Unlawful Combatants in Iraq

In news reports they call them contractors.

Clever Guys

You gotta hand it to the White House strategists on some points. They can be masters at dodging embarrasing questions. The point of the Dick-and-George 9/11 interview may have been to keep Cheney from having to answer questions.

A non-denial denial

The boys at the White House leaked Plame. But they are being quite careful to not deny it but leave the impression they are denying it. A crime has been committed. I want to see these guys in court.

Bush: Bin Laden memo lacked details

Doesn't this remind you of the kind of excuse a teenager would give?

"Bush said if his administration had known more, it would have taken every action to thwart the al-Qaida terrorists."

It proposes a hypothetical rewriting of history, "If only cows could fly.....". But it doesn't answer the question, "Given what little you did know, was the appropriate action to just to do nothing?"

Ingenious Synergy

What do you get when you combine students, a recreational device, and a military need?

You get a sticky projectile that can be fired from a paintball gun that adheres to a target. If you pack a chemical sensor and electronics into the projectile you get a device that can sense the presence of explosives in a box or pile of trash by the roadside and transmit the results to soldiers standing a safe distance away.

The anti-Cheney

quoted by E.J.Dionne:
"Speaking of Kerry, McCain said: 'He's my friend. He'll continue to be my friend. I know his service was honorable. If that hurts me politically or with my party, that's a very small price to pay.'"

Huh?

Fred Kaplan:

There is no nuclear arms race going on now. The world no longer offers many suitable nuclear targets. President Bush is trying to persuade other nations—especially "rogue regimes"—to forgo their nuclear ambitions. Yet he is shoveling money to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories as if the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War still raged.

Candidate for Impeachment

Bush commits an impeachable offense but it will be quicker to defeat him at the polls in November.

Busy

My apologies to the faithful few who drop by here from time to time. Life has me very busy right now so posting has been infrequent. It should let up in a week or so.

Kerry's Protectionism

It would work. By proper restructuring of the tax code, a huge incentive for shipping jobs overseas will evaporate. And the only people that suffer are the villians.

Bush's War of Aggression

Once again, the truth seems to be worse than the speculation. Impeachment proceeding are in order but the best solution is a resounding rejection in November.

Evolution

How to teach it and how to talk about it.

Iron Key To Climate Change

We may be able to control global warming by fertilizing the Southern Ocean with iron.

Easter in Fallujah

The story you won't see on the news.

Press Conference Fallout

from William Saletan:

"Bush's notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true."

This could be where he loses the election.

The Biggest Bozo Among Peers

Turns out to be Ashcroft. His blatant de-emphasis of the terrorist threat seems to have removed whatever slim chance we may have had of stopping 9/11. But you know those right-wing fundamentalists, they always know better than the experts.

Scalia's goon squad

Dahlia Lithwick on the Supreme's police state tactics.

The point here isn't that federal marshals are bad people. Most of them are quite nice. The point is that, unlike most federal and state officials, they simply don't believe they answer to any body of law—they are pretty certain that they answer only to the justices. Imagine a police force answerable only to the mayor or federal prosecutors answerable only to John Ashcroft. The marshals have gone from providing security to the justices to being the court's own private militia.

A new front-runner

A new Newsweek poll:
"Even after adding independent candidate Ralph Nader to the hypothetical race, Kerry enjoys a four-point lead (46 percent to 42 percent), with Nader drawing 4 percent of the vote."

And so it begins

The global warming shoe is about to drop. Time to reconsider all that beachfront property.

Bush Job Ratings Slip

Summary of Findings: Public Support for War Steady, But Bush Job Ratings Slip

Condi Rice's other wake-up call

It's getting harder and harder to keep all the beach balls submerged.

"Richard Clarke was not the only national security expert who warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials about terrorist threats before 9/11. Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado also directly told senior Bush officials loudly and clearly that, in his words, 'The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming.'"

I sure hope this serves as a warning to future administrations that whatever the crime, it's the coverup that really gets you.

Why Condi Agreed to testify

It seems that there already is a precedent.

9/11 Widows

Those gals are terrific. The commission would not even exist without this handful of dedicated women. We all owe them our gratitude.

President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief

It's time to give him a long Hawaiian vacation.