Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

More at Yahoo News

So let me get this straight. Not only was former Gov. Eliot Spitzer a very, very evil man, but any crooked republicans he came into contact with, as it turns out, were saints. Is that right?

DA’s Report: Spitzer Behind Dirty Tricks

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor said Friday that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have lied when he told investigators he wasn’t deeply involved in a plot that used a Republican rival’s travel records in an effort to embarrass him. He added that Spitzer could have been indicted had he not resigned in disgrace in a prostitution scandal.

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said in a report that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, recounted conversations and e-mails that indicated Spitzer directly ordered him in a profanity-laced exchange to give a reporter records regarding Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft on days he attended Republican fundraisers.

Dopp was provided immunity for his testimony in Soares’ second investigation of the 2007 scandal. Dopp had faced a possible perjury charge because a statement released by the Spitzer administration about the scandal differed from his own testimony, but Soares found Friday that he did not commit perjury.

“If Dopp’s testimony is credited,” Soares’ report states, “then former Governor Spitzer’s answers were not truthful. Accordingly, we intended to present these conflicting accounts to a grand jury.”

But Spitzer’s resignation this month, after he was implicated in an investigation of a prostitution ring, made it impossible to file a charge against him because it meant he was no longer a public employee, the report said.

Can’t quite put my finger on just why, but this has me nervous as all hell!

Nearing the end of his presidency, you all thought Bush couldn’t do much more damage to our country. I laugh at you!

Bush Seeks Financial Regulation Overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the government regulates the nation’s financial services industry from banks and securities firms to mortgage brokers and insurance companies.

The plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 22-page executive summary obtained by The Associated Press.

The Fed would be given broad authority to oversee financial market stability. That would include new powers to examine the books of any institution deemed to represent a potential threat to the proper functioning of the overall financial system.

The proposal, which will be outlined Monday in a speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is certain to set off heated debates within different sectors of the financial services industry and in Congress, where some Democrats are likely to complain that the proposal does not go far enough to crack down on abuses.

Republicans want less government, right?

I’m trying the figure out the relevance of “while training for Army test”. I mean, if the guy had been mugged while visiting his sick Grandmother, would that have been the headline? Would it have even been a top AP story?

Can you make heads or tails out of it?

Man Mugged While Training for Army Test

NEW YORK (AP) — Knife-wielding muggers attacked a jogger running in Central Park to prepare for an Army physical fitness test, police and his family said.

“I’m in a lot of pain,” Johnny Reberon, 23, said as he returned from a hospital Friday to his Manhattan home.

He was slashed in the arm and leg by two men who accosted him around 8:45 p.m. Thursday, police said.

What the hell are we doing?

AP probe finds drugs in drinking water

A vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

_Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.

_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

_Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood’stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco’s drinking water.

_The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

_Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

Saw this while shopping in beautiful downtown Stearns today:

(more…)

Ann Coulter will campaign for Hillary Clinton if John McCain is the Republican nominee:

Hyperbole? Yes. A few salient points? Shockingly - yes.

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration says the federal budget deficit would have been 69 percent higher than the $162.8 billion reported two months ago if the government had used the same accounting methods as private companies.

Someone splain this to me. What’s he saying…..that he’s cooking the books?