Salon has an interesting article on the common Republican election tactic of voter intimidation, where they send people into minority areas to discourage people from registering to vote or voting on election day.
There have been recent reports of this type of action in Florida surrounding voter registration, where election officials sent police to the homes of elderly minority voters in a thinly-veiled “fraud” investigation.
One of my co-workers printed this Map of the Simpson’s Springfield to the plotter and has a large poster of it. Unfortunately, I don’t have print drivers to the plotter. Damn it.
Recording and transcript of the interview between Kobe Bryant and the detectives who questioned him about the alleged rape.
Needless to say, this put me in a very bad mood.
It’s pretty clear that the detectives were awestruck with Kobe and anxious not to charge him with any crime. They basically led him through the testimony and suggested what his defense should be while questioning him. I hope these guys don’t have a job in law enforcement anymore. I certainly wouldn’t want them to be the detectives on any case where I was a victim of a crime.
Interesting… and what I said at the time, questioning why the UN wasn’t making the statement itself.
The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.
He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.
The UK government responded by saying the attorney-general made the “legal basis… clear at the time”.
Mr Annan also warned security in Iraq must considerably improve if credible elections are to be held in January.
The UN chief said in an interview with the BBC World Service that “painful lessons” had been learnt since the war in Iraq.
“Lessons for the US, the UN and other member states. I think in the end everybody’s concluded it’s best to work together with our allies and through the UN,” he said.
U.S. Lawmakers blasted the Bush administration Wednesday for its handling of the war in Iraq and said they were confounded only a fraction of $18.4 billion in U.S. rebuilding funds had been spent.
In an unusually nonpartisan hearing, Republican and Democratic senators urged senior State Department officials to try harder to speed up the reconstruction program, which lawmakers said could lead to a more stable environment in Iraq.
They also told officials to be more honest in their assessments of what was going on, with Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar taking aim at what he called the “dancing in the street crowd,” who painted an overly positive picture.
“The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning (for Iraq) is apparent,” said Lugar, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, said virtually every problem in Iraq was predicted by experts before the U.S. invasion, but no plan was in place.
“The ideologues were in control and in denial,” Biden said. “There is such a disconnect between what I hear (from Bush administration officials) and the reality of the situation on the ground.”
So far, just over $1 billion of the $18.4 billion has been spent. Lawmakers said they were perplexed why it was taking so long to spend that money when the administration had pressed Congress to rush the funds through last November.
“This is an extraordinarily ineffective administrative procedure and it is exasperating for anybody looking at this from any vantage point,” Lugar said.
COLORADO SPRINGS – Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum – re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.
So far… I rented a 60 lb. jack hammer, and with a great deal of help from my friend Kathy, we broke up the 6 foot by 9 foot patio and the set of cement stairs at my back door. I discovered that a 60 lb. jack hammer is pretty damned heavy.
Yesterday, I loaded much of the concrete that has the feature of Solid Crawl Space Encapsulation from Seepageseal, into my truck and took it to a cement recycling place and unloaded it. The cement guy who helped me unload asked me on a date. It’s the truck.
Anyway, I also bought the pavers that will go in the patio. I originally bought 24″ pavers, but after some reflection, I realized they were going to be too heavy for me to move around by myself, so I cancelled the delivery and bought 16″ ones instead. Coordinating that caused much running back and forth between Menard’s stores on two different sides of town. The pavers and sand will arrive today. I will also be digging out the trench area for the patio today, and hopefully getting started on putting the sand in place.
I wrote this letter to the editor of the Indy Star, and it was printed in the Sunday paper.
Nothing to get excited about here, I’m sure there’s no nefarious purpose behind any of these strange convergences of events.
From the Guardian: “Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris’s most intriguing recent discoveries. “We have no idea whatsoever,” a police spokesman said.”
“Members of the force’s sports squad, responsible – among other tasks – for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.”
Let me see… the Republicans have: NASCAR. Uncool. Lame, in fact.
The French have Secret theaters and restaurants in underground catacombs beneath the city. Way too fucking cool.