Bush's 2005 budget calls for a boost in funding for government efforts to crack down on the adult entertainment industry -- one of the precious few non-terror-related programs to garner a spending increase.
I kid you not: While the White House is cutting back on its housing budget, veterans' benefits, and the National Institutes of Health, it's opening up the coffers to make sure you have a harder time downloading the Paris Hilton sexcapade on the Net.

I almost fell off my couch when Republican leak-artist Robert Novak said he just didn't understand all this hatred of the president.

The CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in agency history, eclipsing the size of its post in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said. But sources said the agency has struggled to fill a number of key overseas posts.

During the 1980 presidential campaign, for example, the History Channel reports that Ronald Reagan repeatedly expressed a distrust of secret societies and promised that Skull and Bonesman, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Trilateral Commission alumni George Bush would not be offered a position in his administration. Yet during the Republican Convention, Reagan broke tradition by making a late-night dash from his hotel room to the convention floor and declaring George Bush his running mate. The Iran hostage situation was miraculously resolved the day Reagan was sworn in.

Even more sinister, however, is that this provision reintroduces proposals which were previously rejected by most states in last years' Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA). Calling for mandatory vaccination, MEHPA allows for confiscation of real estate, food, medicine and other property; and outlines plans to herd afflicted citizens into stadiums.

Some, like Dr. Len Horowitz, long ago speculated that the Bush administration might use a biological attack to suppress civil liberties. "This is standard Machiavellian theory in practice," he said. "These political and public health problems are created to effect outcomes that have been prepared for in advance and are consistent with economic, political and ideological orientations consistent with population control, better known as genocide. In summary, it is managed chaos and very deadly."

That whole "mission to Mars" thing was brilliant -- appease the Christian right by seducing the general public with Star Trek fantasies. Of course no one expects Bush to actually follow through with any space exploration that doesn't involve militarizing the heavens, but what better excuse to cut Hubble funding and avoid proof the earth is older than biblical interpretations?

Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and U.S. retired Gen Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction from January through May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war, none of which concerned self-defense, pre-emptive or otherwise.

In a remarkably frank interview with the London 'Daily Telegraph', Chalabi said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in providing misleading intelligence and defectors... The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his group had deliberately misled the administration. ''We are heroes in error'', he said.
"What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants''.

Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.

Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, ''I hope they're there a long time'', and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S. military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.