Reporters who entered the office compound after the raid found a scene of destruction. Computers had been seized, furniture had been overturned, doors broken down and framed photographs of Mr. Chalabi smashed. Aides to Mr. Chalabi said members of the raiding party had helped themselves to food and beverages from the refrigerator. What the hell are we doing in Iraq? Have we gone totally apeshit? What is our policy? Are we now the jackbooted bullies of the world? We go in for no good reason, we screw with people, we imprison them (see “no good reason” above) and nobody had…
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WASHINGTON, May 19 – The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly. Very interesting. They actually call it a form of covert propaganda. It’s about time somebody called them on this kind of thing.
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It was the 17th perfect game in major league history, the 15th since the modern era began in 1900 and the first since the New York Yankees’ David Cone against Montreal on July 18, 1999. “It didn’t faze me,” Johnson said. “The bottom line was we needed to win the game. Winning the game was the biggest, most important thing.” Cy Young, then 37, had been the oldest to throw a perfect game, doing it in 1904. Johnson sure didn’t act his age, getting stronger as the game went along on a pleasantly warm night in Atlanta. “Not bad for…
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But the woman’s family are insisting that the militiamen will continue to occupy the hospital until they are compensated for the removal of her womb. The family is demanding 50 camels, which is the traditional Somali compensation offered for the death of a woman. The woman’s family say she is as good as dead because she can no longer bear children. This has been bothering me all day. I realize that this woman comes from a traditional culture, in a place where survival is everything. She would have died had a doctor at a free clinic in Mogadishu not removed…
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Joi Itoquotes Lauren Weinstein: Greetings. Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, who exposed so many aspects of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story, now reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice secretly approved the expansion of a clandestine program that encouraged physical coercion, sexual humiliation, and blackmail of Iraqi prisoners, setting the stage for the abuses that these same officials have recently been condemning so publicly. According to the report, President Bush was kept informed regarding this program. The Department of Defense called the accusations in the story “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and…
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We wants the extended version of The Return of the King, but this version is tempting, too.
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FARGO, N.D. – A man who said he was fed up with his cellular phone service went to a Fargo mall and started hurling phones across a store, striking an employee and causing more than $2,000 in damage, authorities said. Guess he was really fed up with the annoying banner ads. I know I am, because it bugs the hell out of me when I get Mfop2to work but Verizon adds an annoying 2 line ad with extra spaces that reads: This message was sent using Picture Messaging from Verizon Wireless! To learn how you can snap and send pictures…
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Crash Test Goofy approves of car safety: Federal regulators proposed today an overhaul of the side-impact crash tests performed on cars and trucks. The new test procedures will reinforce the industry’s voluntary commitment to equip almost all new vehicles with inflatable curtains and other side airbags that protect people’s heads by the end of the decade.
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We got to Salt Lake yesterday afternoon after driving up through the desert and mountains from Moab. The big wind was still blowing and there were branches down and stuff flying all over. We managed to get to dinner with Timmy and Frank, because Tim was leaving the next morning for a convention. We did much damage to a lot of sushi, much to the wonderment of our family, who stuck to shrimp tempura. Today we mooched around at Mom’s and ran a couple of errands before meeting with our friends Jim and Jane at a place called the Salt…
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We spent the day at Arches National Park; after our exertions hiking out on the slickrock to see the Upheaval Dome area the day before, we were moving slower and somewhat painfully, so we took an “easy” day driving around part of the park and taking short spur hikes to see arches and interesting rocks. At one point we got into an area just off the road called “Sand Dune Arch” and luckily we had it to ourselves. It’s in an area of long, thin vertical fins of red sandstone, and there’s extremely fine red sand (or rock dust) underfoot.…