Brought to you without comment: Worried about the safety of her family during a stormy Memorial Day trip to the beach, Clara Jean Brown stood in her kitchen and prayed for their safe return as a strong thunderstorm rumbled through Baldwin County, Alabama. But while she prayed, lightning suddenly exploded, blowing through the linoleum and …
Archives for May 2006
Shock and Awe
This piece by Arwa Damon is worth reading: It actually took me a while to put all the pieces together — that I know these guys, the U.S. Marines at the heart of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha. I don’t know why it didn’t register with me until now. It was only …
Not Dead
In case you are wondering where I have been, I took the weekend off, and then at some point over the weekend,. I clear my internet cache, which removed my password from the WP login, so I have been effectively locked out of my site until now. I now have my password tattooed to my …
Bob Ney’s Abramoff Troubles Grow
You can file this under stuff that we more or less knew already, but the NYT has a brief preview of indictments-to-come: Testimony in the trial of a former White House budget aide accused of lying about his contacts with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff is expected to result in new scrutiny of Representative Bob Ney, …
HIV Traced To Cameroon Chimpanzees
It seems like a safe rule to disregard any conspiracy theory that expects the government both to orchestrate prominent events/disasters flawlessly (cough) and to cover them up perfectly. When it comes to which insultingly-stupid theory irritates me the most I confess to going back and forth between the we-blew-up-the-WTC rumors and the idea that a …
State Secrets
A football coach once said that if you make a big play, keep calling it until it stops working. I don’t know enough about football to say whether it’s a great idea, an apocryphal story or a crappy coach, but at least somebody listened: The Bush administration asked federal judges in New York and Michigan …
Reality Check
Congress has begun debating whether we should imprison journalists for publishing classified information. As usual Glenn Greenwald has the must-read commentary. I would add, imagine that we had this debate one month after terrorists destroyed the WTC and part of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Let’s say that Congress had the balls to propose …