From Holden: How conveeenient. Continue reading Chalabi One Of Two Candidates In The Running for Prime Minister of Iraq

Listen, kids, because this may be the only time you hear me stick up for Powerline, Free Republic, whoever it was that first reported Eason Jordan’s comments, etc. And the only reason I’m doing it is that they’re right, and everybody over at Romenesko, and I mean everybody, those saying BLOGS IZ PASTEDE ON YAY and those saying BLOGS IZ TEH SUXXORZ, is just so absolutely wrong. Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it. Good God. The sanctimony oozing from these reporters’ pores is just too much to take. Collecting scalps? Oh, the horror. How … Continue reading In Which Athenae Gives Props To Those Who Deserve It

From Holden: A federal appeals court has rejected Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper’s appeal of the grand jury subpeona, ruling that the two reporters must testify in the Plame case. A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that two journalists must testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources in an investigation into a leak that exposed the identity of a covert CIA operative Valerie Plame . The three-judge panel ruled that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine must comply with a subpoena from a grand jury investigating whether the Bush administration illegally … Continue reading Court Rules Miller and Cooper Must Testify in Plame Case

From Holden: The head of the International Committee for the Red Cross held a meeting with the preznit yesterday to express the Committee’s concern about the ongoing use of toture at GITMO. Any doubts that Bush’s response was something along the lines of, “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”? The head of the International Committee for the Red Cross has met US President George W Bush to discuss concerns about detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Jakob Kellenberger and Mr Bush talked about “ICRC concerns regarding US detention”, the organisation said. [snip] A leaked report by the ICRC was said to have found evidence of … Continue reading I’m Sure He Had Chimpy’s Full Attention

From Holden: Rummy loves him some torture. Military lawyers at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison tried to stop inhumane interrogations, but were ignored by senior Pentagon officials, the Daily News has learned. Judge advocates – uniformed legal advisers known as JAGs who were assigned to a secret war crimes task force – repeatedly objected to aggressive interrogations by a separate intelligence unit at Camp Delta, where Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects have been jailed since January 2002. But Pentagon officials “didn’t think this was a big deal, so they just ignored the JAGs,” a senior military source said. The military … Continue reading “Senior Pentagon Officials” Ignored Warnings Against Torture

From Holden: Rummy loves him some torture. Military lawyers at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison tried to stop inhumane interrogations, but were ignored by senior Pentagon officials, the Daily News has learned. Judge advocates – uniformed legal advisers known as JAGs who were assigned to a secret war crimes task force – repeatedly objected to aggressive interrogations by a separate intelligence unit at Camp Delta, where Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects have been jailed since January 2002. But Pentagon officials “didn’t think this was a big deal, so they just ignored the JAGs,” a senior military source said. The military … Continue reading ”Senior Pentagon Officials” Ignored Warnings Against Torture

Today’s Action comes from Amnesty International: No one has been brought to justice for the crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan.  We need to focus the attention of world leaders on this problem. Here’s a sample letter you can send: ***************** Dear Minister, I’m writing to you to express my concern about the continuing failure to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan.  Impunity has fuelled insecurity in Sudan for more than 21 years. I therefore urge your government, as a member of the UN Security Council, to: – Ensure the Sudanese … Continue reading Action Alert – Tuesday, February 15

From Holden: Actually, it doesn’t matter how much it is because nobody’s buying. Retail sales fell in January, a government report showed Tuesday, largely due to a drop off in automotive sales from their sharp gain in the previous month. The Department of Commerce report showed overall sales fell 0.3 percent in January, the first overall decline since last August, compared with a revised 1.1 percent gain in December. Continue reading How Much Is That Bush Boom In The Window?

Know your members of the Kickass Caucus, boys and girls. There will be a quiz before the midterms. A. Continue reading Kickass Democrats: Steny Hoyer Edition

From Holden: I asked this question over at Atrios’ pad earlier today but no one had an answer. Now I’ll give it a shot here. Why has any mention of GOPUSA board member Richard Powell, a former policy advisor to Texas Governor Rick “Goodhair” Perry who last year was the subject of certain rumors, been scrubbed from the GOPUSA web site? Fortunately, Google cached Powell’s bio at GOPUSA. Here’s a photo of Richard Powell. Who knows – you might see him on one of Gannon’s web pages. Thanks to preznit giv me turkee for the tip. Continue reading Missing in Action

From Holden: Mo’ Money! Mo’ Money! Mo’ Money! More for Iraq in today’s gaggle. Q Scott, the Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental, is that indeed, as you said, going up today? And, if so — MR. McCLELLAN: Yes. Q — can you remind us of why it is necessary to do this as a supplemental, outside the budget process and outside the deficit — MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things. One, we don’t know what the cost will be going forward in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, to some extent, depends on — or to a large extent, depends on circumstances … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: A test of the national missile defense system failed Monday when an interceptor missile did not launch from its island base in the Pacific Ocean, the military said. It was the second failure in months for the experimental program. [snip] The previous test, on Dec. 15, failed under almost identical circumstances. The target missile launched, but the interceptor did not. Military officials later blamed that failure on fault-tolerance software that was oversensitive to small errors in the flow of data between the missile and a flight computer. The software shut down the launch; officials said they would decrease … Continue reading Kim Jong-Il Must Be Laughing His Ass Off

From Holden: Pat Buchanan is one of the more distasteful voices on the right, but from time to time I find myself agreeing with him. Yesterday on Meet the Press was one of those times. The United States of America has always been free and always been secure. There have been despotisms from time in memorial. There are 22 Arab states, not one of which is democratic, and the United States has not been threatened by any of them since the Barbary pirates. In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of … Continue reading What’s That They Say About A Stopped Clock?

From Holden: Robin Wright explains what was obvious to those of us who opposed the War on Iraq two years ago. When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran’s theocracy — potentially even a foil to Tehran’s regional ambitions. But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base — and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is … Continue reading Hiding in Plain Sight

From Holden: Safely ensconced in a second undeserved term, Chimpy is socking it to the gullible 51%. Red America is a bit red-in-the-face over President Bush’s new budget. Within a few hours of the release of the president’s proposal last week, Rep. John E. Peterson (R-Pa.), co-chairman of the Congressional Rural Caucus, fired off a statement criticizing the president he typically supports. “We expected to fight cuts to rural programs under the Clinton administration,” he said. “But those who are currently advocating these draconian cuts would not be in office today if it weren’t for rural America. These cuts disproportionately … Continue reading Suckers

This site needs a “whacked-out fucked-up-shit” category for stuff like this: For $750,000, buyers can get the fully loaded “NBC” version that can, Ayres said, detect and block out fallout from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by over-pressurizing the cab with filtered, clean air much like an aircraft. Ayres said he isn’t playing on post-Sept. 11 fears by offering the NBC option. “There’s a certain group of people who color outside the box,” Ayres said, and if they want to escape a city targeted by terrorists with dirty bombs or biological agents, “this is the truck for them.” Possible Bad … Continue reading Statement of Fact

Quick! It’s up to $41.05 now! Bid while you still can! A. Continue reading Historical Memorabilia and Collectibles at Low Low Prices!

Sweet holy mother of God: SUTTER, California (AP) — The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will rob their children of privacy. The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on January 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. While similar devices are being tested at several schools in Japan so parents can know when their children arrive and leave, Brittan appears to be the first U.S. … Continue reading Bobo’s World: Tag ‘Em and Bag ‘Em

From Holden: Senate Democrats are investigating one of the greatest crimes in American history: the outright theft of uncounted billions of tax dollars perpetrated by GOP-connected corporations with the assistance of the Coalition Provisional Authority. U.S. officials in postwar Iraq paid a contractor by stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack and routinely made cash payments around Baghdad from a pickup truck, a former official with the U.S. occupation government says. Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam … Continue reading Your Tax Dollars at Work

Here. � Contribution amount: � $ � � � � I’m sure the full transcript of what was an impressive outline for the future of the Democratic party put forth by Dean in his speech this morning will be available at some point here. But there was one thing Dean said that I thought we ought to keep in mind when opening our pocketbooks. Democrats have no need to be defensive. And we don’t. Our good Republican masters tell us to be ashamed of ourselves and to worry because we lost the values vote, the rural vote, the imaginary puple … Continue reading Giv Howard’s DNC Turkee!

The NYT says what everybody was thinking, that yes, there was warning, and yes, Rice ignored it: The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving “massive support” to anti-Taliban groups “to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down”; destroying terrorist training camps “while classes are in session” and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and … Continue reading Department of That’s Gonna Sting For a Good Long While

From Holden: Wampum’s Koufax Award finalists for Best Blog. All Spin Zone Baghdad Burning Brad Blog Daily Kos Eschaton Hullabaloo Rittenhouse Review Steve Gilliard Suburban Guerrilla Could they make it any harder? Go Vote.. Continue reading Best Blogs

From Holden: Harry Reid ain’t the only dem fighting back. Nancy Pelosi is calling bullshit over the Republicans’ efforts to stack the Ethics Committee. House Democratic leaders yesterday sought the removal of two recently appointed Republicans from the House ethics committee, questioning whether their contributions to Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s legal defense fund would color their judgment on issues involving him. The committee deferred action last year on investigating any role played by DeLay (R-Tex.) in a corporate campaign-donation controversy in Texas that led to indictments of three of his political associates. Rep. Lamar S. Smith of Texas contributed $10,000 … Continue reading Pelosi to Reid: I See Your Balls and Raise You a Pair of Ovaries

From Holden: Wow, we made the list of finalists for Best Group Blog over at Wampum. We made the semi-finals for Best Series (three entries nominated), Best Writing (Athenae, of course), and Best New Blog. Finalists for Best Writing and Best Series are out and I’m afraid First Draft did not make the final cut for either. Still waiting to see the finalists for Best New Blog, it would be quite an achievement to make the final list for both Best New and Best Group. Thanks to all of you for your support. We’re having a ball, it’s good to … Continue reading Koufax Finalists

Thanks to all those who vaulted First Draft into the realm of finalist for best group blog! My mother would be so proud. Of Holden, that is. I use the word “fuck” too much. A. Continue reading You think we’re gorgeous, you wanna date us

From Holden: Today’s gaggle begins with Helen Thomas goading Little Scottie into a lie about the president’s proposed budget. Q Scott, why — why did the President cut down on food stamps and child care and a thousand other — well, not that many — social causes, and so forth, and give huge tax cuts to the rich again? MR. McCLELLAN: He didn’t. Q He didn’t cut down on food stamps and child care, and so forth? MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of the President’s compassion agenda and providing a safety net for those in need, we have made a strong … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: Chimpy: “Mind if I call ya’ Condi?” Continue reading Slow News Day Caption Contest

From Holden: Does George Bush plan to default on the Treasury Bonds in which our Social Security Trust Fund is invested? Speaking at the Commerce Department on Wednesday, he clearly went too far with his rhetoric. Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund — in other words, there’s a pile of money being accumulated. That’s just simply not true. The money — payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They’re spent on benefits and they’re spent on government programs. There is no trust. We’re on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system — what goes in … Continue reading Treasury Bond Default: The Evolving Rationalization

From Holden: And the answer is, yes, our allies is learning. Four Ukrainian army officers escorting the remains of a soldier home from Iraq were caught at the Kiev airport with 300,000 dollars and accused of smuggling, the Ministry of Defense said Friday. Customs authorities at Boryspil airport confiscated the undeclared cash from the four officers. The officers had stashed the cash on their persons. Continue reading Rarely Is The Question Asked, Is Our Allies Learning?

Fox, the older one, likes to drag shoes off and hide them. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging