Rolling Stones
Sympathy for the Devil

Damascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.

In cooperation with Syria, the Venezuelan government is also planning to build an olive oil and a textiles factory. A joint Syrian-Venezuelan commission will in May review progress on bilateral projects.

Al-Assad is due to make a “historic” visit to Venezuela in July, Venezuela’s foreign ministry announced. The trip is to “accelerate the development of several bilateral cooperation accords,” Bolivia’s state news agency reports.

Maduro will on Wednesday and Thursday attend a meeting of an VenDamascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.

Read more at Global Research

Dramatic testimony from fmr. US Atty David Iglesias

Is it even legal for Wilson and Domenici to be making these calls to an US Attorney???

On another note, something I didn’t know about David Iglesias, he is the military defense attorney portrayed in the early 1990s movie “A Few Good Men.”

John Couey is the man who kidnapped, raped and then killed 9 year old Jessica Lunsford. He has been found guilty on all charges. Jessica’s Dad, Mark Lunsford, has been fighting for new laws regarding child predators. Jessica’s Law has been passed in many states. Mark now heads back to Washington to ask congress people to put their money where their mouths are. He says passing the laws aren’t enough. They need to fund them. He continues to fight the good fight for kids. My heart goes out to the Lunsford family. Today must be a rollercoaster of emotions for them.

But the firings weren’t politically motivated, nor were the replacements. Uh huh…..

March 7, 2007.
There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn-t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Read more at GregPalast.com

Joe Wilson is a class act……

NEW YORK When Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted today in the CIA leak case, Valerie Plame Wilson “wept when she heard the news,” her husband, former Ambassdor Joseph Wilson said tonight. She called him at a restaurant and said, “four out of five guilty!”

Wilson gave his first TV interview on MSNBC’s “Countdonw.” He said that he and his wife will “both sleep more easily tonight.”
[tag]
Plame[/tag], the former CIA agent who outing was at the center of the case, is now having trouble getting her book on the case past the CIA clearance, Wilson revealed. He said the agency didn’t have a problem with the content but would not acknowledge she had even worked at the agency before 2002 (when she was often deep-cover). “We may have to litigate,” he said. “I hope she can write the book.”

The Wilsons are pressing a suit and hope through discovery to get at the grand jury testimony of Karl Rove, Libby, Richard Armitage and others.

Wilson also said, “Now that the trial is over, the president and vice president should stop hiding” and share what they told prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

He pointed out that while the president had expressed sadness for Libby and his family he had “never” expressed sympathy for Plame, who had served her country for more than 20 years, sometimes at great risk.

Read more at Editor & Publisher

By Dave Astor

Published: March 07, 2007 11:20 AM ET

NEW YORK At least two more daily newspapers — The Oakland Press of Michigan and The Mountain Press of Sevierville, Tenn. — have dropped Ann Coulter’s column. A daily in Pennsylvania had dropped the column two days ago.

Oakland Press Editorial Page Editor Allan Adler, when reached this morning by E&P, said Coulter’s use of the word “faggot” in a Friday speech was “definitely a factor” in the decision. He also read a statement from his paper that went as follows:

“When we picked up Ann Coulter, it was because we felt we needed a conservative columnist .. and we knew she had a following. She certainly no longer represents conservatism and apparently is more interested in being a celebrity. We are searching for a new columnist and will no longer be running Coulter.”

The Oakland Press had picked up Coulter’s column last summer and, since then, the Universal Press Syndicate feature “probably drew many more letters to the editor pro and con than any national column we run,” said Adler.

In a story today on its Web site, The Mountain Press said it dropped Coulter because of her “distasteful and irresponsible comments over the weekend about a presidential candidate. Coulter referred to Democratic candidate John Edwards as a ‘faggot’ in a Friday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Her comments were denounced by both Republicans and Democrats,” the Tennesse paper noted.

More at Editor&Publisher

As many of our regular readers know, News Hounds and a number of other blogs have been supporting the attempt by Nevada Democrats to force the party leadership to overturn a deal they made that would allow FOX News to host one of the Democratic Presidential debates in that state. Well, it looks like this grass roots effort has achieved its first success. According to Daily Kos, Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards has decided to withdraw from the debate!

Kos (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga) writes that he is sure the Nevada Democrats are “cursing whoever it was that negotiated the deal with Fox News.” He goes on to say that the “Democratic Party decision maker … is still secret. Everyone claims they don’t know who signed the deal.”

Here’s the statement released by John Edwards’ campaign office:

“We will not be participating in the Fox debate. We’re going to make lots of appearances in Nevada, including debates. By the end of March, we will have attended three presidential forums in Nevada - and there are already at least three proposed Nevada debates. We’re definitely going to debate in Nevada, but we don’t see why this needs to be one of them.”
Edwards’ withdrawal is the first in what we hope will be many defections.

We News Hounds know that FOX News cannot be trusted to act in an honorable way towards Democratic candidates.

More at Newshounds

MOSCOW - The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday confirmed that two American women have been hospitalized in Moscow for possible thallium poisoning.

An embassy spokesman identified the women as Marina Kovalevsky and her daughter Yana, but gave no further details. He said they were hoping to return home soon, but it was not immediately clear when they might be able to do so.

The hospital where they have been treated since falling ill on Feb. 24 said Wednesday morning that they were in moderately serious condition. Moscow’s top public health doctor, Nikolai Filatov, was quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency as saying that thallium poisoning had been confirmed.

Russian news reports said both women are Soviet-born and emigrated to the United States in 1989, and that they have visited Russia repeatedly since then. The reports say they arrived in Moscow in mid-February to attend a wedding.

How they may have ingested the poison - a colorless, tasteless substance that can be fatal in doses of as little as one gram - was not clear.

Read more at Chron.com

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Washington issued a damning human rights report on Sudan, saying genocide in Darfur continued and blaming both government and rebel forces for attacks in the remote region.

It said there was widespread impunity for crimes including torture and that thousands more people had been killed by government forces and its allied militias, known locally as Janjaweed, in Darfur in 2006.

“Genocide continued to ravage the Darfur region of Sudan,” the report released on Tuesday said.

“The Sudanese government and government-backed Janjaweed militia bear the responsibility for the genocide in Darfur and all parties to the conflagration committed serious abuses.”

Khartoum denies genocide and blames the Western media for exaggerating the four-year-old Darfur conflict. European governments are reluctant to use the term.

The International Criminal Court said last week it had reason to believe war crimes had been committed in Darfur by a junior government minister and a pro-government militia leader.

“During the year, the government resumed aerial bombardment of civilian targets, including homes, school and markets,” the U.S. report said.

Continue reading at Reuters