Why would they do this: Apple announces Windows browser

Apple has launched a version of its web browser Safari for Windows, competing head to head with Microsoft’s Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Chief executive Steve Jobs said Apple “dream big” and wanted to expand the 4.9% market share Safari enjoys.

Does he want to go back to the future with browser wars? Does anyone need another propriety chunk of software? Being faster than IE is not exactly a technological tour de force. What’s next, a text editor?

Perhaps Whig at Cannablog saw this coming. [If you are not a geek, you won’t get it, so don’t worry.]

MSNBC reports: Court overrules Bush ‘enemy combatant’ policy

RICHMOND, Va. – The Bush administration cannot legally detain an immigrant it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The case involves a Qatari national and suspected al-Qaida operative who is the only person being held in the United States as an “enemy combatant.”

In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act does not strip Ali al-Marri of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court. It ruled the government must allow him to be released from military detention.

The best news is that this comes from the Fourth Circuit, the appeals court of choice for neocons and others stuck in the timeline of the First Crusade. This court thinks Roger Taney was a liberal and Joe McCarthy had a pinkish tinge.

Via Suburban Guerrilla in The Times [the real newspaper in London, not the bird cage liner in New York]: Iran threatens Gulf blitz if US hits nuclear plants

IRAN has threatened to launch a missile blitz against the Gulf states and plunge the entire Middle East into war if America attacks its nuclear facilities.

Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a senior defence adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that Gulf states providing the US with military cooperation would be the key targets of a barrage of ballistic missiles.

This isn’t bombast from the ribbon cutting figurehead of Iran, Ahmadinejad, this is from the national security advisor to the real power in Iran, Khamenei, the man with actual control of Iran’s military. They can do it, and they will do it if attacked.