Compliance and colonoscopies in Guantanamo

Long article in next Sunday’s NYT Magazine on Guantanamo, a narrative history of relations between the detainees and the prison authorities – well, the guards rather than the interrogators, the interrogations aren’t really covered. It gives the longest account I’ve seen of the abortive attempt last summer to establish a prisoners’ council. The author, Tim Golden, is as reasonable and even-handed as he can be under the circumstances, which is also the impression the article gives of the military authorities, who were obviously (and unavoidably) his main sources. But in a place like Guantanamo, doing the job that Guantanamo does, reasonable and even-handed are traits that are irrelevant, even obscene. The authorities were willing, indeed eager, to negotiate about details like bottled versus tap water or not blasting the Star-Spangled Banner during the call to prayer (or, as Gen. Craddock once said, the color of the feeding tubes inserted into the noses of hunger-strikers), in an effort to achieve “compliance,” so long as larger issues like the prisoners being held indefinitely were not broached.

Indeed today Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist commented that the Guantanamo detainees are getting “24/7 medical care - better than many Americans”. Why, 16 colonoscopies have been performed there, he marveled.

Frist’s other priority in The War Against Terror this week is tacking onto the bill authorizing military operations a provision against paying off internet gambling debts with credit cards.

You’re still waiting for me to say something about the colonoscopies, aren’t you? I have way too much class for that.

Caption contest

So what’s going on in these pictures? What’s Frist saying to McCain? Is McCain about to go apeshit and snap his neck like a twig? What’s Kennedy thinking? Is Lieberman packing heat?

I like them during President and I like them after President

Bush talked about making ethanol “not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass.” Does that mean we’ll all be required to spend our vacations clearing brush?

Some people have pointed out the dissonance of a former oil man (and indeed an alcohol addict) talking about an addiction to oil. But then he’s also a politician who claims to despise politics. You’ll notice his expressed distaste for every role he’s ever fulfilled never seems to diminish his own unearned self-regard. The closest he comes is when he discusses his role as husband, where all his talk about “marrying up” suggests a sense of inferiority to the LauraBot. But to get back to the point I was making before my digression into the shallows of the Bush psyche, the dissonance is less than it appears because his approach to energy is to claim that the answers are entirely scientific rather than economic. The day before the SOTU, Exxon announced a $36 billion profit for 2005, the highest profit for any corporation ever, but there was never any question of that being mentioned in the speech. Capitalism is great, huge corporations are great, science is great. As Arthur C. Clarke didn’t say but should have, to a sufficiently stupid person, any science more complex than the wheel is indistinguishable from magic. And Bush does mean magical science rather than mere technology, dismissing fuel efficiency thusly, “We use a lot of foreign oil in our automobiles, and we drive a lot, and people say, well, CAFE this and CAFE that.” I’m convinced he thinks someone will come up with a magic bean that can run an automobile forever.


That line was given today, when Bush followed up the SOTU speech with a recapitulation in the Grand Ole Opry, as is required under the Constitution. After five long (oh god so long) years in the job, he still doesn’t know what words to use for that job: “I like my buddies from West Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them then I was middle-age, I liked them before I was President, and I like them during President and I like them after President.” He describes Bill Frist’s job in the Senate as “herding cats.” Brrr. But then he describes his own job as “educator-in-chief.”


Of what else does his job consist? Well, “As a matter of fact, every day, every day of my presidency I think about this war. That’s what you’ve got to understand.” But enough about his masturbatory practices. “And I clearly see the threats to America. My job is to worry about those threats. That’s not your job. We got a lot of people in government worrying about those threats on your behalf, so you can go about your life.” Insert Brownie-heckuva-job reference here.

Once again he magnanimously concedes the right of people in a free society to engage in impotent debate: “I welcome the debate. But as I said last night to Congress, whether you agree or not agree with the decision, this country has one option, and that’s victory in Iraq.”

I believe in a strong, robust executive authority. And the fascism fairy.

American ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzhad says that 2006 will be the “Year of the Police.” In Iraq, that is. He meant it to be reassuring.

Speaking of the Year of the Police, outgoing (thank God) Iraqi interior minister Bayan Jabr says the death squads in police uniform aren’t actually policemen: “Anyone can go to the store and buy a police uniform.”

The UK has been experiencing its own spying crisis, one with more wide-ranging implications than our own. 20 years ago, the security services began blackmailing a top Sinn Fein official, Denis Donaldson, into cooperating with them in ways that haven’t been fully revealed yet, but seem to include the fabrication of a scandal 3 years ago in which Sinn Fein was supposed to have been spying on other parties in Northern Ireland’s self-rule Stormont government, which was promptly abolished and direct rule from London restored. Still a lot of unanswered questions, but this is as good a primer as any other.

Opening sentence to a WaPo story: “Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) could barely conceal his anger.” Not exactly man-bites-dog, is it?

Frist is barely concealing his anger about the filibuster of renewal of the “Patriot Act.” At the risk of spoiling the surprise, let me tell you now that the Patriot Act will not expire, that there will instead be a deal for a 3-month extension, that Bush won’t carry out his threat to veto it, and that everyone in the Senate knows it.

On Monday, Condi Rice reacted to the election of Morales in Bolivia, saying “We have good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin America,” which would be news to Chavez and Castro. But of course the state of relations will be “a matter of behavior.” Theirs, not ours, of course, we’re always perfectly behaved little angels. Also, “The issue for us is will the new Bolivian government govern democratically”. Faithful readers will remember that this is the new standard whereby the US deems democratically elected governments, such as Venezuela’s, to be undemocratic, based on subjective criteria determined not by the people of the country in question, but by the Bush administration.

Many have quoted Cheney saying yesterday, “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it,” “Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not,” and that the period after Watergate and Vietnam marked “the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy,” but he also cited actual examples of what he considers illegitimate limitations on a robust (dictionary definition: “uncompromising and forceful; not subtle; strong and rich in flavor or smell”) executive authority: the War Powers Act, natch, the limitation on the president’s ability to impound funds authorized by Congress, and Iran-Contra – he thinks Reagan had the authority to do all that Iran-Contra stuff. Other examples of the legitimate authority of the presidency: his own secret energy policy task force, and NSA warrantless surveillance. After all, “It’s not an accident that we haven’t been hit in four years.”

Rumsfeld goes to Afghanistan in a surprise photo op (he met with American troops, but, running behind schedule, decided to skip the actual work portion of the trip, a meeting of the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan staff) (Xinhuanet calls it a “surprised visit to Afghanistan”). Says the US plans to reduce troop levels from 19,000 to 16,000 doesn’t mean fewer troops, because we’re sending in NATO troops. Notice there’s no talk of Afghans taking responsibility for their own security, standing up so that Americans may stand down etc. Says the reduction won’t affect the hunt for bin Laden, which will continue with just as much success. Asked whether the US runs secret prisons in Afghanistan, as has been reported this week, Rummy gave this reassuring response: “Not to my knowledge.”

Where can I get me one of those hats?

Fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory

A London Sunday Times reporter visits Fallujah and reports that it’s still a depressing concentration camp with rubble and raw sewage and really pissed off residents. She is the first independent reporter (i.e., not escorted and watched over by American soldiers) in Fallujah in over a year; she had to sneak in.

Bill Frist has an AIDS charity, World of Hope Inc. It raises money from corporations with legislative agendas, and spends large amounts of money on “consultant” fees to Frist’s cronies, as a way of keeping them on the payroll during non-election years. (World of Hope doesn’t seem to exist on the web, which doesn’t really suggest “legitimate charity” to me. It’s not these people, or these.)

The House of Reps has voted 279-109 for a resolution claiming that “setting an artificial timetable” for leaving Iraq would be “fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory.” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) asked, “What is victory? Nobody has defined what victory is.” Silly Jim, defining victory is fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory.

Speaking of achieving victory, Dick Cheney made his first trip to Iraq since 1991, and would no doubt have been greeted as a liberator by the Iraqi people, had he met any below the rank of prime minister, with whom he shared a jolly, but evil, laugh.



They gave him his very own fake-military jacket, but would only let him eat with a plastic spork.

And all you’ll remember about this post tomorrow is the thing about elks getting drunk

Scooter Libby has a legal defense fund. You can donate money to it. Although god knows why you would. No disclosure requirements, either. And his freaking novel, the one with the girls being fucked by bears, is being reissued. Scooty-Doo could wind up making money off the whole treason thing, like Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy, and so on. Republicans can turn a profit from anything.

News factoid of the day: elks often get drunk, from fermented apples.

France’s interior minister, Nicolas “Scum” Sarkozy, announces that any foreign national, including legal immigrants with residence permits, arrested during the rioting will be deported. Why does this racist pillock still have a job? Expulsions, like other legal procedures, are supposed to be decided on an individual basis, since there’s kind of an unpleasant history involving mass deportations in Europe.

The Gropinator takes all the blame for the defeat of the initiatives he sponsored. Or it could just be that they were all crap. Just sayin’. Ahnuuld went on, “If I was to make another Terminator movie, I would tell Terminator to travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have another special election.” And that still sounds better than Terminator III.

Bill Frist says that he is less interested in the secret gulags than in who leaked the news of the secret gulags. Only so many hours in the day, I guess. In fact, as to what takes place in the gulags, “I am not concerned about what goes on and I’m not going to comment about the nature of that.” “My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security - period. That is a legitimate concern.” First he came for the kitty cats, and I did not speak out because I was not a kitty cat....

The fairest way in a pluralistic society

Good article by Andrew Arato, posting on Juan Cole’s site, on the constitution-writing process in Iraq.

Bill Frist says that intelligent design should be taught in public schools so as not to “force any particular theory on anyone. ... I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.” I can only assume that when he’s practicing medicine, he tells patients, “I recommend heart surgery and I am a doctor, as you can tell by my degrees, handsomely displayed in the cat-fur-lined picture frames, but in a pluralistic society it’s fair that I also tell you about the options of faith-healing, crystals, sacrificing a goat to Odin...”

Where are the girls?

Bill Frist gives a speech about AIDS. He’s against it. “Without a doubt, AIDS is the greatest moral, social and humanitarian challenge we face.” Hey Bill, does HIV spread through crocodile tears?

WaPo headline: “Mideast Summit Ends in Acrimony.” Well color me shocked. It gets even more amazing: “Israeli officials said Sharon spoke angrily at times during the talks.” And he’s usually so easy-going, placid, one might even say devil-may-care. “Just minutes before the meeting, the Israeli air force fired a missile into the northern Gaza Strip”. Sort of like that song: If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake and fired a missile into the northern Gaza Strip.

Alberto Gonzales wants new minimum sentencing requirements, in which judges retained discretion — but only to increase sentences. He said, “We risk a return to the pre-guidelines era, when defendants were encouraged to play the odds in our criminal justice system, betting that the luck of the draw . . . might result in a lighter sentence.” So the purpose of sentencing guidelines is to intimidate people into guilty pleas?

WaPo sub-headline: “U.S. Forces Surprised By Taliban’s Resilience In Remote Afghanistan.” Yes, Americans, in every freaking war, are always surprised when the other side actually fight back. The article is about an infantry battalion arriving in a small remote Afghan town, making nice with the natives, or rather ordering the natives to line up while the Americans gave a little performance of niceness for their edification. That battalion doctor handed out painkillers, the commander gave stuffed animals and pencils to the children

“Where are the girls?” Stammer asked, as a throng of little boys pressed around him. “I want to make sure the girls get these, too.”

Yeah, a well-armed American comes to a village and wants to know where the girls are; I’m sure that went over real well. An elder told them, “You guys are very nice. But you only come around once in a while. The Taliban will come here as soon as you are gone.” As Daniel Ellsberg says, it’s not Vietnam: it’s a dry heat.

Dick Durbin abjectly apologizes for being outraged about the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, or something. “More than most people, a senator lives by his words,” he said; then he ate his, and opened wide to show that they were all gone. Let the healing begin.

I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.

Dana Milbank has a lovely, must-read article about the Senate fight over judicial nominations. It starts with Frist astonishingly unprepared to answer why he supported filibusters of a Clinton judicial nominee: “Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we’ll come back and discuss it... It’s not the cloture votes, per se. It’s the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.” Later the R’s claimed that he’d meant character assassination (keep in mind that one of the key players is Ted Kennedy, who has a little bit of experience with both kinds of assassination) (and Frist has a little bit of experience with assassinating kitty cats). Later, Harry Reid accidentally called Dick Cheney a “great paramour” of virtue. He corrected himself to “paragon,” which doesn’t seem right either. Maybe he meant paramecium. Or parasite.

Frist claimed “I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.” (I assume that by “rise,” he does not mean “get sexually aroused”). But you’ll notice he didn’t take any chance that the D’s might let the first judge through by picking one with bipartisan support. No, he started with Priscilla Owen, an arch anti-abortionist. When a politician starts talking about principle, it’s time to clench your ass-cheeks very tightly, cuz he’s gonna try an’ fuck ya.

The Post also attributes to Ted Stevens the idea that would become the “nuclear option:” simply ruling that filibusters would no longer be permitted. The same Ted Stevens who secured for Anchorage $1.5 million for a bus stop. A single bus stop. Outside the, I believe, Anchorage Museum of the History of Snow. Oh, it’ll be a very nice bus stop. Enclosed, heated, possibly with a pool, a masseur, who knows.

I know I didn’t connect those two Ted Stevens stories, but the line between them is on the Anchorage bus line, and who wants to leave the luxurious bus stop and get on a crappy ol’ bus?

Yes, this will be on the final

The Japanese foreign minister has hit back against China, saying that Chinese high school history textbooks are even more biased than Japanese high school history textbooks. Suddenly, the casus belli of the War of Jenkin’s Ear seems like the height of reasonableness. Guys, a little perspective: everyone’s high school history texts suck.

More deep thoughts on historiography, from one Adolf Hitler: “After all, who remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?”

The US has pressured the UN Commission on Human Rights into firing its investigator in Afghanistan after he reported that the US military holds Afghans in secret prisons without trial, just in case you didn’t know that already.

I didn’t see the “Justice Sunday” telecast, but I have read Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist’s speech, which is clearly toned down from the speech he originally planned to give when he agreed to join the event, before all the backlash. Suddenly, the issue isn’t that D’s are opposing judicial nominees because they’re good Christians, the issue is good manners. They deserve “the courtesy and respect of a vote.” And, he adds, in the biggest climbdown, “the balance of power among all three branches requires respect – not retaliation.” He does not, however, climb down from the threat of “what opponents call the ‘nuclear option,’” so there’s room enough for three branches of government (for now) but not for more than one party.

(Update: Athenae at First Draft live-blogged Justice Sunday, and has a good time with it. I hope to see a transcript at some point, because while Frist dialed it back, no one else did, and when Frist runs for president, it would be helpful to be able to do the guilt-by-association thing to him.)

Being tough when it comes to running down people in caves that are trying to do harm to free people

Entomologists have named newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles after Bush (Agathidium bushi), Cheney and Rumsfeld. Being entomologists, they thought that was a compliment. Guardian headline: the axis of weevils. I can’t find a picture, and you know I tried.

Fun with abstinence. I think it was on Atrios where I found this link; I pretty much figured out it was a parody when I saw the phrase “faith-fucking.” It includes a section, “Ask Dr. Frist,” in which he gives such advice as “whenever you masturbate, God kills a kitten.”

A study in the Lancet says that executions performed in the US are incompetently done and therefore painful. The executioners are supposed to administer anesthesia but have no training in it, and in 21 of 49 bodies autopsied, didn’t administer enough to render the prisoner unaware of pain, much less unconscious. 43 received less anesthetic than the standard for surgery. Since they were also given a paralytic, any pain would have been invisible to observers.

One thing that should reduce the number of executions: the Texas legislature has voted to allow juries to give sentences of life without parole. Faced with the possibility that a killer could be released one day, juries have often preferred to execute. Of death-penalty states, now only New Mexico lacks the no-parole option. When Bush was governor, I believe he was a strong opponent of the culture of life-without-the-possibility-of-parole.

He was asked today how he reconciled his support of the death penalty with the culture of life. Of course, Bush being Bush, the amazing thing wasn’t that he kept two contradictory ideas in his head, but how he kept two ideas in his head, period. He said that the difference between Terri Schiavo and a convicted killer is “the difference between guilt and innocence”. And the death penalty saves lives.

That was Bush talking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors today. Talked down to them, in fact:

Today I was with the Indian Foreign Minister, and we were talking about the neighborhood. [what’s with the thing he’s been doing lately where he says “neighborhood” instinstead of “region”?] And I reminded him that I was appreciative of the efforts of President Musharraf and his efforts in fighting al Qaeda. I thought it was in the best interests of the United States and India that President Musharraf be tough when it comes to running down people in caves that are trying to do harm to free people. After all, India is a free country. It made sense to encourage a leader like President Musharraf.

And when asked about his failure to give the details of his Social Security plan, he slipped into an Edward G. Robinson impersonation:

we have been talking about it for a while, but it’s going to take a while more to continue making clear to people in Congress that we got a problem, see.

None of the editors asked him how he felt about the slime-mold beetle. But then again, no one asked the slime-mold beetle how it felt about being named after Bush.

Terri Schiavo: a modest proposal

I haven’t followed the Robert Blake trial, but I do know that LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley should be forced to resign for saying that the jurors were “incredibly stupid” and the Blake is “guilty as sin.” While both may very well be true, a district attorney doesn’t get to say so. He either believes in the principle that only juries get to decide who is guilty, or he shouldn’t be in the job. His remarks are as unprofessional as Dr. Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist’s video diagnosis of Terri Schiavo.

The LA Times comments that in flying to Washington to sign the Terri Schiavo bill in his jammies, but not saying a word about the Minnesota school massacre, Bush is responding to the demands of his core constituencies: “Conservative Christians pressed Bush to intervene for Schiavo, while the National Rifle Assn. and other gun-owner groups generally look to minimize the relevance of political responses to mass shootings.” So there could be a compromise here. If Terri is as functional as Frist says she is, and if she were to “accidentally” shoot herself while cleaning her gun....

Other ways

Crowds protesting the, shall we say, flawed elections in Kyrgyzstan (Motto: It’s Pronounced Just like It’s Spelled!), elections backed, naturally, by Vladimir Putin, the patron saint of stolen elections, have taken over the country’s second city, which even they were surprised to find out is named Osh.

Condi Rice says if North Korea doesn’t return to talks, we will have to find “other ways” of making it comply with our wishes. No, I don’t see any reason they’d feel a need to arm themselves with nukes for self-protection, no reason at all.

The Republicans are finally advocating universal health care. In the future, everyone in the country will have a doctor. Unfortunately, they’ll all have the same doctor, Bill Frist, who will glance at a video of them and make an instant diagnosis. Neurology, gastroenterology, opthamology, podiatry (but not gynecology, he’s a good Christian man and not into that sort of thing), you name it and he’ll issue a pompous, ill-informed pronouncement.


More.

Rehabilitation, American style

I’m not sure which was the slimiest thing done by a politician this week, Gerry Adams warning the family of murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney not to be “manipulated” for political gain, or Bill “I’m a doctor you know” Frist proclaiming that he’d watched videotapes of Terri Schiavo for an hour and is convinced that the people who have observed her vegetating for the past 15 years have it wrong.

The Sindy reports that the US military routinely orders the release of Iraqi common criminals, including kidnappers, if they promise to spy on the insurgents. Nice.

Speaking of common criminals, does it worry anyone that Wolfowitz is going to the World Bank even though he based his understanding of Iraq on the word of Achmad Chalabi, a man convicted of bank fraud?

Leaning

If Iraq’s election monitors will be in Jordan, Western journalists still have to cover the country from in their countries, practicing “hotel journalism.” Robert Fisk reports that NBC journos not only don’t leave their hotel, but their security advisers have told them not to visit the hotel’s pool or restaurant. He notes that during the invasion, reports from embedded reporters were prefaced with warnings that they were produced under military restrictions, but now, when their only “reporting” consists of reaching out from under their bed to grab the latest press release issued by the US military or the puppet government, themselves isolated in the Green Zone from the real situation in Iraq, no such warnings are given.

With British elections coming up sometime in spring, the talk is of a further Tory party meltdown. Still, none of the parties are going in to the election with the leader they want. The Conservatives have discarded three party leaders since the last time they were in office, and Michael Howard is doing no better with the public. The Liberal Democrats are led by a man with a disconcerting resemblance to Conan O’Brien, enough said there. Labour would do better with anybody but Bush’s poodle, and there are fierce battles, all leaked to the press, being waged over when to replace him with Gordon Brown, the current chancellor, so they’re not looking too great either. Labour are currently thrilled that they were able to arrange for a Tory MP and former minister for higher education, Robert Jackson, to defect to Labour, although 1) he’s not planning to run again anyway, 2) all the issues on which he disagrees with the Tories are ones on which Labour is further to the right (charging tuition for universities, Iraq, etc).

Bill “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty” Frist says that Americans might have to “take some medicine” in the form of lower Social Security benefits. You know, as awful as Frist is as a senator, if poverty is his idea of medicine it’s probably just as well he gave up the doctoring gig.

Speaking of evil ex-doctors, the New Yorker just posted not only the Sy Hersh story about secret incursions into Iran, but also an interesting profile of Iyad “Comical” Allawi, another detailed biography which still doesn’t answer my question whether the guy ever practiced medicine.

In, pathetically, the boldest Democratic move yet on Alberto Gonzales, Ted Kennedy says he is “leaning against” voting to confirm him. But if you consider support for torture to be an absolute disqualification for the job of attorney general, and funnily enough I do, you don’t “lean” because there is nothing left to consider. You do not “lean” on issues of principle.

Barrel of fish

The Bush campaign is accusing Kerry of standing “in pulpits across the country using Scripture to make political attacks.”

After John Edwards makes a comment about stem-cell research helping people like Christopher Reeve, Sen. Bill “Here, Kitty Kitty” Frist accuses him of cruelly offering false hope to patients. Frist prefers to offer false despair.
(Later: Edwards said “When John Kerry is President, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get out of that wheelchair and walk again.” The repugnant Mr. Frist may have a point.)

From a letter to the NYT: “The Bush record is a barrel of fish, and John Kerry can’t seem to hit any of them.”

Mass graves are being dug up in Iraq, with children in them, and I’ll bet Bush mentions that fact in tonight’s debate even though it’s supposed to be confined to domestic and economic issues. I don’t think it’s too cynical of me to wonder about the timing of this. (Bob Goodsell was on this first.)

The NYT has a piece on Allawi trying to hobble the de-Baathization process, trying to disband the independent commission, and then not allowing its members sufficient passes to enter the Green Zone, ordering ministries not to deal with it, etc.

What would Jesus confess to?

My last email had the subject line “mean and nasty people,” which was evidently enough to get it bounced by Chris’s work computer, which thinks everything is about sex.

Bill “Here, kitty kitty kitty” Frist, on the floor of the United States Senate, today accused Richard Clarke of lying under oath, because he (supposedly) “told two entirely different stories under oath” (Condi Rice, of course, continues to refuse to take an oath). Later, Frist had to admit he didn’t actually know what Clarke had actually said the first time, but he wants the testimony declassified so he can conduct a fishing expedition. At least Frist wasn’t under oath, or that little discrepancy between his statements today might be a problem, huh?

Someone has searched all the public statements by both Bush and Cheney from their inauguration until 9/11/01, and found not a mention of Al Qaida or bin Laden.

Evidently MSNBC reported that 58% of all exercise done in America occurred on tv infomercials, without realizing that it was an Onion parody (this once happened with the Chinese news service, which never quite got the concept of parody even when it was explained to them slowly).

Some clown in, where else, Texas, confessed to having murdered his girlfriend after seeing The Passion of the Christ. And someone else in, where else, Florida, confessed to a bank robbery after seeing the movie. Also, a couple of people have had heart attacks watching it.

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.

Freedom is a beautiful thing

A letter to the NYT notes that while Bush’s people talk about him not going to any military funerals because he’s just so busy, since June he has gone to 35 fund-raisers.

Actually, he is planning to visit with families of dead soldiers for the first time next week. Dead British soldiers. Many of whose families said thanks but no thanks. Others will go and ask difficult questions. Heh heh. Bush says about the demonstrations he will encounter, “I'm so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their minds. That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing.” In other words, Britain turned down the Secret Service’s demand that they ban the demos. A beautiful thing indeed. The Sindy points out that Bush hasn’t visited any wounded soldiers. I said this a few days ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print anywhere.

Still, the UK refused to grant diplomatic immunity to US Secret Service and snipers. Nor will they close the Tube, nor will the US Air Force patrol London with fighters and Blackhawks, nor will battlefield weaponry be shipped in for use against rioters. Nor will Buckingham Palace be completely rebuilt with blast-proof windows and reinforced walls. I include a link in case you think I’m making this up.

Laura Bush, interviewed for British tv, said that for Americans, the British monarchy is a “fairytale.” Insert your own Prince Charles joke here.

Here’s an article on scam-baiting, which is where you respond to Nigerian emails and string them along as long as possible. One of the goals is to get the sender to prove his identity by sending a photo of himself holding up a sign with the name you’re using: Iama Dildo, for example. There are websites for those as well.

Israel responds to synagogue bombings in Istanbul by blaming anyone who criticizes Israel.

From the NY Times piece on the Senate marathon, quoting Rick Santorum (R-Moronville): “we'll have our opportunity someday, and we'll make sure there's not another liberal judge, ever!” And this, on the staginess of it all: “In fact, the Republican cots, which were wheeled into the room on Wednesday morning before a summoned throng of photographers and reporters, were quietly wheeled out, having never been used by anyone. Only Dr. Frist appeared to have briefly napped in a cot, one that was ostentatiously placed not in his inner office, which has abundant comfortable sofas and where one might choose to sleep privately, but near the door to a public hallway where it could be seen and photographed.”

The Iraqis took down two US helicopters with a single RPG today. US death toll: 400. Sorry, 419.

It may be pointless to criticize the current American plan for turning over power to Iraq, since there’s bound to be a new plan in a day or two, but the NYT correctly points out that it would occur before there is a constitution (which looks likely to be such a farce that the US doesn’t want to be associated with it), or even national elections. No protection for minorities, or women, nothing about Islamic law. The Kurds should regard this as yet another sell-out. Of course the US military won’t leave, but they’ll evidently stop using the word occupation. And they’ll keep control of the $20 billion.

French fake dog droppings

I’m having no trouble resisting the urge to turn on CSPAN 2 to watch the 30-hour marathon the R’s are staging, Cry-Baby Expo ‘03, highlighting the failure to give Shrub every single ludicrous judicial nominee he pulls out of his ass. Sadly, the impact of the message of this little stunt--I believe the message is “Do as we say, not as we did”--may be diminished by the leak of the memo from Majority Leader Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist’s office about stage-managing the event for Fox; quote: “the producer wants to know will we walk in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so they get it live to open Brit Hume's show?”

(Later): well, I gave in and watched some of the windbaggery. Before you schedule 30 hours of talking you should really make sure that you have something to say. Sen. Enzi just said that the words “with liberty and justice for all” in the pledge of allegiance requires the approval of Bush’s nominees.

Orrin Hatch is quoting H L Mencken and The Far Side.

Sharon says that critics of Israel’s use of force against Palestinians are exercising “a new form of anti-Semitism.”

Pakistan bans fashion shows as un-Islamic.

Reuters: “For many days, aides have portrayed California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as hard at work in meetings on his new administration which takes office on Monday. It turns out that the actor and his wife Maria Shriver have been vacationing in Hawaii with their four children, a person close to the family told Reuters.” Ah, how Reaganesque.

This week we’ve been getting conflicting estimates of the size of the enemy in Iraq, ranging from 5,000 to 50,000. This all has a very nostalgic, “military intelligence says there were 3,500 Vietcong and our body count this month is 3,300,” feel to it.

When Israel bombed an alleged terrorist training camp in Syria last month, its planes buzzed a presidential palace. Isn’t that sweet?

So if I read a NYT story correctly, Tom DeLay set up a charity for abused children that is a cover for paying for parties at the 2004 Republican Convention. It’s a way of not having to report campaign contributions.

Can you resist the headline “French Fill Lyon With Fake Dog Droppings”?