Submitted by lambert on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 9:53pm
But you knew this was coming. Right on schedule! AP:
A Capitol office building was evacuated Wednesday night after sensors indicated the presence of a nerve agent but a later test proved negative.
"Tests initially indicated a nerve agent," said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. "A subsequent test indicated it is not a nerve agent."
Uppity Congress-critters! We'll show them!
Say, they ever catch that anthrax guy? Maybe he's hiding with Bin Laden! Read below the fold...
Submitted by MJS on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 6:48pm
The Bad Magician has already not existed. He has already forgotten the future. The circle is complete but abstract. The Bad Magician awakens in the melting ice. The water runs along his fingers in streams of kinetic lines. His head elevated, his back arches, his cloak sweeps its blackness skyward. Rising, rising, rising. Time to go see the great Sinecure of Poison. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 5:45pm
Hey, whatever happened to "You got to war with the Army you have", anyhow? Somehow, it turned into "You go to war with the cash cows you have!" USA Today:
A former U.S. soldier injured in Iraq says he was forced to pay $700 for a blood-soaked Kevlar vest that was destroyed after medics removed it to treat shrapnel wounds to his right arm.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by tresy on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 1:57pm
I'm not naive enough to believe that Canada's courts are going to hand Stephen Harper a political IED by granting American soldiers asylum here, but any publicity about soldiers who are refusing to fight in Iraq helps bring this depraved war closer to an end. It should be abundantly clear by now that everything that's happening in Iraq right now is about protecting Bush and the Republicans politically--it cetainly isn't about saving Iraq--so even if once upon a time it was possible to imagine one was fighting for a freedom and democracy, that fairy tale is now standing crucified on a box in Abu Ghraib, and the soldiers fighting and dying aren't doing so for a mistake, they are doing so for a squalid band of thieves and liars. The only question is whether they admit it to themselves. If they do, their course of action is pretty clear. Read below the fold...
Submitted by captain nemo (not verified) on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 10:16am
Absolutely delightful column from Garrison Keilor today. Of course that is "delightful" only in the sense that it is pleasant when somebody else cleans up the cat puke on the carpet so you don't have to: Read below the fold...
Submitted by shystee on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 2:04am
It’s not exactly a compliment to be called a "Christianist.†The Portland Indymedia website posted a rant a while back against "Christianist ayatollahs." But the term looks like a useful way to denote the political Christians of the right. And it has a certain symmetry with "Islamist": If Muslims of a political slant are "Islamist," then perhaps it makes sense to call Christians of a certain political slant "Christianists."
- Ruth Walker, Christian Science Monitor Blog
Read below the fold...
Submitted by captain nemo (not verified) on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 1:10am
Via (a remarkably good piece in) NYT:
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by captain nemo (not verified) on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 11:34pm
Sen. Don McLeary
Tennessee State Senate Building
Nashville TN
Dear Sen. McLeary,
Welcome to the Repubican Party! Your announcement that you were leaving what we like to call the "party of loosers" came as a great joy to us. It also came as something of a surprise to us--but probably not as much of a surprise as it was to your (former) fellow Democrats, since you were telling people as recently as last week that you had no intention of doing any such thing. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 10:51pm
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 10:20pm
Inspired by ReddHedd, I went and read John Dickerson's articles about how the White House outed Valerie Plame. I thought it would make things simpler if I made a scorecard that shows the players in the story that Dickerson tells, and the nature of their contacts with the press, as Dickerson describes them: Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 8:20pm
It's nice to be right. Reuters, today, 2006-02-07:
A Senate committee will look into discrepancies in accounts of how dogs came to be used to abuse detainees at a U.S. prison in Iraq, after a general who testified to the committee then declined to testify in military court, senators said on Tuesday.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 8:01pm
After handing out billions in tax cuts to those who have billions, the Bush [cough] domestic policy arm gets down to bidness. AP
President Bush's budget calls for elimination of a $255 lump-sum death payment that has been part of Social Security for more than 50 years and urges Congress to cut off monthly survivor benefits to 16- and 17-year-old high school dropouts.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by chicago dyke on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 6:16pm
Amy Goodman, covered (of course) by a British paper, here.
Ms Goodman said in the run-up to the Iraq war a study of NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS newscasts over a fortnight recorded 393 interviews on the conflict, of which only three reported the anti-war movement.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by tom on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 5:14pm
Submitted by lambert on Tue, 02/07/2006 - 1:00pm
And that's one sign of a truly hard-core weasel, isn't it? Boston Globe:
Gonzales forcefully repeated the administration's defense of its wartime powers...
[Senator Diane] Feinstein also asked if the president had used these powers to bypass other laws.
Read below the fold...
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