I received this video in an email from the Chris Dodd campaign. This is AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein speaking out against retroactive immunity for telecom companies.

In one small article, Lou Dobbs sums up with great clarity where we, the American people, really stand.

“Dobbs: The November surprise“, IMO, a very good read!

I remember when Barbara Bush, charitable creature that she is, channeled her Hurricane Katrina relief donation to her son’s software, Ignite. God these people make me sick. And I’m here to tell you……there’s plenty of children left behind in Florida.

The inspector general of the Department of Education has said he will examine whether federal money was inappropriately used by three states to buy educational products from a company owned by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector general, said he would review the matter after a group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, detailed at least $1 million in spending from the No Child Left Behind program by school districts in Texas, Florida and Nevada to buy products made by Mr. Bush’s company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Tex. Mr. Higgins stated his plans in a letter to the group sent last week.

Full article here

Can republicans not find anyone better’suited for the job than this loud-mouthed b*tch?

These people aren’t just a handful of folks out to ruin your friggin’ day, Mrs. Perino. They represent me. They represent the majority of Americans. If you want to talk about wasting time, try reading up on some history first, you bubble-headed skank!

Yeah, everybody’s got a bomb
We could all die any day
But before I’ll let that happen
I’ll dance my life away

Better hurry up with that Mukasey confirmation… Iran’s centrifuge tally has just hit the big 3,000.

“We have now reached 3,000 machines,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of Iranians in Birjand in eastern Iran, in a show of defiance of international demands to halt the program believed to be masking the country’s nuclear arms efforts.
[...]

Centrifuges are used in enriching uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead.

Associated Press

L.A.-based NPR show To the Point, hosted by the superb Warren Olney, today focused on “The Next Attorney General and Waterboarding.” Olney speaks with Malcolm Nance, whose definitive piece on waterboarding we discussed earlier here and here (in addition to a few other pieces on torture).

Olney’s second guest is Lee Casey, a lawyer who worked for Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Casey is clearly a good defense attorney, civil and articulate, performing accomplished (and infuriating) hack work for the Bushies here.

Luckily, Scott Horton of Harper’s is brought on to rebut him. Horton’s written quite a bit on torture, but his three most recent pieces are “The Bellinger-Sands Debate” (11/5/07) , “The Justice Department’s Culture of Torture” (11/5/07), and “DOJ Torture Memo # 6 Identified” (11/7/07). As Horton points out a few times, Casey’s arguments for Mukasey and the Bush administration really only make sense as a legal defense, and Casey’s dead wrong about the law being unclear about waterboarding’s illegality.
(more…)

Via Gene Weingarten’s chat today, here’s a dangerous charity - or rather, a game for charity that’s dangerously addictive. Free Rice poses vocabulary questions, and for each question you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to combat world hunger through the United Nations World Food Programme. It seems to be on the level; the FAQ explains that the rice is paid for by the rotating ads for each screen.

So far, I’ve gotten up to vocab level 47. As Weingarten, who “got to 48, then tanked badly,” says, anything above 44 is quite good. Plus, it’s not hard to burn out for a stretch!

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican whose lone term was dogged by a hiring scandal, LOST BADLY Tuesday despite an election-eve effort to woo conservative voters by displaying the Ten Commandments in the state Capitol.

Ice cream and cake are now being served in the BlueHerald dining room.