pretty funny article……..

Surely confession plays some role in Tom DeLay’s brand of hyper-religiosity. If so, there’s faint testimony to the principle as regards politics in the former House majority leader’s self’serving new book, No Retreat, No Surrender.

DeLay has a lot to be sorry for. As he says not quite half-way through the book, “In short, I had become a self-centered jerk.” Fighting against almost all the external evidence, DeLay would have us believe there came a point when that wasn’t the case. On that basis the book belongs in the “new fiction” display.

Overall, DeLay offers himself up for canonization in the Church of St. Ronald the Reagan as a result of suffering the slings and arrows of persecution from the devilish Democratic troika of Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel and Patrick Kennedy. Of the three, only Emanuel is anywhere near DeLay’s league.

Co’starring roles as Beelzebub and Lucifer are assigned to District Attorney Ronnie Earl of Austin, who had the temerity to indict DeLay on state charges related to campaign fund raising, and to former Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, who broke (thankfully) what our author describes as “the seven-year gentlemen’s agreement” not to use ethics charges as “political weapons.” Truth and justice, you’ll note, are not allowed to rear their ugly heads in DeLay’s rendering of his role in the world.

Full article at Chron.com

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The Kinks
A Well Respected Man

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From the Washington Post:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Character actor Calvert DeForest, best known for his dead-pan appearances as the pudgy, bespectacled everyman Larry “Bud” Melman on David Letterman’s late-night TV show, has died at age 85.

DeForest died on Monday at Good Samaritan Hospital on New York’s Long Island after a lengthy illness, Letterman’s production company announced on Wednesday.

And……from the Hollywood Reporter:

WASHINGTON — Luther Ingram, the soul singer who seduced audiences with his hit “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” and wrote the Staple Singers hit “Respect Yourself,” died Monday of a heart attack in Belleville, Ill. He was 69.

Ingram had diabetes and suffered kidney failure in 2003, his son Eric said.

“He couldn’t tolerate the dialysis,” said Eric, an aspiring music producer. “It began to take a toll on his heart, which caused his heart to fail.”

Luther Ingram had been a part of the deep talent pool at the influential Memphis label Stax Records and its subsidiaries that included such soul music stars as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the MG’s and Rufus Thomas.

RIP Gentlemen!

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Doesn’t this just piss ya off??? Did this US attorney get canned? Something else, they keep saying Bush had no knowledge of these firings of US attorneys……but in the same breath they’ll say “they serve at the President’s discretion.” So why the hell wouldn’t he know?

By Beverley Wang, Associated Press Writer | March 21, 2007

CONCORD, N.H. –A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction and sentence of a former Republican National Committee official accused in a phone-jamming plot on Election Day 2002.
[tag]
James Tobin[/tag], the former regional chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign, was convicted in 2005 of helping to arrange more than 800 hang-up calls that jammed get-out-the-vote phone lines set up by the state Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters’ union for about an hour. Republican John Sununu defeated then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for the Senate that day.

Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in prison on charges of telephone harassment.

But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the statute under which Tobin was convicted “is not a close fit” for what Tobin did and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin intended to harass. A Justice Department spokesman said prosecutors were reviewing the decision, and did not say if they planned to appeal.

“Oh my God, wow, you know sometimes there is no justice,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan.

More at Boston.com

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In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Republican Representative Rick Renzi of the state’s First Congressional District for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence-peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton’s name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone “we should now consider pushing out,” D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’s chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 13. In his previously safe Republican district, Renzi had barely held on in the election. On December 7, the White House demanded Charlton’s resignation without offering him any explanation.

Who is Brent Ward?

Ward first came to prominence in Utah, where as US Attorney during the Reagan era he cast himself as a crusader against pornography. His battles made him one of the most fervent and earnest witnesses before Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Commission on Pornography; he urged “testing the endurance” of pornographers by relentless prosecutions. Meese was so impressed that he named Ward a leader of a group of US Attorneys engaged in a federal anti-pornography campaign, which soon disappeared into the back rooms of adult bookshops to ferret out evildoers. Ward returned to government last year as the chief of the Justice Department’s newly created Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, where his main achievement has been the prosecution of the producer of the Girls Gone Wild film series.

Full article at the Nation

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(Two Open Threads in one day… wow!)

For QG and ‘G’… music to relax by. The good Lord knows they deserve this. Enjoy!

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces have released a senior aide to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on the orders of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister’s office said on Wednesday.

Ahmed Shibani, who had been held for more than a year, is a senior aide to Sadr, a radical anti-American cleric who is also the leader of the Mehdi Army militia which Washington recently called the greatest threat to security in Iraq. Sadr’s political movement is an important part of the coalition government and holds several ministries.

“(Shibani) has been released this afternoon on the orders of Prime Minister Maliki,” an official in the prime minister’s office told Reuters.

Nassar al-Rubaei, head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament, said U.S. forces had been detaining Shibani without charge.

“We know that today he will be released by the occupation forces and delivered to the prime minister today to be freed,” he said.

Shibani was arrested in Najaf and was believed to be held at a U.S. base at the airport in Baghdad.

There was no immediate confirmation of Shibani’s release from the U.S. military.

Source: Reuters

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Democratic-led congressional panel defied President George W. Bush on Wednesday and authorized legal orders to force several White House aides to testify under oath about the firing of eight U.S. prosecutors.

Heading toward a showdown with the Bush administration, a House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee voted to authorize subpoenas if Karl Rove, Bush’s senior political adviser, and others refuse to testify voluntarily under oath.

The action came a day after Bush vowed to oppose any subpoenas. He offered instead to allow aides to answer questions from investigators, but only behind closed doors, not under oath and with no transcript taken of their exchanges. Several Democrats called the offer unacceptable.

Source: Reuters

From TPM today:

I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.

Mike Allen spotted it this evening in the Politico.

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H/T Melina for this post.

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Two more U.S. troops killed in Iraq yesterday. What’s going on in the world this morning?

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