* bobby fisher arrested in japan, apparently trading with the enemy is bad. prescott, didja hear that? and that naughty deserter about to be arrested there too. apparently, being a deserter is bad. unless you are a president. im not sure the japan thing is anymore than a coincidence, altho the ldp got slammed last week in the elections.

* it looks like 43 wont renew the assault weapons ban. this is ashcrofts baby. they are all crazy.

* go read this article. its amazing. i mentioned this recently. "The Bush administration announced yesterday that it is withholding the United States' contribution to the UN Population Fund for the third straight year, once again accusing the family-planning organization of supporting coercive abortion in China." http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/07/17/us_again_denies_money_to_population_fund/ they are all fucking crazy. remember, they also refuse to support anyone who works with UNPF - on the basis of them working in china. doesnt china have full trading status with the usa?

* nyt poll: headline: "Public Likes Edwards, but Race Is Still Close" then "the campaign between Mr. Kerry and President Bush remains statistically deadlocked" and "The results suggested that the country is as deeply divided as ever" and way down to the last paragraph "The Times/CBS News poll, like other recent polls, found the race to be close, within its margin of error. In a head-to-head matchup, the Kerry-Edwards ticket was supported by 49 percent of registered voters, and a Bush-Cheney ticket by 44 percent." ok - so 49/44 is somehow close and we are reminded its, like other polls, statistically deadlocked. nice. i wonder if it was the other way around whether they'd use this language.
http://nytimes.com/2004/07/17/politics/campaign/17poll.html
its also nice to see that there was no hit on bush becos of the (pre-election half of the) senate report.

* "Was our son murdered by the CIA?" http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=815622004

* alterman: " In fact, almost everything we have learned about the shoddiness of the case for war was known at the time we were being stampeded into it."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040802&s=alterman

* "Tony Blair was warned before the Iraq war by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, that a UN court could rule Britain's invasion unlawful, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.
The warning was in Lord Goldsmith's so far undisclosed legal opinion from 7 March last year, less than two weeks before the conflict began."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=542151

* fnc is rooting to get santorum on the podium at the gop convention.

* "The USA's involvement in a pre-emptive (nuclear) strike against Iran would also undermine the Bush administration's last vestiges of credibility as an 'honest broker' in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians."
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040716_1_n.shtml
umm. right. thats one of the concerns...

* 911 comm has just now discovered iran/alq/911 links. hmmm. iran is toast. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html

* fox is telling me that obl might be on his deathbed. 'will he die b4 we can capture him?'

* "Citing a recently discovered December 2001 memo buried in the files of the National Security Agency, the commission report states that Iranian border inspectors were instructed not to place stamps in the passports of Al Qaeda fighters from Saudi Arabia who were traveling from bin Laden’s camps through Iran..."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5454606/site/newsweek
heres a question - how does this memo get lost or forgotten 2 months after 911? did the authors forget they wrote it? werent we trying to work out who to go to war with at this point? iraq: no nukes. no alq connection.
isikoff is on fnc now - 'iran helped with the 911 attacks - essentially'