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Most people will settle for a rabbit’s foot, which isn’t very lucky for the rabbit.

I blame it on a Republican state government.

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If the President has the power to overrule the Posse Comitatus Act and use the National Security Agency, a military organization, to spy on Americans why couldn’t he use the military to save Americans from the flood waters in New Orleans without the permission of the governor of Louisiana?

If we are at war as a result of 9/11 why didn’t Congress issue a declaration of war instead of an Authorization for Use of Military Force?

If they felt hemmed in by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act why didn’t they make adjustments in the USA PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act had everything else under the sun it, so why wasn’t there any tweaking for perceived problems with the FISA system?

How can anyone believe that ignoring the Fourth Amendment does anything but advance the cause of the terrorists? How can you support the Constitution by ignoring it?

The President is selected by a majority of 535 electors. Each state has the right to designate its share of the total by any means it finds appropriate. While states may have laws that would punish “unfaithful electors”, whoever a majority of them select is the President of the United States. How can someone receiving fewer actual votes than most small town mayors unilaterally decide that the law of the land is not binding?

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The Pharaohs beat the Elephants 4-2 on penalty kicks after a scoreless match and overtime period. The Pharaohs goalkeeper was too good for the Elephants.

There are rumors that something happened in Detroit this past weekend and something is happening Torino starting today, but it doesn’t involve a real sport.

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Len over at Dark Bilious Vapors has decided to spend more time in the real world and switch to commenting occasionally instead of fighting with computers to produce posts.

His viewpoint and expertise will be missing from the front page, so now you’re going to have to read the letters/comments.

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Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq by Paul R. Pillar in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs.

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community’s former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community’s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

So why didn’t Mr. Pillar say something sooner? How about: because no one was willing to listen.

The New York Times sat on the NSA story for a year. A host of media figures have been commenting on the Valerie Plame case while failing to mention that they were involved. Only after they helped the Shrubbery get re-elected did the media finally wake up to what a mess they had foisted on the country with their failure to report what they knew. The media are complicit in every failure that has plagued the American people, from Iraq to Katrina. They were enablers.

Finally, the media is taking small steps back to reporting the news, but not to the point that it bothers their corporate overseers.

Read Mr. Pillar’s article and understand that the intelligence community wasn’t broken or wrong until the Shrubbery’s thugs, Negroponte and Goss, started pushing out the pros and replacing them with cronies, just as they have done at every Federal agency.

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Oh, right, there’s never been political speech at funerals.

Would someone buy Republicans a book and make them read it. Remember their talk about “Western Culture”, well the quote is from the canon for “Western Culture”.

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™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

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Cat Blocking

When are you going to visit Daily Kitten?
What does this button do?
Did you see what I dropped in the water dish?
When’s dinner?

[Editor: Blogger isn’t the only problem some of us have with posting.]

Friday Ark

Posted early because of outage

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