I have shat myself

The Boston Globe report about Senate Judiciary Committee Republican staffers hacking into the D staffers’ email and leaking it to the press, which has been all over the leftie blog sites today, doesn’t seem to be spreading very widely yet. The NYT has a story that underplays it considerably, and a literally parenthetic comment in Krugman’s column. The Post has nothing. This is the same sort of activity involved in Watergate, only without the overt break-in because you don’t need that sort of thing in the cyber age. It’s not just the one staffer who was fired (and promptly hired by Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist), but every R staffer who read one of these emails, who should be prosecuted, and any senator who knew or should have known should be kicked off the committee.

In the ongoing list of really stupid ideas to come out of Hollywood, there’s this: a movie version of The Dukes of Hazzard, with Britney Spears.

Australian newspaper The Age says that Aussie troops attacked Iraqi positions prematurely last March, before Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum had expired.

The Texas D’s believe that the Justice Dept’s non-political appointees recommended an objection to Tom DeLay’s redistricting coup as violating the Voting Rights Act, but were over-ruled. The JOD is refusing to release the legal opinion prepared for the department.

The R’s are pushing a Fetus Protection Bill, or some such name, to make killing a fetus a separate crime, part of the not-terribly-subtle strategy of giving more and more “rights” to the unborn. By the end of a second Bush term, fetus’s will have the vote. Their mothers won’t.

Russian prosecutors are trying to figure out how to prosecute the organizers of a vodka-drinking contest. Most of the contestants wound up in the hospital. The winner triumphantly yelled out “I have shat myself,” and dropped dead.

After a businessman is indicted for having bribed Ariel Sharon, Sharon himself insists he won’t resign as PM even if he’s indicted. Prosecutors are still trying to figure out if there’s enough evidence for that, although how could there be enough for one but not the other?

How time passes. In October 1996 I reported on the first conviction in Britain on the basis of earprint evidence. That man was just released, because earprint evidence turns out to be nonsense (and DNA evidence clears the guy).

The Log Cabin Republicans, the gay R’s, do have a breaking point after all! They’re not happy with Bush’s almost-support of the const. amend. banning gay marriage.

Rep. Bill Janklow gets only 100 days for running over and killing someone. After 30 days, he’ll be allowed out during the day. Janklow had a long record of reckless driving, and had used the claim that he had to swerve to avoid another car on three prior cases, in none of which was evidence adduced for the claim.