Crisco?

Paul Krugman’s review of books on the Bush admin by Molly Ivins and Joe Conason. It starts by retailing the recent decision to allow mining companies to dump waste on public lands, which I meant to write about but didn’t. Also, John Ashcroft anointed with Crisco.

Robert Byrd’s speech on the $87b is a must-read on the fall of the democratic process, not just on the now dominant role of conference committee, which I’ve written about a couple of times (for example a provision for audits passed the Senate 97-0, and was then stripped out in committee by a 15-14 party-line vote), but also in the refusal to include a provision that the new inspector general for the occupation gov in Iraq would have to testify to Congress, or even release his reports to it, truly a great victory for the cause of corruption and secretiveness. Byrd, who must be the last Senator with any knowledge of classical history, explains the derivation of “pyrrhic victory.”

An SF Chronicle reporter notices something odd about soldiers wounded in Iraq: they never die of their wounds.

The Voice says that the DEA is going after doctors who subscribe pain meds.

Kind of repulsive: the White House Ramadan page, although it does helpfully deny, right at the top, that Islam is all about the terrorism. Um, in case you thought that. On the main page, the link to it is right below the link to “Ghosts of the White House.” Halloween, Ramadan, same dif’, right?

Which reminds me: Boykin still has his job. I set up a news.google alert on Boykin, and every day I get links to a bunch of stories in newspapers in Muslim countries, and no this is not doing our image a lot of good.

But of course we believe in free speech in this country, except for tv movies that suggest that Saint Ronnie didn’t like gays and that Mystic Nancy wasn’t a warm person.