I haven’t seen any bears. I found a few beers, though.
Here’s a quick hits list of things I may return to on Wednesday, when I resume normal blogging.
- The Pats beat the Colts … ugly.
- Shane Harris reveals that the rationale for asking Qwest to break the law before 9/11 was hackers. Hackers, terrorists … same difference I guess. Though given the Administration’s troubled history with cyber-security czars, I’d like to consider the implications that their early excuses for violating our privacy pertain to cyber-security. John Conyers has finally asked for more details on the Qwest allegations.
- Our consumer product safety czar has been doing some swank traveling, courtesy of those we are paying her to protect us from.
- Orange County’s Republican Sheriff has been indicted. He has featured in some stories we’ve tracked earlier in this blog. And one wonders whether he was protected in the past by Bush’s USAs?
- The judge in the AIPAC case has approved the defense scheme to call Condi et al to testify about how they leak information through lobbyists. I’m actually more optimistic than most that something might come of this. Not to mention, I’m rather interested by the complete list of those who have been called to testify.
- Two minutes of blog hate goes permanent. The weirdest thing about this venture is that it is largely funded by International Studies entities, but every other post appears to deal with US political blogs. Which suggests 1) an ignorance about the whole range of blogging, and 2) a really bad investment for the International Studies set. Unless the serious foreign policy set is doing this because Atrios and Glenn Greenwald were mean to them. As is predictable, they don’t like pseudonymity anonymity and don’t know the difference between the two.
- In a move that will only surprise Matt Bai and Governor Mark Warner, Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s Constitution. Don’t worry–I’m sure this won’t distract Dick from his Iran fetish in the least.
- Both Merrill Lynch and Citibank are in some deep doo-doo for their investments in crappy mortgage loans.
- DiFi and Schumer, as expected, will support Mukasey to be AG. I guess Schumer’s ego really is more important to him than the Constitution and the rule of law. Meanwhile, the Administration purged a former Acting Assistant AG when he opposed their waterboarding fetish. No wonder Mukasey won’t say he’s opposed to it. I think these details on the Levin purge fill in an important hole in the timeline of the politicization of DOJ.
- The US was the lone country, of 172, voting against a UN resolution calling for peace in space. Even our stalwart Israel felt obliged to at least abstain rather than vote against this no-brainer resolution.
- Whistleblowers continue to be treated like crap in this country. But the press will tell you that it’s more important to have a journalist shield law than to fix our whistleblower protections. You know–because free speech is best when it has to go through a gatekeeper.
- Bandar Bush bin Sultan has now made his second claim that Saudi Arabia had the goods on the terrorists aiming to strike at the US and UK. I thought he made the claim about the UK terrorist plot to discredit Gordon Brown–perhaps as a favor to the Tories. But that doesn’t make sense, if he’s saying the same thing about the 9/11 terrorists. What’s he doing?
The WiFi gods are bound to be really mad at me for the Pats win, so I may not check back in until Wednesday.