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August 6, 2001 – We Will Never Forget

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.- ek

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 FBI used aggressive tactics in anthrax probe

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

57 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.

The last thing the FBI needed was another embarrassment. Overreaching damaged the FBI’s reputation in the high-profile investigations: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing probe that falsely accused Richard Jewell; the theft of nuclear secrets and botched prosecution of scientist Wen Ho Lee; and, in this same anthrax probe, the smearing of an innocent man – Ivins’ colleague Steven Hatfill.

Hey! The Boss Skipped Out On Vacation And Left A New Org Chart!

I’m really only posting this because Rusty1776 was wondering what that funny ‘Promote’ button does.  Like I need to get more meta.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Sure.  Let’s pick a fight at another blog.

Anthrax

Glenn Greenwald has been doing some important reporting on the Anthrax investigation this past week and if you haven’t seen it yet I think it’s well worth checking out.

In chronological order his pieces are-

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

Friday Aug. 1, 2008 05:36 EDT

We now know — we knew even before news of Ivins’ suicide last night, and know especially in light of it — that the anthrax attacks didn’t come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government’s scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government — from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role — I’d argue a very major role — in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue — including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework — were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and — as importantly — to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They’re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 AP IMPACT: Seoul probes civilian `massacres’ by US

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writers

45 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean investigators, matching once-secret documents to eyewitness accounts, are concluding that the U.S. military indiscriminately killed large groups of refugees and other civilians early in the Korean War.

A half-century later, the Seoul government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has more than 200 such alleged wartime cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens’ petitions recounting bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings and unsuspecting villages in 1950-51.

Concluding its first investigations, the 2 1/2-year-old commission is urging the government to seek U.S. compensation for victims.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Mine hits bus with Afghan wedding party; 10 die

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer

10 minutes ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A road mine blasted a bus carrying a wedding party in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 10 civilians, a police official said.

Provincial police chief Matiullah Khan blamed Taliban militants for planting the explosive in Spin Boldak district of the southern Kandahar province.

Khan said the bride and groom were among the dead, but an AP Television News cameraman later interviewed the relatives of a wounded, unconscious man who was said to be the groom. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the accounts late Saturday.

Perverts and Sadists.

I’m sorry, the language may get a little rough.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Well, we’ve quite a large backlog of worthy essays to work off but I’ll not consign them the late night ghetto that is The Stars Hollow Gazette.

Instead I’ve been requested to do something in a lighter hearted, more literary vein and I’ll point out one of my favorites- The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll.

Fit the Eighth: The Vanishing

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway-share;

They charmed it with smiles and soap.

They shuddered to think that the chase might fail,

And the Beaver, excited at last,

Went bounding along on the tip of its tail,

For the daylight was nearly past.

“There is Thingumbob shouting!” the Bellman said,

“He is shouting like mad, only hark!

He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,

He has certainly found a Snark!”

They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed

“He was always a desperate wag!”

They beheld him — their Baker — their hero unnamed —

On the top of a neighboring crag.

Erect and sublime, for one moment of time.

In the next, that wild figure they saw

(As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,

While they waited and listened in awe.

“It’s a Snark!” was the sound that first came to their ears,

And seemed almost too good to be true.

Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:

Then the ominous words “It’s a Boo-”

Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air

A weary and wandering sigh

Then sounded like “-jum!” but the others declare

It was only a breeze that went by.

They hunted till darkness came on, but they found

Not a button, or feather, or mark,

By which they could tell that they stood on the ground

Where the Baker had met with the Snark.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,

In the midst of his laughter and glee,

He had softly and suddenly vanished away — –

For the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

"Why are you a Republican?"

“Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.”

“What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?”

“Aside from the president, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.”

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 McCain backs off his no-new-tax pledge

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s signal that he may be open to a higher payroll tax for Social Security, despite previous vows not to raise taxes of any kind, is drawing sharp rebukes from conservatives.

McCain’s shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. “I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table,” he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Greg McKendry

Yesterday, when a stranger pulled a shotgun out of a guitar case and started firing into a crowd of 200 watching a children’s perfomance of the musical Annie at the Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, this 60 year old church usher stood up and did the right thing when everyone else was running away.

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