Tony Snow on Joe Scarborough show pointing the Iraq finger at Tommy Franks.

What Donald Rumsfeld did was what a good Secretary of Defense does, which is listen to the Generals.
Thanks for clearing that up for us Tony.

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The Incredible Etta James
I’d Rather Go Blind

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The Rev. Ted Haggard was dismissed Saturday as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed “sexually immoral conduct,” the church said Saturday.

Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him. He also had placed himself on administrative leave from the New Life Church, but its Overseer Board took the stronger action Saturday.

“Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct,” the independent board said in a statement.

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*haha haha hahahahaha ha ha*
Take that, you lying hypocrite

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There’s no wrath too strong for the bastards that got us into this war and think torture is acceptable.

Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter’s FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh “interrogation techniques.”

By Greg Mitchell

(November 01, 2006) — The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn-t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation methods used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic’speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”
Read on at Editor & Publisher

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And we’re safer with these incompetents in office? I think NOT…..

The recent security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory was very serious, with sensitive materials being taken out of the facility - possibly including information on how to deactivate locks on nuclear weapons, officials tell CBS News.

Officials say there is no evidence the information taken from Los Alamos was sold or transferred to anybody else, but there is no way to be sure right now.

As CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson was the first to report, secret documents apparently taken from the lab were found during a drug raid at a Los Alamos-area home last month. The FBI was called in to investigate.

Multiple sources now tell CBS News that the material includes sensitive weapons-design data.

More here

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Thanks to Closet Exhibitionist for this video

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its “Desert Crossing” games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University’s National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

“The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops,” said Thomas Blanton, the archive’s director. “But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground.”

Read more at the Washington Post

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WASHINGTON

The first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure faces U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny next week in cases testing whether President George W. Bush’s two new conservative appointees will restrict abortion rights.

Returning to one of the nation’s most divisive, emotional and politically charged issues, the high court considers the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act the Republican-led U.S. Congress approved and Bush signed into law in 2003.

The arguments on Wednesday in two cases widely viewed as the most important of the court’s 2006-07 term occur the day after voters go to the polls nationwide to decide whether Republicans keep control of Congress. South Dakota voters will cast ballots to decide whether a law banning almost all abortions should be repealed.

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Every self’similar pattern in nature breaks down at some scale, at the level of molecules and atoms if not before. The photo shows the tiny structures near the top level spiral. As the spirals get smaller and smaller approaching the vertex, the spirals that make them up have less and less lower level detail, with the tiniest being little more than bumpy spheroids.

Romanesco is excellent raw, enhancing both the appearance and taste of an assiette de crudités. It’s crunchier than cauliflower and not as bland. It has a nutty taste and doesn’t have the chalky edge which some people dislike in broccoli. Any dip that’s good with cauliflower and broccoli will go fine with Romanesco, but be sure to try it by itself–you may decide to forgo the dip. It would be absolutely ideal to serve raw Romanesco on a platter with an image of the Mandelbrot set!

source

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Jerusalem

The Palestinians of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip began to count the cost of a month-long Israeli invasion as the troops finally pulled out yesterday, leaving a trail of anger, despair and devastation behind them.

More than 42,000 olive, citrus and date trees had been uprooted, according to the local council. Altogether, 4,405 acres of orchards, vineyards and vegetable fields were flattened.

Officials accused the army of demolishing 21 houses and damaging a further 314. Five factories and 19 wells were also destroyed. They said the loss could reach as high as £70m.

The Israelis said they went in to stop Hamas militants firing rockets at Sderot, a town of 24,000 across the border inside Israel. One salvo killed a three-year-old boy and a middle-aged man there five weeks ago. A house was damaged earlier this week, and two more rockets fell on open ground yesterday.

Before pulling out, the army distributed leaflets with a cartoon showing rockets bouncing back at Beit Hanoun. “Terror,” it read, “will kill you.”

Two weeks ago Hamas gunmen shot dead a youth whose family tried to stop them firing rockets from their backyard for fear of reprisals, but the blockade may yet rebound on Israel.

Basel al Masri, a farmer who lost an acre and a half of grape vines, said: “Everybody here agrees that the militants should not fire from a densely populated area. But after this massive destruction, the people of Beit Hanoun will tell them to come and fire rockets from the tops of our houses.”

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DAGSBORO, Del. - When Tricia and Gregg White were told by the Marines in 2004 that their son, Lance Cpl. Russell White, had been killed in Afghanistan in a gun-cleaning accident, their hearts went out to the marine who had been holding the gun.

Corporal White’s brother Adam memorized a prayer of forgiveness, the Whites said, and headed to Camp Lejeune, N.C., to visit the marine, Lance Cpl. Federico Pimienta. The Whites had been told he was on a suicide watch.

“I immediately put myself in his parents- position, and I just couldn-t imagine,” Mrs. White said. “We didn-t want two people to die because of what we thought was an unfortunate accident.”

But their outpouring of forgiveness came months before they learned that, whatever had happened, their son’s death did not result from a gun-cleaning accident. It was before they learned that Corporal Pimienta had lied to investigators and that he had been repeatedly chastised for mishandling weapons. It was before he failed to appear at his court-martial, having fled to Europe.

And it was before persistent questioning, guided by intimations of a darker explanation from their son’s platoon mates, enabled the Whites to piece together a picture of what had happened at Bagram Air Base on June 20, 2004, when Corporal White, 19, was killed by a single shot to the head.

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19 years old…….a mere baby to his parents.

LEAVE MY CHILD ALONE!!

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Congressional Quarterly election forecast map, House, Senate, Governors, here

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A Republican congressman accused of abusing his ex-mistress agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day, a person familiar with the terms of the deal told The Associated Press.

Rep. Don Sherwood is locked in a tight re-election race against a Democratic opponent who has seized on the four-term congressman’s relationship with the woman. While Sherwood acknowledged the woman was his mistress, he denied abusing her and said that he had settled her $5.5 million lawsuit on confidential terms.

The settlement, reached in November 2005, called for Cynthia Ore to be paid in installments, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal is confidential. She has received less than half the money so far, and will not get the rest until after the Nov. 7 election, the person said Thursday.

A confidentiality clause requires Ore to forfeit some of the money if she talks publicly about the case, according to this person and two other people familiar with elements of the case.

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As the November 7 midterm elections approach, the increasing media coverage has carried with it an onslaught of conservative misinformation. Media Matters for America has compiled some of the more common examples

excellent read here

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