Who got paid?

RANDOM STUFF
* "The Patriot Act II envisages stripping Americans of their citizenship for supporting terrorist organizations. Without citizenship, they would not be afforded the protections of the Constitution. And gradually, in this way, the American nationalist Right would be able to circumscribe that pesky Bill of Rights, which so interferes with Executive (i.e. Royal) Privilege. The legal minds on the American Right have clearly been annoyed with the Bill of Rights for some time and the speed with which they foisted the so-called PATRIOT Act (makes it kinda hard to oppose, calling it that, huh?) on an unwary Congress, which had no time to read it, suggests that they had a lot of these ideas on the shelf ready to go." LINK

* the boeing tanker story keeps giving. LINK and here and heres holden on ari2 on boeing LINK

* wow - coingate just grew up. " The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation admitted today that it lost $215 million in a high-risk fund that few people knew about." LINK

* juancole: "The Zarqawi Myth... I don't trust those jihadi web sites. I think someone is jerking the US press around, and it could be anybody, including USG." LINK
ive had a go at juancloe before cos he seemed to believe in zarq. it looks like he has changed his mind :-)

* " only 2 percent said they did not believe in God, according to the polling conducted for the AP by Ipsos." (2% atheist, 4% agnostic) LINK
please tell me that isnt true.

* " A Spanish judge wants to question three U.S. soldiers as suspects in the death of a Spanish cameraman who was killed when a U.S. tank fired on a hotel housing foreign journalists during the 2003 assault on Baghdad.
``It would be a very, very cold day in hell before that would ever happen,'' said a State Department official, who asked not to be named." LINK
i remember you well. from the palestine hotel. you were famous.


* nancygrace on larryking was hysterical. i could only watch for 2mins. certifiablybatshit.

* "Reuters' Will Dunham notes that 520 detainees from over 40 countries are currently being detained at Guantanamo Bay, and since the prison opened in January of 2002, "only four have been charged." And, in total, 272 have been granted their release." LINK

* tedkennedy becomes a kossack! i love it. i literally lol'd LINK

* read this: "This is all bad enough, but what comes next is fantastically worse: Texas also has a shiny new law criminalizing "fetal murder," and the fact that Basoria wanted a miscarriage in this case doesn't matter. Her boyfriend, Gerardo Flores of Lufkin, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for his part in this tragic comic opera:" LINK

* there was some brit army guy (colonel tim collins) who was apparently hi-up somewhere who said that they launched the invasion early - which i dont think i know. curiously, he also said 'i used to wake up every morning and read the situation reports - ya know, the newspapers' - thats hysterical. he is furiously anti-war, altho u dont see it till 95% thru the interview. shame.

* why was mehlman given an hour on mtp? why did the repugs want it?

* waxman: "We request that the Office of the Inspector General investigate whether improper political interference led to yesterday’s sudden reversal by the Department of Justice in the landmark tobacco case in U.S. District Court. Despite the testimony of a key government witness and leading national expert that $130 billion is necessary to fund smoking cessation programs, the Justice Department, without explanation, asked the Court for only $10 billion.
We also ask you to investigate the role of Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, Jr., a former tobacco industry lawyer, in this surprising reversal." LINK

* gilliard: "Who got paid?
When the fucking tobacco lawyers wonder what the fuck is up, you know this came from the White House." LINK

* conyers has gone from stating there was some criminality in ohio in november to outright stating that the election was stolen

* "Knight Ridder Newspapers distributed a story May 6 that said the memo "claims President Bush ... was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy." The Los Angeles Times wrote about the memo May 12, The Washington Post followed on May 15 and The New York Times revisited the news on May 20.
None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages. Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday. Today marks USA TODAY's first mention.
USA TODAY chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."" LINK
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha

* "The media, seeing how big the Newsweek “scandal” had become, exerted itself mightily and reported the story exactly as the DOD gave it, with no one questioning how a stream of urine could miraculously weave its way through a series of air vents, nor asking why the guard in question was reprimanded and transferred to other duty if he had truly done nothing wrong." LINK

* "PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first, as I said in my statement, we've tripled aid to Africa. Africa is an important part of my foreign policy. I remember when I first talked to Condi when I was trying to convince her to become the National Security Advisor, she said, are you going to pay attention to the continent of Africa? I said, you bet. " LINK
this is funny for a few reasons. first, note the way that when he thinks of afrika, he thinks of condi. cos she's black, ya know. (and thats why she looked so horrified, she didnt know what dumb thing he was gonna say). secondly, i wonder if she was really concerned about afrika when she was thinking about the NSA job, or if blinky meant secstate - security=poverty. thirdly, its funny that he called it the continent of afrika, it shows that our children is learning.

* "Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050." LINK
ha ha ha. way to get closer to your targets. lol

* "Now Bolton, in having to scramble desperately to secure confirmation, is paying for all the enemies he's made in Washington. To some extent America is in the same position. Under President Bush it has made more enemies than it had to, because his foreign policy has been counterproductively unilateralist and gratuitously antagonistic." LINK

* cjr stumbled across an hour of cnni and was stunned to be actually watching 'news' LINK

* heres driftglass on redfolk: "And because everything, “ their very souls“, rest on the foundation of the infallibility of Dear Leader, they'll happily kill anyone in any numbers who might force them to face up to the fact that Dear Leader is a duplicitous, lying sleazebag who has played on their fear and ignorance and patriotism to turn them out like $2 crack whores" LINK
its quite a read. but the fun part is that many of them are peeling away from redness, and as i mentioned last week, the newblues must being going through some horrible ugly-mirror moments. i feel their pain. and ill note that it will be a necessary conversion for most of them, sooner or later. and the longer they delay that moment, the uglier the portrait in the closet upstairs.

* gilliard calls america "The fake security state" which sounds tasty. LINK