What a shame that the slime molds holding the reigns of power in this country right now have no idea what sunshine is.

Switching course on one of his most controversial anti-terrorism policies, President Bush agreed yesterday to submit the administration's warrantless surveillance program to a court for constitutional review.

A deal negotiated between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) came with conditions. Bush is insisting that Congress first give him new leeway in some areas of surveillance and that all lawsuits challenging his eavesdropping policy be funneled to a Washington-based intelligence court that operates in secret.

A court that oversees this should be one that was constituted as the Founders envisioned under the 4th Amendment. I think that a federal judge could keep his mouth shut about properly constituted intelligence matters. It would be the improper ones that he would quite properly speak out about.

Thomas Jefferson takes another spin in his grave every time Bunnypants opens his pie-hole.

Given this precedent, when the Democrats seize the reigns of power again what are all these enablers of Beloved Leader going to say when, hypothetically Hillary Clinton does the same thing? How loudly will they be honking in the well of the Senate about a similar move by a Democrat? Loud and long, I suspect and they won't have fucking leg to stand on. Ever.

This just speaks absolute volumes about the power of corruption and special interests in a whole new way.

A Homeland Security database of vulnerable terror targets in the United States, which includes an insect zoo but not the Statue of Liberty, is too flawed to determine allocation of federal security funds, the department's internal watchdog found.
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the department's database of vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources included an insect zoo, a bourbon festival, a bean fest and a kangaroo conservation center. They represent examples of key assets identified in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Maryland.
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The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database -- more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York.

Daniels's name was mentioned as being involved in the insertion of the "Midnight Rider" of the Homeland Security Act which was signed into law on November 25, 2002. The bill contained a provision that was added at the last minute that would block lawsuits against Eli Lilly and Company over the production of a controversial vaccine preservative called "thimerosal" which is 49.6% mercury. Parents of autistic children claim this preservative has caused autism in thousands of children.
...
In January 2001, Daniels accepted President George W. Bush's invitation to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He served as Director from January 2001 through June 2003. In this role he was also a member of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.

Have you ever been to Indiana? It's a nice enough place, but Gary is hardly Manhattan, and the life of Bossie the Cow is hardly worth the life of an urban resident. It's not fair to say that Indiana is not worthy of protection, nor funding, but in the reality based world, they'd be considered on reality-based criteria, not whether their governor is a crony of the Preznit.

Yeah, more evidence that the grown-ups are in charge.

The christofascists have succeeded in bullying the FCC (not that it took much) into taking the next step in defining the New Nanny State. The FCC is now apparently going after live broadcasts where someone uses a bad word from the crowd/audience because you know, no one has ever hear those seven little words before. Ever.

In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.

Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs.
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“I don’t know how they are going to rule, but they asked us for tapes with a specific emphasis on crowd noise,” said another TV executive, who also requested anonymity. “If some bozo in the crowd calls the ref an a--hole, the commission is asking for a copy of the tape.”

I'm guessing that protesting outside the FCC headquarters playing Eminem might not get any news coverage, but I'm just guessing here.

Well, I was going to write "CheneyBurton Fails", but that's been self-evident from the beginning of their no-bid love-affair with the 1600 Crew. Now it seems, even the Army, slow institutional entity that it is has finally had enough CheneyBurton.

The Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide, a decision that could cut deeply into the firm's dominance of government contracting in Iraq.
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Under the deal, Halliburton had exclusive rights to provide the military with a wide range of work that included keeping soldiers around the world fed, sheltered and in communication with friends and family back home. Government audits turned up more than $1 billion in questionable costs. Whistle-blowers told how the company charged $45 per case of soda, double-billed on meals and allowed troops to bathe in contaminated water.

alliburton officials have denied the allegations strenuously.

The real kicker here is this:

"The Iraq reconstruction is winding down . . . so there is no need for new contracts to replace the existing," Foster said.

Instead, the Iraqi government will have to find its own contractors to do the work, which includes tackling a large number of projects left undone by the United States.

"This is the year of transition for Iraqi reconstruction. The U.S.-funded projects are being completed and transferred to Iraqi management and control," said James Mitchell, spokesman for the inspector general's office.

That office has repeatedly warned of a "reconstruction gap" between what the United States promised in rebuilding the country after the spring 2003 invasion and what it has delivered. For instance, a contract aimed at building 142 new health centers across Iraq instead produced 20 before the program ran out of money.

Oh, and if you wanted to know...

No contractor has received more money as a result of the invasion of Iraq than Halliburton, whose former chief executive is Vice President Cheney.

Non-Outrage du jour (i.e. bidness as usual in Bunnypants America), republican congressman Peter Hoekstra is mad because whistleblowers informed him that the 1600 Crew had made an end-run around congressional oversight in intelligence matters. I'm shocked! There's gambling at Rick's!

Mr Hoekstra said his intelligence committee learned about some undisclosed operations from whistleblowers who alerted Congress to what they believed were illegal activities.

This led to Mr Hoesktra writing an angry letter to Mr Bush reminding the President of his legal responsibility to "fully and currently" inform Congress of intelligence operations.

"If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies," Mr Hoekstra wrote.

I'm wondering if Hoekstra will have "come to Karl" meeting concerning his upcoming reelection bid on his schedule this week...be interesting to know. Love to hear the conversation...

Yeah, it was almost inevitable. As the demand for boots in Mess O'Potamia increased, so too did the demand for fresh new faces to fill them. Clearly, the Yellow Elephant Class were not/are not going to fill them, they're too busy "fighting the war of ideas" here at home, not to mention staying in those well-paid Wingnut Think-tank jobs, all safe and secure.

So what's happened? Apparently recruits who might not normally make it out of basic training are finding their way into the field as fully-trained infantrymen. Recruits whose allegiance is perhaps to their unit for the time being, but might also be to such organizations as the Aryan Nations or the Crips...in short, not the kind of folks we want our tax dollars training in Urban Combat with weapons of small-scale destruction.

The military (and I thought I had written on this before) went through some serious convulsions with respect to race, and race relations back in the early 70s. The story of the Navy and its troubles and eventual salvation are the one I'm most familiar with, having lived through a good part of it first hand.

A couple of incidents at sea, most prominently aboard USS Kitty Hawk and USS Constellation (you can read the congressional report and narrative here) focused the attention of the entire Navy, and one man in particular, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt on the issues surrounding race relations and it's importance to the command structure and the entire US Navy. Zumwalt was hated by most of the senior enlisted and senior officers of the early 70s Navy, with a passion. But he stepped up and did what needed to be done to help move the Navy from a very autocratic, racially divided service to one where the individual contributions of every sailor were valued. The shift in mindset that he propagated are still in force today, and have made the Navy a pretty damn great organization.

So what's up with the Army? Well, my understanding is that they followed the best they could, and made an effort to crawl out of the same hole that their sister service was in with respect to race relations. I don't know that they were ever as successful, because "little" incidents kept happening, like this one a few years ago at FT Bragg. I don't believe that there's less of a "zero tolerance" attitude among the more senior leadership, at least at the "lip service" level, but in the field, I have to wonde if a go-along get-along attitude doesn't prevail. After all, an infantry unit is not a subject to the confinement and closeness of a shipboard environment 24/7 for literally months on end. Although in Iraq it's probably pretty similar, there is not much in the way of "off base" activities for most combat units beside their daily patrols for IEDs and such. So unit cohesion and morale is important there, will that be a place where the first breaks along racial lines occur, if they do as happened aboard those carriers in the early 70s?

It'll bear watching to see how the Army handles this, now that there has been some publicity about it. I'd like to think that most soldiers, if approached by a fellow soldier about joining an organization whose goals are overtly not compatible with DoD policy like some of those mentioned would decline and report the "recruiter" to his or her chain of command. Sadly, I doubt that's going to happen. Go-along/get-along is going to kick in, and the activity will continue elsewhere.

Bottom-line: are recruiters actively seeking these folks out? No, I don't think so. They are being pressured to "make goal", and their alternative to not "making goal" is probably being ripped from their current stateside tour and being sent back overseas, whether to Iraq or not, they'll be sent away from the Army version of "shore duty", and if you just got back it's a no-brainer that any warm body that keeps those PCS orders from arriving in your in-box is a good warm body.

1. Sunshine is the best disinfectant
   
2. AQ threatens Cows
   
3. More Nanny-stateism
   
4. CheneyBurton Falls...
   
5. Ah, yeah...next...
   
6. Race relations and the military