SOTU drinking game

"Almost guaranteed to kill you."

Bleh

Meet Justice Alito. We're going to regret that this guy ever got on the SCOTUS.

Pickton trial begins

We visited Vancouver Skid Row some years ago for a weekend. Didn't hear anything about this happening, but apparently it was ongoing at the time.

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. -- Almost four years after his arrest, accused serial killer Robert Pickton -- facing 27 counts of first-degree murder -- entered not-guilty pleas Monday in B.C. Supreme Court.
The 56-year-old man was arrested in February 2002 by police investigating the disappearance of sex-trade workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
The not-guilty pleas marked the formal start of Pickton's trial, which will be followed by several months of hearings on the admissibility of evidence held under a strict publication ban.

In a bar reminiscent of the tune "Spanish Moon," a hooker claimed to recognize us.

'Directed'

The Shrill One, from behind the curtain:

A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes' donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word "directed," Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them.

Best wishes to Bob Woodruff

Head injuries are not career-enhancing in the TV news anchoring field.

LP to digital

The Beeb explains how to do it. We have about 400 titles on vinyl.

Stop-loss

Not good:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called "stop-loss," but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat.

That they're doing this is not news, but the number surprised us. Don't forget to vote, guys.

Wheaties

NYTimes editorial:

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.
The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

'He was against the idea before he was for it'

The Carpetbagger Report catches W in a flip-flop.
via Atrios.

W doesn't pay attention to polls

Here's one he won't like:

A strong bipartisan majority of the public believes President Bush should disclose all contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staffers despite administration claims that media requests for details about those contacts amount to a "fishing expedition," according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found that three in four -- 76 percent -- of all Americans said Bush should disclose contacts between aides and Abramoff while 18 percent disagreed. Two in three Republicans joined with eight in 10 Democrats and political independents in favoring disclosure, according to the poll.

Sure looks like they're hiding something.

SOTU

This is pretty funny.

'The older folks don’t get out as often ...'

Arkansas Times has a good piece this week by Jim Kelton about the vibrant Fayetteville music scene back in the 1960s and where it went from there. Nowadays, a bit tamer, but still.

Not just corrupt

Harold Meyerson:

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.
... It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). But in what must be an unforeseen development, people are trying to get their medications covered under the program. Apparently, this is a contingency for which the administration was not prepared, as it has been singularly unable to get its own program up and running.

WTF?

John Lott, in The New York Times?

W broke the Army

Remember "help is on the way?"

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.
Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

All because Saddam tried to kill his dad.

Gotta love the Czechs

They like their weed almost as much as their beer.

Backpedaling

Someone figured out they're gonna get hammered in November:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal government will help reimburse states that have been paying for prescription drugs after glitches with Medicare's new benefit left many patients stranded, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.
States should first seek reimbursement from companies offering the plans, but Medicare will help pay for any difference, Mark McClellan, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said.

Everyone but PhaRMA's pissed about this fiasco. And the "doughnut-hole" should arrive just in time for the midterms.

Froomkin's back

After paternity leave, the washingtonpost.com White House Briefing columnist has resumed his daily roundup of administration-related news, a must-read.

Zero credibility

KR explains.

Breathtaking

Gen. Michael Hayden, constitutional scholar. Can't wait to read Jonathan Landay's story when Knight Ridder posts it.

Two wrongs don't make a right

Isn't this what he got in trouble for?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday made their first request to use classified evidence at his trial, launching a highly secretive court process that could bog down the case.
In the filings made under seal in federal court, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby put the judge and prosecutors on notice that they want a jury to hear evidence the government now says is classified.

'Terrorist Surveillance Program'

Who could oppose that? Get a warrant. Wolcott is underwhelmed.

Liars

This reminded us of when, during W's monthlong August 2001 vacation, Dan Bartlett appeared on TV, CNN we're pretty sure, to tell us how hard the preznit was working, provoking howls of "Liar!"

Porn spam

Because we always just click "check all" and "delete," we never knew what those spam messages with "Amazing, so-and-so" in the subject line were about. Until now.

Bush/Abramoff photos

First the Washingtonian, now Time. Who the hell is showing these photos to magazines but not allowing them to be published?
UPDATE: This makes sense.

He's probably right

Jon Chait:

The Medicare drug plan is the perfect issue for Democrats to run on. It perfectly encapsulates the corruption of Republican Washington, and it's a concrete thing that voters can relate to. Running on this issue makes so much sense that naturally the Democrats won't do it.

We're glad the LATimes gave Chait a column. At least people read the Times.

Would you buy this paper?

Hussman did. Pathetic:

Whether it’s "Dancing with the Stars" or "So You Think They Can Dance," recent reality shows seem to influencing local teens.

Deborah Howell responds

Not bad. Although she clearly cherry-picked the comments she quoted, their Freeperishness is a bit distressing. Let's be civil.

Keyboard Kommando Komics

Here.

Recommended

Salon has several good pieces today. Farhad Manjoo covers the flap over the Post ombudsman's gaffe. (Media Matters too, here.) Michael Scherer on Osama bin Laden plugging an obscure book. Walter Shapiro attended Karl Rove's speech to the RNC. Joe Conason wants the White House press corpse to ask Scottie about Abramoff meeting the president. And we always enjoy Ask the pilot.

Fisk

A guy who has actually met bin Laden:

So why only on audio? Why no video tape? Is he sick? Yes, say the usual American "intelligence sources". It's the same old story: Osama bin Laden talks to us from the mouth of a cave, from within a cave, from a basement perhaps, from a tape almost certainly recorded down a telephone line from far away. Yesterday's message, broadcast as ever by al-Jazeera television, was a reminder that security - not sickness - decides his method of communication.

All here. Someone was speculating that he may have changed his appearance.

Better hope they're convicted

Washingtonpost.com has a headline up right now that says, "Eleven ecoterrorists indicted." What do you suppose Tom DeLay's lawyers would do if the Post called him a money-launderer?

Bin Laden's truce offer

That tape is thought to have been recorded six-seven weeks ago. It's probably safe to assume the truce offer is off the table now.

Shrill

Krugman has a good column today on the Medicare drug plan. No link, but you can find it on someone's blog if you look. This fiasco's sure to cost the GOP come November. Democrats need to run on pledges to fix this mess.

Airstrike looks like success

Because it's from Pakistani sources instead of the Bush administration, this is more credible, but it appears that bombing killed some top Qaeda guys. Good. On the other hand:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al-Jazeera on Thursday aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, who says al-Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce "with fair conditions."

Department of it'll never last

Trust us:

TOKYO (AP) -- Gohan and Aochan make strange bedfellows: one's a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; the other is a four-foot rat snake. Zookeepers at Tokyo's Mutsugoro Okoku zoo presented the hamster - whose name means "meal" in Japanese - to Aochan as a tasty morsel in October, after the snake refused to eat frozen mice.
But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make friends with the furry rodent, according to keeper Kazuya Yamamoto. The pair have shared a cage since.

GOP 'reform'

Conason is skeptical. As usual, he's right.

Maybe not

In a post about "signing statements," Josh Marshall writes:

There's a body of literature and debate about this theory of the unitary executive.

But Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience, writes in Salon:

Not having heard of this concept, and thinking perhaps that I had missed something in constitutional law, I decided to survey a random sampling of attorneys about it. The group included civil practitioners, prosecutors, a federal judge, a former federal prosecutor who has a Ph.D. as well as a J.D., defense attorneys and a U.S. magistrate. The precise question was, "When did you first hear about the Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency?" Most said, "The past few weeks," but my favorite was, "A few seconds ago, when you asked about it." All agreed that the term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution and that, the last time they checked, we still had three branches of government.

When will they ever learn?

Raymond Hernandez of The New York Times should read the blogs.

Golden Winger nominees are out

Classic TV edition. Don't forget to vote.

Note to self

Return here until the volume subsides enough to use it. (Our ancestors were Scots/Irish.) It shows the distribution of surnames in Britain.
UPDATE: Turns out, we're members of the British race. We can't get the maps to display, but it looks like our Irish is mainly of the Northern variety. And we might find a free place to crash in New Zealand someday.

How's that Iraq project going?

It's still a disater:

The U.S. Agency for International Development paints a dire and detailed picture of the Iraq security situation in its request for contractors to bid on its $1.32 billion, 28-month project to help stabilize 10 major Iraqi cities.

Hey, they've already rebuilt Iraq for only $1.7 billion. Now they'll stabilize it for a mere $1.32 billion more. That's a pittance compared with the $2 trillion total cost of this folly.

Sucking up everything, learning nothing

This is a vortex:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for the eavesdropping program, which did not seek court warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

What Justice Department official do you suppose wrote those opinions?

Mustain unrenegs

The Morning News says our savior will come to UA, after figuring out that we're more desperate than the average bear. If he redshirts, we'll suck again next year.

Vietnam-era deserter arrested

This guy would almost certainly be a superior president to the one we're stuck with now.

Good on them

The WaPo torpedoes Ralph Reed's political career.

Helluva game

Top that Chicago and Carolina. Then comes "24." We're glued to the TV all day and into the night.

Now Atrios is bloggered

But he's right, as usual. Deborah Howell is a wanker:

Schmidt quickly found that Abramoff was getting 10 to 20 times as much from Indian tribes as they had paid other lobbyists. And he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.

No, he didn't. He gave solely to Republicans. Here's a revelation:

Sources often know important facts that they don't reveal until they see how the story is going to turn out.

No shit. Her whole column reads like she's addressing an eighth-grade journalism class. This is The Washington Post ombudsman. The NFL beckons.

We're curious

But not curious enough to actually open one of those spam messages with the subject line, "your neighbors lost their alarm clock," to find out what it's peddling.

Sounds about right

Atrios gazes into his crystal ball.

Must be nice

Cashing in:

WASHINGTON - Less than three months after registering as a lobbyist, former Attorney General John Ashcroft has banked at least $269,000 from just four clients and appears to be developing a practice centered on firms that want to capitalize on a government demand for homeland security technology that boomed under sometimes controversial policies he promoted while in office.

These guys have no shame.
via DailyKos.

Missed him by that much

For what it's worth:

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri is alive, Al Arabiya television reported on Saturday, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.

Not that al Qaeda would announce it if he'd been killed. Still, be on the lookout for a taped statement soon just to dispel any doubt -- if he's alive. And there are about 18 dead villagers.

Caution

It's nice that Riaz Khan, unlike many AP writers and editors (an editor could have corrected it), knows that airstrike is one word. Anyhow, this would be good, and a PR coup for W. If it was successful.

DAMADOLA, Pakistan (AP) -- An airstrike in a remote Pakistani tribal area killed at least 17 people, and a senior Pakistani official said Saturday the target was a suspected al-Qaida hideout that may have been frequented by high-level operatives, possibly the No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that it was a CIA strike and that al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, could have been at a targeted compound in the Bajur area or about to arrive.

But we're doubtful whether AP etc. have better connections than these guys.

It's a start

See ya:

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Dennis Hastert is trying to force out Ohio Rep. Bob Ney as chairman of the House Administration Committee, a week after Ney was linked in Justice Department documents to a bribery scheme involving convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a senior House aide said Friday.
Ney's committee has jurisdiction over the Republican reform agenda in the wake of the Abramoff scandal, and Hastert believes it is inappropriate to let Ney run it, said the GOP leadership aide, who spoke of anonymity because of the negotiations between Ney and the speaker.

Republicans have a reform agenda?

Big Media Matt guests at TPM

We were reading Talking Points Memo, and we thought, Man, Josh is making even more typos than usual today. Then we got down to the post where Matt Yglesias announced that he's guest-blogging today. That explains it. Matt's a talented and prolific writer and policy wonk but he should read his copy before publishing (which we did several times here, lest we commit a typo).

Light housekeeping

So we were reading Altercation, and Dr. Alterman had printed a comment from our pal GreyHair so we had to update his link, because he has moved to Bending the Third Rail. And as long as we were in the template, we added AMERICAblog, where John Aravosis and friends are doing great work like this, which was another thing we would've linked yesterday except ...

Catching up

The WaPo had this yesterday when Blogger was being difficult. The NYTimes follows up:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the former commander at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who also helped set up the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, is declining to testify further about harsh interrogation practices and will retire from the service, Army officials said Thursday.

If we didn't have a sadistic freak running the Pentagon, this war criminal would be court-martialed.

Seems to be working OK now

In fact, it's twice as good as before.

Bloggered

Blogger had a note up saying "scheduled down time 3:30 PST." Coulda fooled us. We thought it was down for the past 30 hours.

Bloggered

Blogger had a note up saying "scheduled down time 3:30 PST." Coulda fooled us. We thought it was down for the past 30 hours.

Ya think?