'wipe iran off the map'

* "of the 8 countries which are known or widely suspected to have tested nuclear weapons, five of them -- the U.S., France, Great Britain, India and Israel -- were democracies at the time, while the sixth (Russia) is now a democracy and the seventh (Pakistan) is one of the U.S.’s closest allies. The most destructive and potent weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of democracies, not dictatorships." (link)

* you can sign up to attend AIPAC's 'wipe iran off the map' conference here. march 5-7.

* in other news, " Federal agents contacted two reporters from The New York Times on Wednesday seeking information about a former Pentagon official and two representatives of (AIPAC) who have been at the center of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information...
The agents, the official said, are trying to determine whether reporters received national security information intended to influence their reporting on the Middle East." (link)

* "Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate: "This year's pandering nadir came during the brief passage on bioethics, when George Bush called for legislation banning the creation of 'human-animal hybrids.' In Washington, there is a lobby for everything except apparently mermaids and centaurs."" (via froomkin)

* John Byrne and my buddy Ron Brynaert have a traitorgator piece over at rawstory which covers some of the new details from this latest round of communications - including this which may be of interest to sibelologists: "They also hint that Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby may have outed Plame on the orders of his “superiors.”"
i haven't read the documents yet - it was my impression that the 'superiors' comment related to the leaking of the NIE to judy - but perhaps there was another similar reference re Plame.

* nyt ed: "President Bush is not giving up the battle over domestic spying. He's fighting it with an army of straw men and a fleet of red herrings.
In his State of the Union address and in a follow-up speech in Nashville yesterday, Mr. Bush threw out a dizzying array of misleading analogies, propaganda slogans and false choices" (link)

* "You think our oil "addiction" is the problem, and state subsidization of alternative fuels is the answer? The U.S. government isn't immersed in the Middle East because American consumers are jonesing for petrol. Our so-called addiction is merely a pretext for intervention – economic and military, at home and abroad – with tidy profits for crony capitalists as a side "benefit." And as long as the state's talons are sunk in the energy market, we'll be sending troops to "secure our access" to the fuel du jour, whatever and wherever it is." (link)

* "Disposing of another wingnut talking point, Fitzgerald asserts that, as of the Novak column, the only reporters who knew that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA were Woodward, Miller, Pincus, and Cooper. So much for the argument that the fact was widely known in political Washington" (link)

* Mark Kleiman: "Yesterday was the State of the Union. Tomorrow is Groundhog Day.
Curious, isn't it? Two national rituals, both built around the theme of frustrating, meaningless repetition, only two days apart.
One ritual involves our pretending to trust a stupid little rodent to tell us about the future.
The other involves a groundhog." (link)
ouch!