Warren Christmas

* athenae:

"I do not get it. If you're all that committed a Christian, wouldn't you be one even if you were surrounded by others who weren't? If you're so sure, so certain (and I do envy people their certainty sometimes, in my agnostic soul) that you're okay, what difference does it make to you that somebody else isn't? I'm not talking about telling family members how awesome your relationship with God is, I'm talking about showing up at the city council meeting pestering strangers for a recognition of what you say you know to be universal and revealed truth. Why does that reassure you? What is it about driving past a nativity on the way to the mall that makes you feel like America loves and accepts you? I mean, if you need visual validation, couldn't you just alter your shopping route to take you past your church?"

* PDB (thnx K):

"For the super-duper Republican so-called Christians like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Reverend James Dobson, Reverend Pat Robertson, Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend Don Wildmon, and the entire FOX News network; what matters most about the Season is that Wal-Mart labels it to their liking, that Wal-Mart's sells achieve heights befitting having included Christ's name in their advertising, and that there is a Christ-child ornament adorning every public space. That is after all, what Christmas is about."

* the Hill:

"The three unreleased sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s controversial “Phase Two” report on the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence are headed for circulation next year, incoming Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told The Hill late last week.

“One does not want to spend all one’s time looking back, but the history of all this evolution of the war has to be brought to full accountability,” Rockefeller said in a Friday interview.

Democrats have repeatedly protested the lack of progress on the Phase Two investigation, which was split by outgoing Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) to allow some portions to become public before the midterm elections. Democrats pulled the Senate into a rare closed session in November 2005 to revive the inquiry, which began in 2003 with Phase One’s look at the intelligence community and was later expanded.

Rockefeller said much of the work is done on one of the three remaining elements of Phase Two, though he declined to reveal which section was close to completion. Still yet to receive a committee vote are sections dealing with prewar intelligence on the war’s aftermath, whether existing intelligence backed up U.S. officials’ public comments on Iraq, and the role of a Pentagon office headed by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith."

* Mid East Times:

"The terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely were US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab having access to "moonsuits" that enabled them to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, an eminent authority on the subject says.

Although only a "handful" of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered the destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, IA., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, the authority said.

This action makes it impossible "to pin-point precisely where, when, and from whom these bio-agents had originated," said Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign.

Boyle, who drafted the US Biological Weapons Convention of 1989 enacted by Congress, said destruction of the Ames anthrax "appears to be a cover-up orchestrated by the FBI."

If impartial scientists could have performed genetic reconstruction of the anthrax found in letters mailed to Senators Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy, (D -Vt.), "the trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret but officially-sponsored US government biowarfare program that was illegal and criminal" in violation of biological weapons conventions and US laws, Boyle said.

"I believe the FBI knows exactly who was behind these terrorist anthrax attacks upon the United States Congress in the Fall of 2001, and that the culprits were US government-related scientists involved in a criminal US government biowarfare program," Boyle said."

Larisa has more.

* Good Heavens! Even Rumsfeld is off the TWOT bandwagon.

* neil cavuto likened iran's holocaust denial conference to Jimmy Carter's book.

* warroom:

"Bush's latest plunge comes at the hands of Republicans. Last month, 70 percent of the Republicans polled said they supported the way Bush was handling Iraq. This time around, just 47 percent of them do. "

* wingnutdaily (via):

"Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products."

lol.