In my Fantasy Agenda for the second hundred hours of change by the Democrats would be the utter dismantaling of the TSA. They are good for absolutely nothing. Watch them at the airports sometimes, the good ones are really good, and the bad ones are worse than just bad ... someone gave them a wee bit too much authority. But that's not the real reason for dumping or reshaping the agency, this is:

Secure Flight, the U.S. government's stalled program to screen domestic air passengers against terrorism watch lists, violated federal law during a crucial test phase, according to a report to be issued today by the Homeland Security Department's privacy office.

The agency found that by gathering passenger data from commercial brokers in 2004 without notifying the passengers, the program violated a 1974 Privacy Act requirement that the public be made aware of any changes in a federal program that affects the privacy of U.S. citizens. "As ultimately implemented, the commercial data test conducted in connection with the Secure Flight program testing did not match [the Transportation Security Administration's] public announcements," the report states.

In the days following 9/11, too many people were willing to give up too much to the faceless authoritarians who promised security and tranquility at a price. The price, as it turns out has been lawlessness and malfeasance run rampant on our Constitution and populace.

Time to end it, and end it now.

Oh, and did I mention that the TSA has lost over 3,700 badges and uniforms in the last few years. None, I am sure, made their way to someone who might be an Al-Qaeda member, or who plays one on TV.

Oh, and right after TSA, their parent agency DHS ought to be next on the block. That's a bureacracy that can't couldn't get out of it's own way to do anyhthing. Example: Katrina. Discuss among yourselves.

From the Department of Legal Oddities, or as they might have said on the old "Fractured Fairytales" ... Only in Texas

In the middle of Joshua Bush's forehead, two inches above his eyes, lies the evidence that prosecutors say could send the teenager to prison for attempted murder: a 9 mm bullet, lodged just under the skin.

Prosecutors say it will prove that Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a used-car lot after a robbery in July. And they have obtained a search warrant to extract the slug.
...
Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, predicted Bush's rights as a patient will trump the state's desire to get the bullet, and said authorities might have a hard time finding someone willing to extract the slug.

"It truly is a moral quandary," Caplan said. "Doctors are caught between wanting to help solve crimes and their responsibility to patients' rights to refuse a procedure."

Tom Delay has a blog? Yeah, he does it seems...funny. Much.

He drew early attention to the blog with his prediction, made at a meeting with conservative activists to promote the Web site, that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be elected president in 2008 and would probably choose Senator Barack Obama of Illinois as her running mate. She would owe her victory, Mr. DeLay suggested, to liberal groups that had moved faster than their conservative counterparts to harness the power of the Internet.

"The blogosphere needs more conservatives," said Mr. DeLay, who sounded downright cheery in an interview this week as he described his plans to "fight in a different arena."

Maybe he can get Duke Cunningham to smuggle out daily posts in the paper airplanes he sends over the walls at the Butner Federal Corrections Facility (or where ever they're holding him now).

Delay meet Fork, Fork meet Delay. Done.

Back right before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote that there were probably going to be some atrocities that would occur, and that it was not all on the men and women of our military who committed them. The four Marines charged today in the Haditha murders were among those I had in mind at the time.

Could they have acquitted themselves more honorably? Absolutely. Could their leadership have been less blind to the rage that fueled their alleged killing spree? Absolutely.

Were they delivered into a cauldron by a bunch of whining Chickehawks who knew nothing of Combat but the TV show of the same name, who were handed the keys to the country out of fear and a hysteria that most of us now regret ever being allowed to run our lives? Absolutely.

So when I read this, I am sad. I am sad for the victims of the attack, I am sad for the Marines who will now stand trial and have their lives and careers taken from them.

I am mostly sad that we allowed ourselves to be led into a war by incompetants, opportunists and a lazy, arrogant boy-king whose biggest desire in life was to top the accomplishments of his father, and in doing so has ruined more lives, left more broken humans in his wake than any American leader in memory.

Responding to one of the most extreme cases of illegal civilian killings by the American troops in Iraq, the Marine Corps today charged four enlisted men with the murders of nearly two dozen people - including at least 10 women and children - in the village of Haditha last year.

"Support the Troops" was their mantra. Yeah, right.

Honestly, is there any reason we should care what Colin Powell thinks? About anything? Guess what ... he's against the escalation of troop levels in Iraq. Why gee, Herr General why do you care? You bear a huge amount of the burden for their being there in the first place, what with your willing complicity in the lies in the rush to let the draft-dodging chickehawks get their war on.

Now he's sorry, he's really sorry...

Powell's comments broke his long public silence on the issue and placed him at odds with the administration.
...

...But it's history that will judge the performance of all of us in this troubling time ...

For that he deserves to be excoriated when future generations look back on Mess O'Potamia. He was probably the one man in the US who could have stopped the invasion of Iraq if he's had the willpower and guts to be his own man... instead he played the good servant to the end, and is finally beginning to understand his mistake was being an enabler and not a fighter, if he ever was one.

You can't polish a turd, and that's exactly what's begun happening inside the beltway ... republicans who are afraid that they will be tagged with the shitty performance of the 1600 Crew into the next decade are trying their hardest to buff that turd that's Preznit Corn4Texture into something respectable. The once almost-honest Alan Simpson of Wyoming:

I think George W. Bush is a totally pragmatic politician," said former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended a new course. "He's going to do outreach. . . . He is a total realist. He knows that the solid, march-in-step Republicans, at least in the House, are gone. . . . Now his legacy depends on the national interest, not partisanship."

The only legacy that Bunnypants will have is that the magnitude of his failure is of such monumental proportions, that it's hard to imagine repairing all his fuckups within the lifetime of Mary Cheney's baby.

It looks like I may be able to use Haloscan for comments, since commenting sits on their server, and not that of my ISP. We'll see how it goes.

Haloscan can be notorious for problems, but they do have a pretty fair degree of reliability, so we'll see how it all goes.

To paraphrase Ron Ziegler, "No previous comments are operative".

So, let's see how it works, shall we? I have enabled "moderation", so comments will not show up right away, I think. This may be a good thing, we'll see. I also don't know why it seems to think that there are no comments, when in fact there are. But I guess I'll solve that puzzle later. Happy commenting, if you are so inclined...

Thanks for your patience. Sorry 'bout all that... fucking spammers.

Note: I am going to try running without the moderation feature for a while. Play nice.

1. The Transportation Insecurity Administration
   
2. What's in a name?
   
3. Teh Humor!!!
   
4. This tears me up...
   
5. My Lai Colin
   
6. Alan Simpson, deluded apologist?
   
7. Comments