Quantum arcology

Dick Armey, who blames the Dallas Morning News for the failure of his son’s attempt to get into Congress, secretly inserted a provision into a military spending bill that would have forced its parent company to sell it (or a tv station in Dallas).

A list of the top 10 US mistakes of the Afghan War.

North Korea will kindly allow the 5 Japanese citizens it kidnapped (excluding all the mysteriously “dead” ones and the ones they won’t admit to) to visit Japan. It will hold their children as hostages in the meanwhile.

Maureen Dowd reports (leaving the question why it wasn’t in the main news section rather than the op-ed pages of the NY Times) on Bush’s choice to chair the FDA panel on women’s health policy. Ok, a man, I mean, that was a given. But also a Christian loon (one W. David Hager), who is against single women having sex because it’s a sin and has written a book on using the healing power of Christ to treat headaches, PMS and ungodly sex, thinks IUDs as well as abortions are evil, organized a Christian petition against RU-486, etc. Add to this the policy of abolishing or radically changing any scientific advisory panel likely to report inconvenient facts, say on global warming, and you have a policy of distorting the work of bodies that are supposed to be producing objective information. Makes you wonder about the “intelligence” about the danger from Iraq, doesn’t it? Well, yes indeedy, there is “intense pressure” on the intelligence agencies, according to this Houston Chronicle story. Not a great story, but it includes discussion of the evidence Rumsfeld claims to have about Iraq-Al Qaida connections. Indeed, the claim that Iraq offered sanctuary to bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders--turns out it was actually in 1998, and was rejected.
The Guardian on the same subject. Last 9/19/01, I myself asked this question: “And what is the standard of evidence applied by the Bushies, anyhow? If they're convinced that bin Laden is responsible, does that mean the evidence is better than that suggesting that arsenic in the drinking water is bad? better than the evidence for global warming? better or worse than the evidence that Star Wars will work?”

Oddly enough, Saddam Hussein is running for re-election next week. Theme song: Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You.” Evidently the first such fake referendum was sponsored by the British in the 1920s (after they invited an opposition leader to high tea with the High Commissioner, where they arrested him and exiled him to Ceylon. Which does admittedly have a lot of tea planations).