Nothing like a little conservative hypocrisy. Remember when the Bush administration was so upset because the U.N. Weapons Inspectors didn't find anything? Turns out those folks were indeed quite competant. Snipped from this USA Today article:

"I am confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs ? but the process will take months and perhaps years," Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for policy, told the House International Relations Committee.

OAKLAND (KRON) -- Some teachers in Oakland are rallying behind two students who were interrogated by the Secret Service. That followed remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class discussion. The incident has many people angry.
For years the classroom has been the setting for the free expression of ideas, but two weeks ago certain ideas led to two students being taken out of class and grilled by the United States Secret Service.
/snip
"When one of the students asked, 'do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights,'" Felson says.
/snip

Its good that there is nobody listening that closely in AU classrooms when I speak my mind less than a mile from Dick Cheney's house, several embassies, and across the street from the Homeland Security Department. If I happen to not come home some day after school, you all know why. Eeek.

Link goes to full article.

As if there wasn't enough reason not to sleep at night, take a look at this ABC article. This is one of the most horrifying things I've ever read. Snip:

_Friendly Fire_
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe
N E W  Y O R K, May 1 ? In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

_Ashcroft Flying High_
WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001

(CBS) Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

I came across the letter to the editor of Britain's The Guardian. Quite worthwhile. HarHar. Brilliant. Send Eric a note and tell him so.

Monday January 6, 2003
· If a patient came into my office warning of an imminent attack on the United States with weapons of mass destruction without their being any evidence whatsoever that this would occur, and saying that we had to strike first and "take out" all those who were a threat to us as a first step towards world domination, I would diagnose him as suffering from paranoid and grandiose delusions and perhaps as psychotic. And, fearing that he constituted a potential danger to himself or others, I would commit him to a psychiatric hospital for a period of evaluation and treatment.

I suspect that some of my colleagues with licences to practise psychiatry in Washington DC are struggling with the decision to exercise their clinical, ethical, and legal responsibilities to protect the public now that the US Congress has failed to do so.
Dr Eric Chivian
(Co-founder, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) Harvard Medical School
eric_chivian@hms.harvard.edu

In case you missed it, this is Bush doinking his head on the door frame of Marine One yesterday on his way to the made for TV politics aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. This is the latest in a series of self-assassination attempts.

Let's not forget the pretzel. Bags of pretzels will soon come with a choking hazard. I'm fairly certain that was written into the Patriot Act.

And then there was the drunk driving.

Bush is actually full of bloopers, as are all presidents and presidential candidates. I could watch the clip of Bob Dole falling off that stage for hours. Here are a couple of my favorite Bush verbal bloopers:

"The caribou love it. They rub against it and they have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at." -- George W. Bush, on the Alaska pipeline

"There ought to be limits to freedom. We're aware of this [web] site, and this guy is just a garbage man, that's all he is." -- George W. Bush, discussing a web site that parodies him.

Y'all outta read this article.

Included content: 9/11, campaign, reclassify, ludicrous, secrecy, "Phoenix Memo", executive privelege, congressional report.........

So I was watching the first actual campaign (well not really, sure seemed like it) address tonight from President Bush from the the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. This really was Karl Rove at his best. If you don't know who he is, he's Bush's chief advisor. He is credited with creating the platform and strategies that got the GOP a bunch of seats in the midterm elections. There was a very large part of this address that was about catching terrorists, "Those terrorists declared war on the United States, and war is what they got." No, Dubya, I won't be fooled into thinking this last war was about finding Al Qaeda, and you really shouldn't try convincing everyone else. "No terrorists will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the Iraqi regime is no more (cheers)." No, they won't get any WMD from them because the Iraqi regime didn't have any! (I'll eat my words later for that one, if necessary.)

Oh, and it's N U C L E A R , and stop with the fuckin' (sorry Mom) smirk.

P.S. The Tigers suck (3-23).