Thursday, October 19, 2006

How much room is left under the carpet????


That's one way to cover it up.

The House Appropriations Committee had hired 60 extra investigators to deal with the unprecedented level of corruption in federal appropriations these days.

Jerry Lewis, Chairman of the Committee (who's himself being investigated and has racked up $800,000 in legal fees) just fired them all.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

JOHN ASHCROFT AND THE 'SPIRIT OF JUSTICE'


I am anxious to see what Jon Stewart does to this asshole on TDS tonight....










By Tom Paxton

John Ashcroft went to meet the press,/He faced the microphones.
His heart was full of righteousness/His voice like God's trombones.
But then he saw the statue that was set behind him there.
She was 'The Spirit of Justice'/Yes, but one of her breasts was bare.
John Ashcroft looked with horror at this gleaming marble globe.
It thrust itself upon him
From a loosely falling robe.
It was so hard to concentrate on those he there accused
With that marble breast behind him,/Poor John Ashcroft got confused.
Each time he saw that marble breast the poor man was appalled,
He quickly gave the order/And a curtain was installed.
Now when he makes a statement/You can see him on the tube
He has curtained off the statue
But you'll still see one big boob.

Bush signs torture bill; Americans lose essential freedom


Turn out the lights, the experiment with democracy is over for this country....

The provisions of Bush's new torture law mean that Americans have lost the key, constitutional right on which Anglo-American criminal law (and criminal-law procedures in true democracies in general) is founded; that's the basic right of an individual to know why he or she is being apprehended and detained. Now, technically, as in Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia, anyone labeled an "enemy combatant" - again, by whom; by Bush? - can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of "war on terror," but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents.

Does anybody know what these poor people are dying for?


BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military reported Wednesday that nine American troops had been killed in bombings and combat, raising to 67 the number of U.S. troops killed in October.

The eight U.S. soldiers and one Marine were killed by roadside bombs and enemy fire in and around Baghdad on Tuesday, the military reported.

October's death toll is on a pace that, if continued, would make the month the deadliest for coalition forces since January 2005, when 107 U.S. troops died. The war's deadliest month for U.S. forces was Nov. 2004, when 137 troops died. At least 2,779 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Fresno Fair in the News


Gary attended the Big Fresno Fair and found a "Copyright-protected area" sign by a stall where a busker was selling the chance to have your picture taken with a bird. The idea was to use copyright law to stop you from taking your own pictures instead of buying them.
One of the side-effects of the entertainment industry's war on copying is that it's created a kind of folk-mythology about copyright being a kind of magic word you can invoke to put a fence around anything that you want to police. There's no such thing as a copyright-protected area -- it might be reasonable, if you're in the taking-pictures-of-kids-with-animals business, to take some steps to shut out the competition, but appropriating the extraordinary "author's monopoly" that is copyright is both lazy and dishonest.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Feds Finally Questioning Real Terror Suspects!


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Oct. 14) - Upset by the war in Iraq, Julia Wilson vented her frustrations with President Bush last spring on her Web page on MySpace.com.

She posted a picture of the president, scrawled "Kill Bush" across the top and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand. She later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.

It was too late.

Federal authorities had found the page and placed Wilson on their checklist. They finally reached her this week in her molecular biology class.

The 14-year-old freshman was taken out of class Wednesday and questioned for about 15 minutes by two Secret Service agents. The incident has upset her parents, who said the agents should have included them when they questioned their daughter.

Julia Wilson plans to post a new MySpace.com page, this one devoted to organizing other students to protest the Iraq war.

"I decided today I think I will because it (the questioning) went too far," she said.