-26 will be drafted. the draft isnt just for the military - if the military doesnt need you, then u get whored into civil/commerical 'service'.
and this is scary and sinister "seeks to strictly limit the grounds for exemption from national service to physical disability and consciencious objection."
and no deferment for college. they grab everyone either as they finish highskool, or turn 20, whichever happens first.

The Justice Department investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity could conclude that administration officials disclosed the woman's name and occupation to the media but still committed no crime because they did not know she was an undercover operative, legal experts said this week.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 specifies that the revelation is a crime only if the accused leaker knew the person was a covert agent. The July newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that touched off the investigation did not specify that Valerie Plame was working undercover, but said she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." That raises the possibility that the senior administration officials he quoted did not know Plame's status.
"The fact that she was undercover is a classified fact, so it would not be unusual for people to know that she was agency but not know she was undercover," Toensing said.
Toensing said that administration efforts to encourage reporters to look into the connection between Plame and Wilson could have been "typical Washington talk" and would not "even begin to qualify as a dirty trick."
mred - god help us all

But France confirmed that particular fears about Paris-Los Angeles flights, which led to six cancellations, were groundless.
"A check was carried out in each case and in each case it turned out to be negative," a spokesman for the Interior Minister told AFP.
"The FBI worked with family names and some family names sound alike."
"The difficulty is compounded when you have no first name or date of birth," he said.
And Aeromexico's daily flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles was also cancelled for two days running.
mred - no first names or birthdates? similar sounding family names? good heavens. "is there someone by the name of 'smith' on the plane?". this sounds like the same trick used in the great floridian felony scrub. i wonder if choicepoint are involved.

Years ago, our second president, John Adams, sent a treaty to the U.S. Senate to be ratified. The beginning of Article 11 of the Tripoli Treaty of Friendship, submitted on May 27, 1797, stated, "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded in the Christian religion." And the clause and the treaty were approved. (In the 1950s at the height of anti-Communism, we added "Under God" to our money and the Pledge of Allegiance.)