He’s being insufferable about it. Michael of Musing’s musings has once again conned university and government officials to allow him to do “research” in France.

CBS reports that Karl Rove’s attorney is spreading the talking point: E-Mail Deletion Unintentional

Karl Rove’s lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush’s chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system.

The attorney said Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

“His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived,” Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, said.

Bovine excrement, Mr. Luskin. Don’t try to sell that at trial because it just won’t fly…actually it won’t even get to leave the terminal.

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Don’t respond to those e-mails, the Culture Ghost makes it easy. His dieting assistance plan starts here and then you scroll up. It will definitely “put you off your feed.”

Aside: when the e-mails about hoodia started, I thought they were for sweatshirts, given that spelling is not a strong suit among spammers. This is the downside of not watching TV.

Update: The call for calm didn’t last long: Iraq reacts sharply to Turkish incursion threat. People still remember the Ottoman Empire.

Ellroon of Rants from the Rookery notes that Turkey’s Chief of Staff wants to invade northern Iraq.

Kevin Drum of Political Animal picked up on the problem of Kurdistan and includes a map.

The Wikipedia article on Kurdistan adds some numbers:

According to the Encyclopædia of Islam, Kurdistan covers around 190,000 km² in Turkey, 125,000 km² in Iran, 65,000 km² in Iraq, and 12,000 km² in Syria and the total area of Kurdistan is estimated at approximately 392,000 km².

There are an estimated 30-40 million Kurds in the region distributed proportionally with the land area, meaning about half in Turkey, then Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

In terms of concern, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are not happy about independence calls coming from the Iraqi Kurds. While the US is complaining about “foreign terrorists” infiltrating into Iraq from Iran and Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are alarmed about the free movement of Kurdish terrorists into their countries.

The latest round of problems started over the plan for a referendum on the status of the city of Kirkuk, which, coincidentally, is sitting on oil.

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