Bush’s Refrain on Iraq Joined by a Smaller and Smaller Chorus To illustrate the progress in Iraq, Bush ticked off statistics on the Iraqi security forces (200 operations in two weeks), the number of Iraqi battalions (more than 130, covering 30,000 square miles), the number of tips (4,000 in December), the number of weapons caches and bomb plants found (1,800), and the amount spent to defeat improvised explosives ($3.3 billion). He declared that the Iraqi police academy “will include many, many more Sunnis.” Wait a minute. This is The Shotgun Approach. The strategery by which poorly prepared college or post-collegiate…
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BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin gets around, finally, to making this observation: “We are being lied to.” Yep, we sure are. Finally, several days after I first heard part but not all of it, here is the link to This American Life’s Guantanamo report, “Habeas Schmabeas.” This is the one where part of it, in explanation of the origin of the legal concept of habeas corpus, entails a visit to Westminster Abbey. I was wrong about the guide, his name is Tony, and thus is not the same one we had when we visited the Abbey year before last. And remember, the…
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Prisoners without Trials – Blumner: Treatment of Guantanamo prisoners unprecedented in U.S. In the 1660s, England’s Lord Clarendon was in the habit of sending prisoners to remote islands and military garrisons in order to put them out of reach of the due process protections afforded by English courts. For these misdeeds, Clarendon was impeached, and in 1679 Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, which made it illegal to ship prisoners away to deprive them of their rights. It appears the Bush administration never got that memo. Just an “oh ho!” moment after following up on a detail from This American…
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Salt Lake Tribune copy editor and headline writer Robert Ellefson died Tuesday of pneumonia. From the sound of it, he started out at City News Bureau, since his bio includes a stint at the Chicago Sun-Times. City News was owned by the Sun-Times’ arch-rival the Chicago Tribune, but nearly every young reporter spent some time “checking it out” at the News. He sounds like a rare character for Utah, and I wish I’d known him. -30-
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Chicago Tribune | Ethnic groups rally for immigrant rights and against HR4337, which places much stricter guidelines for immigration. It is opposed by a broad spectrum of church, labor, and minority-rights groups. It is supported by… “people” like the Minutemen and a group called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which sounds much more tasteful and level-headed than the “Keep the dam’ furrin wetbacks out” Club. Immigrants: 100,000. Minutemen: Oh, about t’ree or four. The large turnout was partly in response to urgings from the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese, evangelical and socially-progressive churches, and a Hispanic radio announcer called “El Pistolero,”…
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Democrats Want Independent Katrina Probe – Yahoo! News The videotape captured a briefing, one day before Katrina stuck on Aug. 29, involving then- Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown, President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials. Brown and others warned that the storm could breach levees, endanger lives in the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelm rescuers. Five days after the briefing, with most of New Orleans underwater, Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” White House and Homeland Security officials urged the public not to read too much into the video…
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Katrina Report Spreads Blame Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government’s failure to learn the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as leaders from President Bush down disregarded ample warnings of the threat to New Orleans and did not execute emergency plans or share information that would have saved lives, according to a blistering report by House investigators. A draft of the report, to be released publicly Wednesday, includes 90 findings of failures at all levels of government, according to a senior investigation staffer who requested anonymity because the document is not final. Titled “A Failure of Initiative,” it…
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I wish we were doing this at Holy Moly: Chicago Tribune | Churches to mark Darwin’s birthday NEW YORK — Nearly 450 Christian churches around the country plan to celebrate the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin on Sunday with programs and sermons intended to emphasize that his theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science. “It’s to demonstrate, by Christian leaders and members of the clergy, that you don’t have to make that choice. You can have both,” said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and…
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I’ve been tagging del.icio.us links with this phrase today: RhetoricOfFailure. In fact, I bundled it together with a lot of other terms, like “CorruptRepublicans” and “SmirkingBastards” and “anti-truth.” Because every time I read a news item about something that didn’t go so well lately for the current Administration, I tag it and add it to the growing linkslist of failures. . I’ll be adding a new tag to the bundle: “Disengaged.” I just ran across this article from Boing Boing, and began sobbing helplessly at the needless loss of life and property because a bunch of elected and appointed officials…
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Indonesia’s mountains unveil a ‘Lost World’ | IndyStar.com Oh, man! I love me some golden-mantled tree kangaroos! I want one for Christmas! JAKARTA, Indonesia — Soon after scientists landed by helicopter in the mist-shrouded mountains of a remote Indonesian province, they stumbled on a primitive egg-laying mammal that allowed itself to be picked up and brought to their field camp. Among the things discovered by scientists in Indonesia’s remote Foja mountain range: Long-beaked Echidna: The largest species of the egg-laying group of primitive mammals called the Monotremes, seen three times during the monthlong expedition. The enigmatic creature has never reproduced…