A high-level leak has revealed that God is ‘furious’ at Tony Blair’s attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as ‘hopping mad … with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself…

And then Juan Cole reacts to Ibrahim Jaafari claiming that honor:

Oh, great. First God chose George W. Bush and whispered things in his ear. Then He chose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and whispered things in his ear. Now we have yet another messianic, divinely appointed leader out to do God’s will. If God really were choosing these people, couldn’t He come up with better candidates? And if He is giving them advice, why isn’t it better advice? I’d just like to caution all these political prophets that it is widely rumored among medieval observers, who were the real experts in things divine, that sometimes Satan manages to misrepresent himself to you as the voice of God. And sometimes the conviction that God is speaking to and through you is not so much piety as the mortal sin of pride.

American criticism of human rights abuses in other nations ring hollow and have no value after the documented conduct of the US in the “War on Terror”. The Shrubbery has given out “get out of jail free” cards to every repressive regime on the planet.

The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools.

In his Wednesday letter, Rogalski said such anomalies in the TALON database had been removed.

“They did not pertain to potential foreign terrorist activity and thus should never have been entered into the Cornerstone database. These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given,” Rogalski wrote.

Rogalski said only 43 names were improperly added to the database, and those were from protest-related reports such as the Quaker meeting in Florida.

“All reports concerning protest activities have been purged,” the letter said.

The activities have been “purged” from these databases, but what about all of the other databases created using them? Is the “Do Not Fly” list purged? Are people being issued apologies and official letters of explanation that will help them clear up all of the “misunderstandings” caused by appearing on these lists?

Update: Laura Rozen reminded me that this program was run by Mitchell Wade’s MZM, one of the contracts Wade received for bribing “Duke” Cunningham.

The message is that the stupid twit who occasionally wanders into the office he is suppose to be using at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, doesn’t know what his assortment of courtiers and hangers-on are doing.

Having the news that the ports he has refused to secure were going to be handed over to a company owned by the Emir of Dubai should not have just been a media report. The matter should have been vetted, at an absolute minimum, with the Republicans in Congress. This isn’t something you drop on the people in your own party during an election year after you have been banging the drum of Islamic terrorism for years.

If our ports were actually secure, it wouldn’t make any difference who was moving the cargo. But when the cargo handlers are the first line defense, they have to be vetted.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Attempted Escape

Come on, be a pal.

[Editor: CC would like me to help remove the screen so she can come out.]

Friday Ark