Is Katherine Harris lying or just an idiot?

Think Progress has the facts. You make the call. Read More......

Bush Justice Dept. still wants Google records

This is the most intrusive government in the history of America. The Bush administration wants to know every detail of everyone's lives. Nothing is sacred, not even Google:

Google Inc.'s concerns that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said Friday in a court filing.

There is no such thing as privacy when it comes to Bush and his cronies. If they're not eavesdropping on Americans, they want their Google records. If they're not trying to intrude on families making intensely personal decisions as in the Schiavo case, they are trying pack the Courts with anti-privacy judges.

The Justice Department says they won't invade anyone's privacy if they get Google's records. They claim to have the noble purpose of stopping child porn. Can you trust any of what they say? This administration is obsessed with other people's sex lives. And really, has anyone in the Bush administration ever told the truth? Read More......

Saturday Evening Open Thread

Threading our way through a Saturday night. Hearing anything interesting? Doing anything fun? Read More......

More Progress in Iraq -- Bush style

For the Bush team, stunned and thwarted are the new shock and awe:

American officials have been repeatedly stunned and frequently thwarted in the past three years by the extraordinary power of Muslim clerics over Iraqi society. But in the sectarian violence of the past few days, that power has taken an ominous turn, as rival hard-line Shiite clerical factions have pushed each other toward more militant and anti-American stances, Iraqi and Western officials say.

But he got that Saddam, didn't he. Read More......

Does Virginia GOP Senator George Allen agree with John Warner that the Dubai port deal is a-okay?

According to the NYT, Virginia Republican Senator John Warner is doing the dirty work for the Dubai ports, working behind the scenes to help them get a hold of our ports.

The action came after the Bush administration and leading members of Congress, including Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, quietly told the company that more time was needed to derail congressional action to block the deal.

I'm just wondering if Virginia GOP Senator George Allen, who is up for re-election and who wants to run for president in 3 years, agrees with Warner that we should sell out America's national security to the highest foreign bidder? Read More......

Progress in Iraq -- Bush style

This one fact says so much:

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

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A week in the life of the Bush/Condi failed foreign policy agenda

Banner week for the Secretary of State. Everything she touched --- on behalf of her hapless, clueless boss -- was a disaster. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Bush and Condi were in charge of national security when we faced the worst attack ever on American soil. They missed that despite all the warnings. Bush and Condi led us in to a war. They've screwed that up. I'm no foreign policy expert, but it's pretty clear that Bush and Condi are the architects of a failed -- and dangerous -- foreign policy:

It was probably Condoleezza Rice's unhappiest week as secretary of state, one so disappointing that it raises questions about the Bush administration's ability to shape Middle East events in the near term.

During her three days in the region, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian leaders — with Rice standing awkwardly at their side before the news media — refused to support the U.S. financial boycott of the militant group Hamas as it takes control of the Palestinian parliament.

In Iraq, sectarian violence threatened to turn into a civil war, setting back efforts by President Bush and Rice to construct a democratic government that would shine as an example for the entire area.

And a deal with the United Arab Emirates, one of America's few close Arab friends, to operate some terminals at six major U.S. ports unexpectedly ignited bipartisan anger in Congress and forced at least a delay of the transaction.

Thanks to Bush and Condi (and Cheney and Rummy and Wolfie...), the world is a much more scary place.

The sickest part is that those are the people who many Americans trusted to make them safer. They were so wrong. Read More......

Off to a comedy club

But more pics from today in Amsterdam first.






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AP picks up the story about that dirty little Ricky

Ricky is getting some national attention. And don't forget that Santorum, who spends a lot of time obsessing about gay sex, is also the GOP's beacon of ethics in the Senate:

Sen. Rick Santorum's charity donated about 40 percent of the $1.25 million it spent during a four-year period, well below Better Business Bureau standards - paying out the rest for overhead, including several hundred thousand dollars to campaign aides on the charity payroll.

The charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is described on its Web site as an organization promoting "compassionate conservatism" by providing grants to small nonprofit groups, many of them religious.

The Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance says charitable organizations should spend at least 65 percent of their total expenses on program activities.

Operation Good Neighbor is based at the same address as Pennsylvania Sen. Santorum's campaign office in suburban Philadelphia, and some of the same people who have worked on his campaign are working for his charity and collecting money from it, records show.

He's in big trouble. Read More......

Profile in spinelessness: Paul Bremer

One of the most disturbing aspects of the last few years under Bush has been the cowardice of people like Bremer, Colin Powell and Tony Blair who all have had countless opportunities to publicly speak out but have failed to do so. Bullies like Bush rely on this and this lot somehow think that it is respectful or somehow beneficial to just be quiet. Hardly. This is a crisis of democracy and these people deserve no credit at all for going along with the madness, the incompetence and the ignorance of the Bush team.

As an outsider, I did not get bombarded with the American media spin that went 24/7 after September 11 so when I visited the US afterwards, I would listen and then question the madness that I would hear. Even just questioning caused problems just about everywhere I went in the US. It has always bothered me to hear that people like these guys did not really buy into the Bush story, but were somehow playing along for the sake of unity. Bullshit. They are all cowards, plain and simple. They should all feel ashamed of themselves and quite frankly be embarssed to show their faces in public because they failed democracy.

Today's NY Times book review of Bremer's book is worth a read. Why he is only now admitting that the US was well under-manned in the field is a mystery but I suppose he was too interested in playing the game. Say-nothings stick around for the long haul and those who question are sent packing. Bush did not want to admit that more troops were needed because it did not fit with his campaign strategy and Bremer and others were only too happy to tow the line.

Bremer turned to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, and asked him what he would do with two more divisions, as many as 40,000 more troops. General Sanchez did not hesitate to answer. "I'd control Baghdad," he said. Bremer then mentioned some other uses for the soldiers, like securing Iraq's borders and protecting its infrastructure, to which General Sanchez replied: "Got those spare troops handy, sir?"

Yet for most of the 14 months that Bremer oversaw the occupation, he and his aides, and General Sanchez and his, often seemed the only people in Iraq who refused to acknowledge the anarchy in the streets. Though confronted by the growing guerrilla insurgency and the brazen behavior of armed militias, Bremer and other senior American officials routinely batted down any suggestion that they needed more soldiers.

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Open thread

Off to the market. Read More......

Pentagon report on Iraqi troops is not good

Last September there was one Iraqi battalion capable of going it alone into battle. That alone was pretty sad news after all of the time, effort and money that had poured in to Iraq but now that number is zero. (Strangely enough, the Washington Post somehow gives this article the title of "US Report on Iraqi Troops is Mixed" as if going backwards is somehow "mixed.") This is even down from the previous number of three battalions. The booby prize is that the number of Iraqi battalions that can go into battle with US support has increased. So the US is nearly three years into this disaster and this is what they have to show for the effort? Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

The other jewel in the report is that the insurgency is losing steam and should not even be called an insurgency. Uh huh, right. Those TV images of people marching in the streets with guns everywhere must not have really happened. That looked to me like a country that had a lawlessness problem. The insurgency may be changing to a civil war, so you can call it whatever you like, but there is an obvious problem that only the Pentagon and Bush can overlook. Read More......

South Dakota extremists win vote in state house

The American Taliban votes to ban all abortions in South Dakota. Who says American extremists can't be as nuts as foreign extremists?

Republican Gov. Mike Rounds said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.(Bold added.)

Read More......