John Bolton's orders to Syria

* "Is there a person anywhere in the world who still thinks there is an ounce of sanity in the Bush administration? If so, let that person read John Bolton's orders to Syria in the January 24 online edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Bolton is Bush's unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, a neoconservative warmonger, has managed to get the UN Security Council on January 23 to instruct Syria to disband and disarm the Lebanese militias. Bolton says, "I hope in Damascus they read it very carefully and then comply."" (link)

* "In a radio interview a week ago, Doolittle denied news reports that he is among the members of Congress targeted by prosecutors for possible wrongdoing. "Come investigate me, come contact me, because I know what the truth is, and I'll come out with a clean record," said Doolittle, who described Abramoff as a friend."
today: ""He doesn't have any comment on the AP story," said Richard Robinson, Doolittle's chief of staff." (link)

* Froomkin: "President Bush goes before a disaffected nation tonight to reassert his leadership -- quite possibly by insisting repeatedly that he's a leader with an obligation to lead at a time that requires leadership" (link)

* everyone is picking up on the point i made earlier about Murdoch, google and china. here's atrios

* " The Department of State will provide live audio streams of the State of the Union Address at 9:00 pm EST (0200 GMT) in the following languages:
English, Arabic, Farsi, Bahasa Indonesian, Spanish, French, Russian.
At 1:00 am EST (0600 GMT) Wednesday, February 1, audio files of the following languages will also be available: Portuguese, Swahili and Turkish." (link)

* driftglass: "So behold one such evolutionary dead end – the Modern Gay Republican. Motivated by some kind of single-minded self-loathing that is startling to behold, he wholeheartedly embraces the political companionship of people who openly want to annihilate him, and will hold himself willfully and astonishingly ignorant of the true nature of the enemies in whose beards he nests." (link)

* "The meaning of the word "democracy" was pretty dicey even two centuries ago, and it's gotten kicked around especially badly the past five years. But at this point I don't think it's left with even a shred of meaning." (link)

* "Trustworthy sources say that Norquist and Soros met in New York subsequent to Soros's appearance at the Wednesday brownbag. Norquist was seeking $20 million to drum up rightwing support for drug legalization." (link)
hysterical.

* there's an article at CounterPunch called "The Hippocratic Oaf". i was quite surprised to learn that it wasn't about Bill Frist.