A reader from Eugene, Ore., wrote in with a complaint about my harping on the third world: "Why should the U.S. care for the rest of the world?" he asked. "The U.S. should take care of its own. ... It's way past time for liberal twits to stop pushing the U.S. into nonsense or try to make every wrong in the world our responsibility."

And while that reader wasn't George W. Bush, it could have been. Today marks Day 141 of Mr. Bush's silence on the genocide, for he hasn't let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly since Jan. 10 (even that was a passing reference with no condemnation).

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become
a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal.

NEW YORK - A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said.

Government lawyer Sean Lane argued that releasing pictures, even if faces and other features are obscured, would violate Geneva Convention rules on prisoner treatment by subjecting detainees to additional humiliation or embarrassment. He said the emotional wounds would be reopened because detainees could identify themselves and because the public would learn their identities.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Everyone agrees that Ligaya Lagman is a Gold Star mother, part of the long, mournful line of women whose sons or daughters were killed in combat for the U.S. armed services. Her 27-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, was killed last year in Afghanistan when his unit came under fire during a mission to drive out remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida forces.

But the largest organization of such mothers, the American Gold Star Mothers Inc., has rejected Lagman for membership because _ though a permanent resident and a taxpayer _ she is not a U.S. citizen. "There's nothing we can do because that's what our organization says: You have to be an American citizen," national President Ann Herd said Thursday. "We can't go changing the rules every time the wind blows."

The treasurer of a political action committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay broke the law by not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, a judge ruled Thursday in a lawsuit brought by Democratic candidates. State District Judge Joe Hart said the money, much of it corporate contributions, should have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

The Plame leak is a very serious one. It is an especially nasty case of revenge for truth-telling: To go after Wilson's wife, for his Op Ed, is dirty business indeed. Even more important, for Valerie Plame (and possibly others who covertly associated with her abroad, and were outed when she was outed) this leak could be life-threatening.

It is way past time to get to the bottom of the Plame leak. It deserves both the pitiless light of publicity, and the laser focus of prosecution. One can only hope that the paperback edition of Joe Wilson's book, with its new material, will create more public pressure to uncover the truth.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Voice of America and other news agencies on May 12 that the report - which claimed that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility holding suspected Islamic terrorists tossed the Muslim holy book into a toilet - had little if anything to do with the protests.

Myers said he spoke with Gen. Carl Eichenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who played down reports that the demonstrations were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident.

"It is the judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran, but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President (Hamid) Karzai and his Cabinet are conducting in Afghanistan," Myers said. "He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine."

Women soldiers in the U.S. Army would be barred from serving in combat support units under language added to a defense bill Wednesday. Proponents of the measure said it would affect only a small number of women, while opponents said over time, it
would drastically alter the face of the modern army.

The leaked minutes sum up the July 23, 2002 meeting, at which Blair, top security
advisors and his attorney general discussed Britain's role in Washington's plan to oust Hussein. The minutes, written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide, indicate general thoughts among the participants about how to create a political and legal basis for war. The case for military action at the time was "thin," Foreign Minister Jack Straw was characterized as saying, and Hussein's government posed little threat.

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

Not worth it. Hey Pat, do the words Dachau and Auschwitz mean anything to you? Yeah, what are a few Jews, gypsies, gay people and mentally retarded people to you? Maybe you can find some Zyclon B and get the party started here you piece of shit.

What is wrong with these people? Really, I would love to know. I don't understand how any news show could have Pat Buchanon as a talking head, or Robert Novak. Where is the shame?

Now that Iraq is turning into a civil war with over 70 suicide attacks per day and over 1600 dead Americans AND the memo that proves that this administration bent the intelligence to meet their need to invade Iraq I wonder when we will Impeach.

Oh, but a plane flew into Washington airspace and Macaulay Culkin testified at the Michael Jackson hearing. Isn't that much more important?

II. Waiver of Laws to Facilitate Barriers at Border44 Section 102 of the IIRIRA generally provides for construction and strengthening of barriers along U.S. land borders and specifically provides for 14 miles of barriers and roads along the border near San Diego, beginning at the Pacific Ocean and extending eastward. IIRIRA § 102(c) provides for a waiver of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA)45 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)46 to the extent the Attorney General determines is necessary to ensure expeditious construction of barriers and roads...

H.R. 418 [the Real ID Act of 2005] would provide additional waiver authority over laws that might impede the expeditious construction of barriers and roads along the border. H.R. 418 would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws that he determines necessary, in his sole discretion, to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads under IIRIRA § 102...

Section 102 of H.R. 418 would amend the current provision to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any law upon determining that a waiver is necessary for the expeditious construction of the border barriers. Additionally, it would prohibit judicial review of a waiver decision or action by the Secretary and bar judicially ordered compensation or injunction or other remedy for damages alleged to result from any such decision or action.

The people who're coming out of the woodwork are avowed, outspoken Bush bashers. The woman that came out of Texas who was chased down the hall, allegedly, which there's no other contemporaneous witnesses, is Mothers Against Bush. See, these are Bush bashers. These are against Bush policies. They're not against the whole policy.

Now, is she in the puce zone or the gray zone?. Carl Ford, who came out strongly against Mr. Bolton in the committee hearing is a conservative Republican who supports President Bush. So, Ms. Mattlin didn't say "all" people against Mr. Bolton are Bush Bashers so is she in the clear? I think not. Did Mr. Russert follow up? Of course not.

Ms. Matalin had a couple of interesting things to say about judges:

...but that the secular left has behaved imperialistically--there's no other word for it. They have subverted the democratic process by taking their issues to the judiciary. What the so-called religious right has done has taken their petition and their concerns into the democratic process, into the public square.

Really? 2000 Election come to mind for anyone? Or the fact that the Republicans tried to overrule the courts' decisions on Terri Schiavo? The courts were not activist enough for the Republicans. And, really, what issue are we, the secular left, taking to the judiciary? I suppose the big one is Roe v Wade but that was over thirty years ago. Separation of church and state? Maybe, I'll grant you that, but I don't have an issue with it. I understand if you do but not everyone is Christian so perhaps a little compassion for the Jewish kid who would be sitting down when everyone else in class is praying to Jesus would help.

She went on to say:

If they want to debate these judges, the qualifications of these judges, all of whom have received the "gold standard," according to the Democrats, the highest regard from the ABA.

So, the Democrats are saying that ALL of the judges have received the gold standard. Really? Now, is she saying they've all be ranked well qualified? No, she uses the term gold standard and she does say the highest regard from the ABA. As mentioned in a previous post...that is an outright lie. I'm going to rank this one as puce.

I wrote Mr. Russert an email asking him to please push people to tell the truth.

I'll let you know how that works out.