(CNN) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former link to the White House will testify on Capitol Hill Wednesday, speaking out for the first time on her role in the controversial U.S. Attorney firings.

Monica Goodling is the only key official who has not yet testified about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Her lawyers initially kept her from testifying, saying she would cite her Fifth Amendment right to protection from self-incrimination, but she will now be granted immunity.

The Justice Department, under Gonzales, has said the attorney firings were due to poor job performance. Critics suspect the attorneys were fired for political reasons.

More at CNN

Here’s a bit of totally useless trivia to amaze your friends and have a laugh. - JS

Just more than $200 million is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.

The world record for kissing is 11,030 people in one hour.

Although it’s just 2% of our body weight, our brains use 20% of all the oxygen we breathe, 20% of the calories consume, and 15% of the body’s blood supply.

Light takes six hours to travel from Pluto to Earth.

Merv Griffin wrote the theme to “Jeopardy.” It’s estimated that the royalties have earned him more than $80 million.

The U.S. average credit score is 678.

The US Department of Transportation reports the average life span of a vehicle is 12 years, or about 128,500 miles.

Kitsch is the main export of Hell, Michigan.

Experts say 77% of Americans go to the grocery store with a list. It’s estimated that half of everything bought there is bought on impulse.

The opposite of a “vacuum” is a “plenum.”

Super Bowl weekend is the slowest weekend of the year for weddings.

The largest crossword puzzle ever published had 2,631 clues across and 2,922 clues down. It took up 16’square-feet of space.

The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book that doesn’t mention the name of God.

Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major.

A man named John Bellavia has entered over 5,000 contests, and has never won anything.

Before airplanes existed, the phrase “jet lag” was once called “boat lag.”

Your statistical chance of being murdered is one in 20,000.

February is “National Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month.”

It is estimated that there are 4.2 million porn sites on the Internet. About 200 new sites go live each day.

Have a GREAT Wednesday

from The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

MAHMUDIYA, Iraq, May 22 - The ground exploded under an ashen sky at dawn. Dust, dirt, blood and military equipment filled the air, clearing after several seconds to reveal a frenzied scene of horror.

Where Sgt. Justin D. Wisniewski, 22, had just been standing there was now a crater five feet wide and three feet deep. His body lay nearby. The wounded were scattered around him.

Soldiers near bomb explosion

The soldiers swore. “It was Ski,” one said, using the sergeant’s nickname.

Sgt. Joshua Delgado, 23, the unit’s medic, rushed in and went to work on the most seriously wounded soldier, who lay with shrapnel wounds to the face, arm and side. Two other Americans and an Iraqi were also hurt.

One of the wounded, Staff Sgt. Robert Simonovich, 31, knelt off to the right. He had taken his body armor off and, with just a T’shirt on, it was clear he had not walked far enough yet to sweat. His hands rested on his knees, his head tilted down. Eyes closed, he said he couldn-t see.

“It’s not one of our guys, is it?” he said. No one answered.

Capt. Blake Keil, 31, who commanded the group of 11 Americans working with about 50 Iraqis, called for a medevac helicopter.

The bomb was the third planted away from a road that the soldiers had discovered since May 12, when they began searching for three soldiers from their unit who were captured after an ambush that left four Americans and an Iraqi soldier dead.

After the attack on Saturday, the reality of the threat set in: the fields they had been crossing on foot for months might now be as dangerous as the roads they had learned to avoid. What they had just witnessed - a homemade land mine, or what the military calls a dismounted improvised explosive device - could be anywhere.

Some of the soldiers began to move more slowly. Seeking cover, they traced one another’s footsteps to an abandoned house. Sergeant Simonovich continued to kneel alone.

“I-m worried about my guy out front, Sergeant Wisniewski,” he said. His Ohio accent was thick enough to sound southern. Blood had splattered his face, which was bruised but intact. “I have a question,” he said, pointing to the left side of his head. “Is my ear still there?”

read more at THE NEW YORK TIMES

The photo in the story below, shows the signs of tomato yellow leaf curl virus. - JS

By LAURA KURTZMAN, Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO - An insect-borne virus that has killed tomato plants across Central America, Florida and Georgia has been detected in California for the first time.

The virus, known as tomato yellow leaf curl, devastated crops in the Dominican Republican and in Mexico, forcing those countries to curtail the growing season to contain the spread of the disease.

Tomatoes are California’s eighth largest crop. The state supplies the vast majority of the nation’s processed tomatoes - 95 percent, according to the California Tomato Growers Association.

In Arkansas, federal statistics show about 1,200 acres of tomatoes were harvested last year.

“Where this virus is present, it will absolutely kill the tomatoes,” said Ross Siragusa, president of the association, which represents farmers who supply the state’s $2 billion a year processed tomato industry. “It’s a very difficult disease to fight.”

California has some natural advantages in stopping the disease from spreading that other locales lack.

Tomato virus

The cold, wet winters in the Central Valley, where most tomatoes are grown, act as barriers to the bemisia white flies that carry the disease. The flies are native to Imperial, Riverside and San Diego counties in the southern part of the state, but not to any counties in the Central Valley.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that those conditions are going to be very unfavorable to establishment of the virus,” said Robert Gilbertson, a plant pathologist at the University of California, Davis.

The diseased plants were found in March at a greenhouse in Brawley, which is near the border with Mexico. Experts do not know how the virus spread there. It could have been brought by tomato transplants from Mexico or Texas. Or the virus could have been carried by bemisia flies.

The virus causes tomato plants to become stunted and grow abnormally upright. Flowers usually fall off before the fruit sets. And leaves are small and crumpled with an upward curl. They also turn yellow.

Ah, the fear mongering continues

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq - and that the United States should be the top target.

The information mirrored a classified bulletin from the Homeland Security Department in March 2005, reporting that bin Laden had enlisted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to plan potential strikes in the U.S. The warning was described at the time as credible but not specific and did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.

Osama bin Laden

The declassification of the intelligence came a day before Bush was scheduled to speak about terrorism at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Bush, who is battling Democrats in Congress over spending for the unpopular war in Iraq, will argue that the terrorist threat to America is real, said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser. She said Bush would talk about why Iraq is an important battleground in fighting terrorism abroad to prevent attacks on U.S. soil and highlight previously reported successes in foiling terrorist attacks.

The Bush White House has intermittently declassified and made public sensitive intelligence information to help rebut critics or defend programs or actions against possibly adverse decisions in the Congress or the courts. On a few occasions, the declassified materials were intended as proof that terrorists see Iraq as a critical staging ground for global operations.

Democrats and other critics have accused Bush of selectively declassifying intelligence, including portions of a sensitive National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to justify the U.S.-led invasion on the ground that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. That assertion proved false.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

Little Richard
“Rip It Up”

Happy Birthday to my son, Charles. When he was in grade school, he loved Little Richard. Here’s to those grade school days my son! I love you!!! Hope you ripped it up for your birthday without getting in any trouble!

$3.10 -$3.50 a gallon here. Billion dollar quarterly profits…..and lies.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The jump in U.S. gasoline prices this year has so far drained consumers of an extra $20 billion, or about $146 for each passenger car in the country, the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Tuesday.

The national price for regular unleaded gasoline hit a record $3.22 a gallon this week, and is up $1.05 since the beginning of February, according to the Energy Department.

The added expense is taking money away from consumers to spend on other goods and services.

“Spending billions more on gasoline constrains consumers’ budgets, leaving less money available for other purchases,” GAO’s Thomas McCool said in written testimony to a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the cause of record prices.

Like many other energy experts, McCool said the GAO has found that current high pump costs are the result of a large amount of oil refining capacity being offline, strong gasoline demand and lower fuel inventories.

More at Reuters

Oh how I wish this guy could run for President and win. They’re worried about political comfort while our kids blood continues to spill. Makes me sick.

One of the Democrats leading anti-war voices accused his party of abandoning its priorities and ignoring the will of the American people in preparing to send the president a bill that would fund the Iraq war without requiring any consequences for a continued lack of progress there.

“I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the President to continue what may be the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history,” Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., said in a statement released Tuesday. “There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action.”

More at Raw Story

cross-posted at THINK PROGRESS

Senate Judiciary Committee heads Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, demanding he provide answers by June 5 to their “longstanding questions about the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.”

Leahy and Specter

The senators told Gonzales that the new request came in light of James Comey’s extraordinary testimony last week, which raised “very serious questions about your personal behavior and commitment to the rule of law.”

This Committee has made no fewer than eight formal requests over the past 18 months - to the White House, the Attorney General, or other Department of Justice officials - seeking documents and information related to this surveillance program. These requests have sought the Executive Branch legal analysis of this program and documents reflecting its authorization by the President. You have rebuffed all requests for documents and your answers to our questions have been wholly inadequate and, at times, misleading.

“To consider any changes to FISA,” Leahy and Specter write, “it is critical that this Committee understand how the Department and the FISA Court have interpreted FISA and the perceived flaws that led the Administration to operate a warrantless surveillance program outside of FISA’s provisions for over five years.”

In other words, Leahy and Specter are telling Gonzales: turn over the information now, or President Bush’s desired changes to FISA are going nowhere.

reada the entire letter at THINK PROGRESS

cross posted at THINK PROGRESS

Some grisly details about criminal former Rep. Duke Cunningham and his crony hot-tub parties on his old boat, The Duke’stir.

The ‘Duke-Stir’

For one thing, Wilkes was totally disgusted by the hot tub Cunningham put on the boat’s deck during the autumn and winter. What repelled Wilkes - and others invited to the parties - was both the water Cunningham put in the hot tub and the congressman’s penchant for using it while naked, even if everybody else at the party was clothed. Cunningham used water siphoned directly from the polluted Potomac River and never changed it out during the season. “Wilkes thought it was unbelievably dirty and joked if you got in there it would leave a dark water line on your chest,” said one person familiar with the parties. “The water was so gross that very few people were willing to get into the hot tub other than Duke and his paramour.” That was a reference to Cunningham’s most frequently seen girlfriend, a flight attendant who lived in Maryland.