TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Pop Star of Truth ripping off the Leather Bodice of
Lies.
Confl
ict of Interest: A Case Study The Supreme Court has agreed to
hear a case involving the legality of Dick Cheney keeping the records
of his sinister energy task force secret. Antonin Scalia is a justice on
the Supreme Court. Weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the
case, Antonin Scalia and Dick Cheney flew together on Air Force Two
to go duck hunting. Scalia was Cheney's guest on the free airplane
ride. "It means Scalia is accepting a gift of some value from a
litigant in a case before him," says New York University law
professor Stephen Gillers. "It is not just a trip with a litigant.
It's a trip at the expense of the litigant. This is an easy case for
stepping aside." Knowing all that you know about the Bush
administration, though, you can already guess the punchline: Scalia
has declined to recuse himself from the case.
How to Win Friends and Influence
People the Paul
Bremer Way In a move that will only surprise people who are
shocked that Scalia isn't recusing himself from the energy task force
case, the U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq are hinting that the
planned June elections, which would give power to an elected Iraqi
assembly, may be delayed. The administration that damned the UN as
irrelevant when it went into Iraq in the first place is now deferring
to the world assembly, which has been publicly skittish about the
June 30 election dates. "The intention is not to come up with
something post-30 June, but we have to leave a little room for the UN
to come up with what they think best," a senior State Department
official says. Notably nonplussed by the possibility of postponed
elections are the majority Shi'ites in Iraq, who have waited for more
than 30 years to elect a government. Watch this space for details.
45 Tony Blair now admits that he didn't
understand a key
piece of pre-war intelligence relating to his famous claim that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction ready for deployment with as little
as 45 minutes of lead time. Now, it turns out, the claim was
actually applied by British intelligence to Iraq's conventional
weapons, like mortars and artillery shells. But, was Tony Blair
really talking about 20-year-old Russian mortars when he made his
famous "45 minutes" speech? Defense Minister Geoff Hoon thinks so:
"This was not a great matter of public controversy at the time," Hoon
recently burbled, apparently unaware of the MLWL's powerful Way, Way
Back Machine, which has the power to transport readers all the way
back to 2002, when the issue was, in fact, a matter of public
controversy. "I don't believe there was any misleading impression,"
Geoff further adds. Well, since the government now admits that Hoon
knew the 45 minutes claim referred to conventional weapons and Blair
thought it meant WMD, it seems there was indeed a "misleading
impression." Perhaps Lord Hutton can get to the bottom of this.
Arabs for
Democracy There has been a lot of attention lately given to
Republicans who are fed up with one or more aspects of the Bush gang:
Fiscal conservatives are mad about the profligate spending,
pro-lifers are mad that Bush isn't doing anything to end abortion,
Sun Belters are mad about the amnesty offer to illegal immigrants,
etc. However, in my opinion, this is all nothing more than idle
chatter. These voters are never going to switch to the Democrats,
just like black voters upset with the Dems are never going to switch
to Republicans. There is a relatively new Republican constituency,
though, that looks like it might be won over to the good guys after
all: Arab Americans. As this story shows, Arabs in Michigan (where
most Arab Americans live) were initially Republican voters for a
variety of reasons, but have swung around behind the Dems in the face
of the USA PATRIOT Act and the lickspittle posture adopted by the
Republicans before Ariel Sharon. The Dems, thank Allah, are
responding: For the first time, primary ballots are being printed in
Arabic for all the new members of the donkey party. Watch the
turnout in Michigan: If a lot of Arabs come out to vote, it could
mean another growing body of Americans is now within the Democratic
coalition (better news, if this pans out: the other states where
there are large Arab populations are Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
Florida).
Young
People Against
Democracy Well, with that cheerful news that Arab Americans are
starting to see the light behind us, we now come to this depressing
story about Bush's popularity with 18 to 29-year-olds. While Bush's
approval rating is around 49 percent among voters overall, it's about
57 percent among young people, two-thirds of whom approve of the Iraq
war. As someone who falls within this age group, I can just say:
Thank God we young people don't vote in large numbers. We're a bunch
of morons.
-Consider Arms
12:14:03 PM 
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