The Waterkooler

Chicago's use of the Internet to humiliate customers of prostitutes, or "johns," has led to concerns that the practice may violate constitutional rights.

At issue is Chicago's recent decision to run a Web site that posts the names and photos of people who have been arrested for soliciting a prostitute -- but not convicted.

Attorneys and law enforcement officials argue that the practice violates a person's constitutional right to a fair trial, and could lead to lawsuits down the road.

"The trouble has nothing to do with foam or other launch debris but rather the accidental slippage of ceramic-fiber fabric used to fill the thin gaps between thermal tiles."

Ceramic? Isn't that what they used instead of freon on the World Trade Center?

The buildings are also thought to have been the first buildings to use non-asbestos fireproofing. The fibers of the spray-on fireproofing product were reportedly ceramic rather than asbestos.

When will we learn?

Related Story: Why NASA Can't Get it Right


large photo of shuttle damage

We used to use tiles that worked well. Then we stopped using them because they were not politically correct - they were freon-based. So we changed the tiles and ever since then the tiles have been problematic at best, and for the lives of the Shuttle crew, disasterous. So, why are we still using inferior tiles on the Shuttle?

"You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. "We need to do some work here, and so we're telling you right now, that the ... foam should not have come off. It came off. We've got to go do something about that."

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said pre-flight safety checks had fallen short. "Everyone has said without any attempt to hide it ... we goofed on that one."

The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.

"We wont be able to fly again," until the hazard is removed, Parsons told reporters in a briefing Wednesday evening. "Obviously we have some more work to do."

Well, this is nothing new, unfortunately:

• Environmentalists ban DDT - millions of deaths over the world.

• Environmentalists ban asbestos - the WTCs collapse instead of burning out, resulting in 3000 deaths instead of a few hundred.

• Environmentalists ban freon - space shuttle foam and tiles less rugged, resulting in the loss of a shuttle, and its mission, and crew, and even after looking at the problem, another orbiter has suffered damage on take-off.
  

Steven Milloy, 2003...

Until 1997, Columbia’s external fuel tanks were insulated with a Freon-based foam. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) supposedly linked with ozone depletion and phased out of widespread use under the international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol.

Despite that the Freon-based foam worked well and that an exemption from the CFC phase-out could have been obtained, NASA succumbed to political correctness. The agency substituted an allegedly more eco-friendly foam for the Freon-based foam.

PC-foam was an immediate problem.

The first mission with PC-foam resulted in 11 times more damaged thermal tiles on Columbia than the previous mission with the Freon-based foam.

A Dec. 23, 1997, diary entry on the NASA Web site reported: “308 hits were counted during the inspection, 132 were greater than 1-inch. Some of the hits measured 15 inches long, with depths measuring up to 1.5 inches. Considering that the depth of a tile is 2 inches, a 75 percent penetration depth had been reached.”

More than 100 tiles were damaged beyond repair, well over the normal count of 40. Flaking PC-foam was the chief suspect.

In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency exempted NASA from the CFC phase-out. Even assuming for the sake of argument that widespread use of CFCs might significantly damage the ozone layer, the relatively small amount used by NASA would have no measurable impact. The bulk of CFC use, after all, was in consumer products such as air conditioners, refrigerators and aerosol cans.

But contrary to the exercise of common sense, NASA didn’t return to the safer Freon-based foam. Instead, NASA knowingly continued to risk tile damage -- and disaster -- with reformulated PC-foam.

This is obviously a potentially embarrassing situation for NASA.

In what smacks of an effort to avoid blame, NASA is now claiming the disintegration of Columbia has turned into a scientific mystery.

NASA says computer modeling fails to show how foam insulation striking the thermal tiles could do enough damage to cause catastrophe -- apparently ignoring that flaking foam substantially penetrated thermal tiles on an earlier flight.

NEW YORK -- A Manhattan man says he can't remember what happened, but his $40,000 credit card bill said he had a wild time with eight young lady escorts.

Leonardo Manfredo's attorney said that's impossible, and that the man is suing Midnight Escorts of Jamaica, Queens.

Attorney Kevin Claffey said his client hired one escort on March 19, but awoke 15 hours later with the credit card charges. One $20,000 charge was denied, but another $20,000 charge was approved.

Monfredo accuses one of the escorts of slipping him a drug and then inviting seven other women to his apartment. Manfredo said he didn't know there were eight women in his apartment until he was told by his doorman the next day.

Manfredo is seeking to have his credit card bill refunded, and he's suing the escort service for $1 million.

Phil Horowitz, of the California Employment Lawyers Association, who submitted a brief to the court in support of a lawsuit filed by two women, called the decision "groundbreaking."

"It's the first major decision saying women can sue if they are treated worse because they're not the paramour of the supervisor."

download the ruling here.

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual," went Dan McKay's winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced their plans to seize private church property and displace the remains of 1,300 deceased members of St. John’s United Church of Christ in order to “revitalize” and expand O’Hare International Airport.

Tragically, “they acknowledge that the salvation of the deceased at St. Johannes Cemetery depends on their undisturbed remains, but then order them to be bulldozed away,” said Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of The Becket Fund who is defending the church, cemetery and family members of the deceased. He, along with his clients, are outraged by this gross violation of religious rights. “Our country's founders are also turning in their graves."

Full story here.

Called the "Carrie Bradshaw" of bloggers by the New York Times, suburban New Yorker Stephanie Klein's online musings in her personal blog, Greek Tragedy, has gained the attention of Hollywood and the book industry while it draws comparisons to former HBO television series, Sex and the City.

Since January 2004, Klein has written her blog which goes into the intimate details of her life as a 29-year-old professional single woman living in New York City's northwestern suburb of Prospect Park, New Jersey. Since then her blog has become among the top 1 percent most-read blogs in the world, according to Technorati's "net attention" ratings system.

That popularity grabbed the attention of two international media conglomerates, News Corporation and NBC Universal. News Corp.'s HarperCollins book division struck a book deal with Klein valued at more than $500,000. The book is scheduled to debut in April 2006.

Comparisons to Sex and the City may continue. NBC Universal is developing the blog-based book into a fictionalized weekly sitcom version of Klein’s life for its NBC television network.

While the International Freedom Center is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend--people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Over There," produced by "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blues" creator Steven Bochco, hits the US FX cable network on Wednesday, telling the story of the Iraqi conflict from the viewpoint of eight American soldiers.

The show, heralded by a major advertising campaign, begins with the eight military personnel -- six men and two women -- leaving their homes in the United States to join their units, according to previews.

While FX is part of Australian-born US media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television group, which is a vocal supporter of the US military presence in Iraq, the channel denies it is trying to make a political statement.

In one Florida household, a whole family is afraid of the toilet after a poisonous snake used it as a hiding place. Alicia Bailey was bitten by what appeared to have been a large water moccasin that had been hiding in the bowl in the middle of the night.

The snake bit her thigh after she lifted the lid, sending her to the hospital for three days.

No one knows how the snake got in the toilet, or where it went after that.

So the family is a little jumpy these days.

"We're not looking to take it alive," said the victim's husband, Richard Bailey, as he held a shotgun. "I just want it out of here."

"We're currently very uncomfortable in our home," Alicia Bailey said. "And toilet shy, I would say."

The Bailey's 11-year-old son is now staying with neighbors because doctors said he would die if he were bitten by a snake that size.

video

"Honey? Do you wanna watch a movie?"

Face it, guys. If you're in a relationship, there are few questions (other than, "Do these jeans make my butt look fat?") that are more loaded and riddled with danger. Before you say "yes" to your sweetie, here's a little guide to "Chick Flicks" and their more palpable alternatives.

If you don't want to lose hours of your life that you'll never get back, you need to be careful out there. Hopefully, this helps...

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. -- Wildlife officials say they used doughnuts to catch a bear in Bonita Springs.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says a small young female bear was trapped Monday morning, five days after it was set free.

Wildlife biologists are towing the bear in the trap to the Ocala National Forest. There, the bear will be tranquilized, receive a radio collar, be weighed and then released--again.

Authorities also trapped a 225-pound male bear in the same area two weeks ago.

A WEST NYACK, N.Y. MAN was found dead at his computer apparently the victim of trying to keep up with too many professional forums. Childress H. Wanamaker, 54, an account executive at a New York-based new media company, died of starvation according to the West Nyack coroner's office. Wanamaker's emaciated body was found by Loraine, his wife of 26 years, who told MediaPost she had been bringing her husband meals on plastic trays for weeks, but that he never took the time to eat them.

"He was glued to his computer 24/7," she said tearfully. "He was so afraid he was going to miss an opportunity to contribute a comment or start a discussion, that he just stopped eating." She added that Wanamaker's last words were "OK Picard, stick that in your pipe and smoke it..."

When Anne-Marie,* the president and CEO of a start-up medical device company in Philadelphia, first began thinking of having a child on her own, she was 37 and her biological clock was ticking loudly.

As much as she wanted to be in a great, loving relationship with a partner, she wanted a baby even more. “If I turned 50 and didn't have children," she says, "I'd be pretty devastated."

So after about a year of weighing her options and considering what it would be like to be a mother on her own, she did something a growing number of single women are doing: She chose an anonymous donor through a sperm bank and started her attempts to get pregnant, using drugs to encourage the growth of egg-producing follicles.

London - A British teacher who killed his wife with a punch to the jaw and left nine pieces of her mangled body in a freezer was jailed for five years on Monday.

Paul Dalton, 35, of Kingston, southern England, said he accidentally killed his 38-year-old Korean-born wife, but denied murdering her.

JERSEY: Assemblyman John F. McKeon, D-West Orange, sponsored a measure that would fine drivers up to $250 if they are found smoking while driving.

McKeon, a tobacco opponent whose father died of emphysema, cited a AAA-sponsored study on driver distractions in which the association found that of 32,000 accidents linked to distraction, one percent were related to smoking.

The smoking while driving ban shifts the smoking debate to private property.

Related Story (Jan 2005): Private Company Fires workers for smoking - at home!

Have we gone Nicotine Nuts in this country?

Nationally, some companies, such as Union Pacific, are refusing to hire smokers. At least one Michigan company, Weyco, let four workers go earlier this year when they refused to quit smoking - at home!

From Weyco firing at-home smokers, to a new bill that would outlaw smoking in cars, to the increasing number of tobacco-related lawsuits, to the number of states outlawing smoking in bars and restaurants, the cigarette makers of this country are fast becoming our favorite bad guys.

And as they become increasingly criminalized, cigarettes are fast becoming targetted by gangs for their black market appeal:

"Police and Customs officers seized at least 300kg of manufactured tobacco and 3.8 tonnes of tobacco leaf, along with machinery and equipment used in its manufacture on Tuesday.

The "truck loads" were taken largely from Motueka Valley as part of an ongoing operation, Customs fraud spokesman Terry Brown said.

But insiders say it is just the tip of the iceberg and estimate that more than 20 tonnes is being grown to be hawked in bars.

With the excise on one tonne worth $376,000, millions in potential tax revenue could be being lost."

Tobacco Resources and Stats

• Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $50 billion in direct medical costs.
  
  
• Each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires - combined! (about 430,000)
  
  
• In addition, smoking costs the U.S. economy at least $100 billion in annual health care expenses and lost productivity.
  
  
• States with smoking bans in bars and restaurants (Love the fact that in Washington DC, smoking is banned in all government buildings - except in Congress)
  
  
• Scholarly articles on smoking bans
  
  
• The United Pro Smokers Rights Newsletter
  
  
• more stats here and here
  
  
• more tobacco lawsuits and stories here
  
  
• tobacco lawsuit timeline
  
  
• Class Action Fairness Act
  
  
• Book: For Your Own Good. A chronicle of the Nanny State, this book provides a powerful and provocative case against America's public health crusaders. The debate over smoking is really more about the nature of liberty--how should a society restrict the choices of its members?--than it is about public health, says author.
  
  

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Some members of the Alabama House say that violent sex offenders who prey on children should be forced to undergo surgical castration to ensure that they do not hurt another child.

In an effort to strengthen a bill toughening the state's laws against sex offenders, the House added an amendment Thursday by Rep. Steve Hurst, D-Munford, that would require those convicted of violent sex crimes against children under 12 to undergo the operation to remove their sex drive.


Is chemical castration an acceptable punishment for male sex offenders?

Sex offenders, such as rapists, pedophiles, and exhibitionists, are among the highest reoccurring offense populations in the United States probation system. These offenders commit crimes that put fear into the general public and pose a threat to people that live in their neighborhoods. These offenders should be punished and not let off or forgiven of their crime(s) just because they have gone through a treatment program, most or which cannot show a significant success rate.

Chemical castration is an ideal punishment for sex offenders. When Depo-Provera is administerd, recidivism rates fall to 5%. Their sexual fantasies are lessened as a result of the reduction of testosterone levels. Although men administered this drug are capable of having sexual intercourse, many people argue that chemical castration is cruel and unusual punishment. This argument is countered by the fact that sex offenders are required to get injections only once a month. What is "cruel and unusual" is allowing sex offenders to attack innocent women and children. This effective therapy will protect future victims. It is an "offender friendly" way of reducing sexual violence. [LaLaunie Hayes.]

• Recidivism High
  A 1989 review of recidivism rates for sex offenders in North America and Europe, published in the Psychological Bulletin, came to the conclusion that "there is no evidence that treatment effectively reduces sex offense recidivism." In fact, the recidivism rate for counseled offenders was often higher than that of untreated ones. In Florida, men who completed counseling were re-arrested for a sex offense at a rate of 13.6%, while men who did not complete the counseling were arrested at only a 6.5% rate. In Philadelphia, those who were not counseled re-offended at less than half the rate of those who were. link
  
  
• Proponents of castration argue that it is justified and appropriate, that by controlling sex offenders' irresistable urges to rape or molest again, castration allows them to be released without endangering the public. Of more than 700 Danish sex offenders castrated following multiple convictions, relapse rates dropped from between 17% and 50% to just 2%. A Norwegian study showed the same for selected male and female sex offenders (the women had their ovaries removed). In smaller studies in Scandinavia and Italy, chemical castration was equally effective in some groups of volunteer prisoners, with the most dramatic reductions among pedophiles.
  
  
• Opponents say Castration Inneffective
  University of Alabama Criminal Justice Professor Robert Sigler said castration has not proven to be an effective way to stop sex offenders from repeating their crimes.
  
  "Research indicates that sexual abuse is not necessarily sexual. These people are mentally ill and sexual castration often does not solve the problem," Sigler said.
  
  He said a program where convicted sex offenders are required to take polygraph tests once a month is being used in some parts of Alabama and has proved more effective than castration. link
  
  

Sex Offender Stories

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Police were hoping Friday that molestation victims would step forward after a convicted child molester was arrested on charges of molesting a boy and authorities found logs suggesting that he abused thousands of children over 30 years across the United States as well as in Mexico and Brazil.

Authorities in this Northern California city said 63-year-old Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller could be the worst child abuser on record in the United States.

SAN FRANCISCO - California taxpayers helped pay for Viagra and other impotence drugs for at least 137 registered sex offenders in the past year, the state Attorney General’s office said.

An audit found that Medi-Cal — the state Medicaid agency that funds some health services programs for California’s poor — spent $2.6 million to provide 5,855 men with Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs, including 137 men who were registered sex offenders, Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said Wednesday.

The Story: Smoke and Mirrors. The Game: Get Karl Rove

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way.

That is part of the commentary we hear from the Left Wing, (a.k.a. Jackass) Party these days... Thank you Frank Rich. Now, it is no secret that the Jackasses like to victimize criminals and n'er do wells and that is exactly how Mr. Rich and the Left want you to view the insidiously deceitful Joseph Wilson - as a victim. Moreover, they want you to believe that this "plot" was "hatched" from the oval office. [read more]


When I read recently that the Leftcoaster had posted a lament about the London bombings giving Fox News more fodder to scare America with War on Terror hyperbole, "distracting from real issues like global warming," chills ran up and down my spine. This is how this country will come to ruin, I thought. But then I read something slightly more soothing. Thank you, Frontiers of Freedom...

Fox news, conservative radio and now the internet have come under attack for simply being an alternative to what is referred to as ‘mainstream news media.’ Fox news and Claudia Rosette were responsible for breaking the most important news story of the year. Mainstream Media has treated the oil-for-food program like the plague, corruption between Saddam, Chirac, Schroeder, Putin the U.N. and others has not been as important to the mainstream media as ‘who leaked the name of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative’ and that’s only important because they see visions of bringing down Karl Rove/Bush Administration (never mind the fact that its only a crime if she were a covert operative at the time and many people have said, she was not)

P.S. Thanks also for the tip that Matt Cooper’s (the journalist who received Rove’s so-called ‘leak’) wife is Mandy Grunwald; media consultant and campaign advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Read about it here and here and here.


BY Joel Mowbray: While the Washington press corps has been buzzing about the
Rove-Wilson-Plame kerfuffle (as have I), there's been a different scandal
involving mishandling of classified info that few in the media have even
noted. Last week, I broke the story of how the federal prison system has
119 inmates with "specific ties" to international Islamic terrorist
organizations and almost all have outside comminication privileges, yet the
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has no full-time Arabic translators. The
translators they do use--17 BOP employees who have full-time work unrelated
to translating--undergo no fluency tests or any special background
screening. This means that the translators handling the communications of
terrorists--potentially the most sensitive information imaginable--have no
security clearances whatsoever.


ACLU Sues FBI

"The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism and yet the government has collected almost 1,200 pages on our activities," Romero said. "Why is the ACLU now the subject of scrutiny from the FBI?"

Sexy Sandra Bulluck ties the knot, marrying bad boy Jesse James of Monster Garage fame. We're still waiting for someone to post the over/under on their breakup.


Speaking of gambling on celebrities, BetWWTS has already posted odds for the Emmy Awards. The news release can be found here.


Should Sex Offenders be jailed for reading Maxim?

Recent Immigration Stories

FAIR Fact Sheet

We know that illegals are 5 times more likely to engage in criminal activity, as studies show. It is common sense: You come hear illegally, your first act in this country is to break it's laws; you have to find illegal underground sources for illegal documentation, you live each day a lie, you become desensitized to the law. The simple fact is that illegals coming into this country are taxing our prison systems.

In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.1 Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates.2 These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Over the past five years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges alone.

RECENT STORIES (More Privacy News Stories Here and Here)

Who's minding the store (of private data you gave up)?

I accidentally downloaded your identity from the IRS

ID Theft: How Bad Is It?

The Enterprise Strategy Group recently surveyed 229 U.S.- based security professionals from organizations with more than 1,000 employees. The majority of respondents (52 percent) came from organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

23 percent of respondents reported their organization had suffered an internal security breach in the past 12 months, while 27 percent didn't know if it had or not. Note to self: Make sure the people you do business with know whether they've been hacked or not.

Regarding the damage caused by these internal security events, 40 percent of respondents said that an internal breach led to an interruption of a critical system or service, 38 percent indicated that an internal breach led to data corruption or loss, and 17 percent said that the internal breach led to the theft of intellectual property.

Are you ready to cut up your credit cards yet? It gets worse.

Google's Growth Prompts Privacy Concerns.

"Google is at once a powerful search engine and a growing e-mail provider. It runs a blogging service, makes software to speed Web traffic and has ambitions to become a digital library. And it is developing a payments service.

Although many Internet users eagerly await each new technology from Google Inc., its rapid expansion is also prompting concerns that the company may know too much: what you read, where you surf and travel, whom you write."

Hackers Up the Pressure in June

"A massive run-up in the number of Trojan horses and Trojan horse downloaders, as well as a corresponding jump in the number of malicious sites, over the last three weeks means that a new, large-scale, coordinated phishing campaign is being waged by criminals, a security vendor said Friday.

Websense, a San Diego-based security company, has detected a "four- to five-fold increase in the number of Trojans during the last week of June and especially the first two weeks of July," said Dan Hubbard, Websense's senior director of security."

A Pass on Privacy?
You may love your EZ Pass - that electronic encoder that allows you to zip through toll booths - but now that you have given up a piece of your personal information to yet another database, what vulnerabilites have you exposed yourself to?

Choicepoint Loses 145,000 US Identities
Bank of America Loses 2.1 million gov employee records
Seisint Reports Familiar Story: Hackers Stole 32,000 US Identities

So what is the Senate going to do about it?

-------------------------------------

Learn How to Protect Your Privacy Here.

No Place To Hide, a radio documentary, asks the question, "Has technology outpaced our ability to protect ourselves?

Fight for your Right to Privacy:

Electronic Privacy Information Center
Washington National Office
1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Suite 200
Washington, DC 20009
tel: 202 483 1140

Privacy International

FTC Initiatives

Privacy Rights Now

Privacy Rights.org

Novack Curses, walks off set at CNN
The latest: Novack calls ex CIA official liar

The Story: Smoke and Mirrors. The Game: Get Karl Rove

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way.

That is part of the commentary we hear from the Left Wing (a.k.a. Jackass) Party these days... Thank you Frank Rich. Now, it is no secret that the Jackasses like to victimize criminals and n'er do wells and that is exactly how Mr. Rich and the Left want you to view the insidiously deceitful Joseph Wilson - as a victim. Moreover, they want you to believe that this "plot" was "hatched" from the oval office.

"Bad things happen to decent people" ?? Please. (Talk about trashing people).

So, let me get this straight... in this fairy tale of Mr. Rich's, the "bad thing" is that the truth was told and the decent person is the guy who was lying to reporters.

A Pack of Lies
Look, Wilson lied about the administration sending him to Niger and he lied about what he found there by insisting that he found evidence that the President was lying about uranium. But the Senate Intelligence Committee caught him in this lie.

In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that "for most analysts" Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

So he was lying. This is no surprise, since his book is full of partisan lies (want to guess which party Wilson gives his money to, which Presidential candidate he worked for? - by the way, Kerry fired him because he was such a kook!).

Lie #1
Wilson's main lie was that the Bush admininstration knowingly lied, or misled, the public about Iraq's attempts or desires to obtain uranium from Niger. This has been debunked again and again.

Reports by two official investigations -- Britain's Butler Commission and the Senate intelligence committee -- demonstrated that Mr. Wilson's portrayal of himself as a whistle-blower was unwarranted. It turned out his report to the CIA had not altered, and may even have strengthened, the agency's conclusion that Iraq had explored uranium purchases from Niger. Moreover, his account had not reached Vice President Cheney or any other senior official. According to the Butler Commission, led by an independent jurist, the assertion about African uranium included in Mr. Bush's State of the Union speech was "well-founded."

The Butler Report affirmed what the British government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what Bush said as well.

Butler Report: By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was well-founded.

Lie #2
So, on top of that lie, comes another lie, about who sent Wilson to Niger. Reporters were told that Ms. Plame recommended Mr. Wilson for the Niger trip -- a fact denied by Mr. Wilson but subsequently confirmed by the Senate investigation.

Enter Karl the Rove
This is where Rove comes in. He simply corrected a reporter who Wilson had lied to, by saying that in fact it was Wilson's wife, an employee of the CIA, who sent him to Niger, not Dick Cheney. The Wall Street Journal thinks Rove should be given an award for this.

Instead, the Jackasses want to use the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 to indict Rove. Sorry Jackasses, but we spoke to the author of that law, Victoria Toensing, and she assures us that Rove did not come anywhere near a violation. Meanwhile, the White House waits upon the grand jury to come to their decision. (The smart money is on innocent, by the way.)

In Conlusion - Monty Python
So what do we have here? Rove corrected a reporter who was about to publish one of Wilson's many kooky lies. Wow. What a scandal. Only the hatred of the Left and the blood thirst of the media could dream up something so big out of so little. Even the Washington Post editorial thinks this is much ado about nothing.

You can hardly blame them, though. If I were a brain-damaged fiction writer with an overwhelming hatred of George W. Bush and someone handed me a story with the words "CIA," "Karl Rove" and "lies" in the first paragraph... well, who knows what I might start blathering about.

Doesn't the whole thing sound like some silly put-on from a Monty Python episode?

Don't believe the hype. Read the facts here.

Review the facts about the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the Butler Report here.

Read the actual Butler Report here.

More articles here.

Oh, and there seems to still be all this talk of Valerie being an undercover agent...

For the Record: the myth that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was violated in the Plame case began to unravel in October 2003, when New York Times scribe Nicholas Kristof revealed that she abandoned her covert role a full nine years before the Novak column.

Wikepedia

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Was Plame a covert agent?

The case is clouded by reckoning on the covert status of Valerie Plame when the leak occurred. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for an FBI probe 10 days after the July 13, 2003 column by Robert Novak identified her as an agent. A Chicago native and appointed special prosecutor, Patrik Fitzgerald took over the case 19 months ago. That the case continues today says something in itself.

Critics of the investigation believe the case is overblown because it was widely known in Washington social power circles that Plame worked for the CIA.

A MediaMatters report on the widely publicized quote by Joseph Wilson, who said, "My wife was not a clandestine officer... ", was misconstrued by the press.

BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife [in the January 2004 Vanity Fair magazine], who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you?

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.

In the full context of the above CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports televised broadcast, Wilson was responding to mean that after Robert Novak's column ran, his wife was no longer a clandestine officer. The Vanity Fair coverage given Wilson with wife Plame was a result of the publicity that ensued from the column written by Novack. The photo shoots did not occur before the disclosure, they came in January 2004.

The Associated Press reported the Wilson-Blitzer interview as follows:

...CNN Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

But at the same time, Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.

Federal law prohobits goverment [sic] officials from divulging the identity...

Media outlets followed the AP lead with their own reporting that mirrored AP report.

Is Harry Potter Evil?
After all, Harry and his classmates attend the celebrated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The real danger is not in the books, but in laughing off those who would ban them.

History of Witchcraft

The Christ-ocrat party gains momentum...
"to be morally consistent is often to be politically unpredictable. 'I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm a Christ-ocrat.' And that's what we need to be." - Zell Miller

Congressman Says He Doesn't Advocate Bombing Mecca
But why not? Were we joking when we threatened to bomb Moscow? Remember MADD? Or maybe the lives of Russians are worth less than thier middle eastern counter parts?

Ebonics: Blacks in San Bernadino to have future ruined.
You thought the schools were crazy for teaching alternatives to Evolution? How about teaching alternatives to Language?

Anonymity is coming to an end, well known author says.
Is this good or bad? It doesn't really matter – it is inevitable. Once anonymity is gone, it is very likely that we will eliminate crime as we know it today. That will be a very good thing. (see also 1984)

Credit Card Minimums to Double
Within the next month, Bank of America, MBNA and Citigroup will raise minimum monthly payments on their cards from 2 percent of the balance to up to 4 percent, not including interest. Other card issuers are expected to make similar changes by the end of the year.

Speaking of banks, can I have another beer?
HSBC bank says there is no law against Banking While Intoxicated, as outlined in a multi million dollar claim by supermodel Maggie Rizer.

Teen Lauches New Airline - No, really

British Pigeons Becoming Obese
British junk food lovers are having an unhealthy effect on the country's pigeons, which are becoming obese by feasting on litter leftovers.

I got a fever and the only prescription is more cow bell
The governor of Iowa accompanied REO Speedwagon on cowbell at Sunday night's National Governors Association mini-state fair event.

If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.