"Barack Obama said Friday the Food and Drug Administration will enforce tougher
standards for food safety inspections. The president means business. He doesn't
want to end the war in Iraq just to lose four thousand people a year to peanut
butter."
- Argus Hamilton
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Bon Appetit
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/po/2009/po090217.gif
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"Last week, an American satellite collided with a Russian satellite over
Siberia. And Sarah Palin said she could see the collision from her house."
- Jay Leno
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"A U.S. satellite collided head-on with a Russian satellite Friday while
orbiting the Earth five hundred miles above Siberia. You know what this means.
Dick Cheney's been out of office for a month and already he is playing video
games with his iPhone."
- Argus Hamilton
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Rudyard Kipling Said....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cartoon/2009/feb/19/afghanistan-obama-troops
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184801
An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who
approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety
among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the
department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility
(OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in
crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards
that apply to Department of Justice attorneys." According to two knowledgeable
sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of
the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It
sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and
John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of
Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said.
(Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond
to multiple requests for comment.) ...
..the OPR probe began after Jack Goldsmith, a Bush appointee who took over OLC
in 2003, protested the legal arguments made in the memos. Goldsmith resigned
the following year after withdrawing the memos, and later wrote that he was
"astonished" by the "deeply flawed" and "sloppily reasoned" legal analysis in
the memos by Yoo and Bybee, including their assertion (challenged by many
scholars) that the president could unilaterally disregard a law passed by
Congress banning torture.
OPR investigators focused on whether the memo's authors deliberately slanted
their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted,
according to three former Bush lawyers who asked not to be identified
discussing an ongoing probe. One of the lawyers said he was stunned to discover
how much material the investigators had gathered, including internal e-mails
and multiple drafts that allowed OPR to reconstruct how the memos were crafted.
In a departure from the norm, Jarrett also told members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee last year he would inform them of his findings and would "consider"
releasing a public version. If he does, it could be the most revealing public
glimpse yet at how some of the major decisions of Bush-era counterterrorism
policy were made.
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Chains We Can Believe In
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/02/18/fiorechainsDTL
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"The New York Times is reporting that, in his last days in office, Vice
President Dick Cheney repeatedly went to President Bush to try to get him to
pardon Scooter Libby, and he was furious that Bush wouldn't do it. They say
Cheney is now bitter. Yeah, as opposed to the happy-go-lucky zippity-do-da
Cheney."
- Jay Leno
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NEWS QUIZ
The security firm Blackwater has changed its name. What is their new name?
a) Mayhem, Carnage, Loot & Pillage, Ltd.
b) Private Armies 'R' Us
c) Murder, Inc.
Hint: who wants to know?
- IronicTimes.com
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Images of Valor
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/crkca/2009/crkca090219.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"The Kyrgyz parliament has voted to oust an American military base near the
country's capital. Kyrgyz does say it will reconsider the decision if the U.S.
gives it some vowels."
- Jake Novak
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Founder Of Islamic TV Station Accused Of Beheading Wife
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/16/buffalo.beheading/index.html
The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at
countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities
said. ...
His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several
domestic violence calls at the couple's home, Benz said. ...
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What does he do for an encore? Suicide bombing?
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"The Bufflao man who founded a cable TV network dedicated to portraying Muslims
in a better light has beheaded his wife for trying to divorce him. His network
is planning a special on how he humanely knocked her out before slicing off her
head."
- Jake Novak
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Atheist Revival In Arkansas
http://tinyurl.com/cnfyfa
Hard to say what was more remarkable about the resolution that was read into
the record and referred to committee Wednesday by a member of the 87th Arkansas
General Assembly.
The resolution itself: HJR 1009: AMENDING THE ARKANSAS CONSTITUTION TO REPEAL
THE PROHIBITION AGAINST AN ATHEIST HOLDING ANY OFFICE IN THE CIVIL DEPARTMENTS
OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS OR TESTIFYING AS A WITNESS IN ANY COURT. ...
Arkansas is one of half a dozen states that still exclude non-believers from
public office. Article 19 Section 1 of the 1874 Arkansas Constitution states
that "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the
civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in
any court."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled all such state provisions unconstitutional and
unenforceable in a 1961 ruling in a Maryland case: "We repeat and again
reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally
force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.'" ...
Meanwhile, in a related story, the Arkansas House passed a bill Wednesday
allowing people to bring their guns to church.
"Due to many shootings that have happened in our churches across our nation, it
is time we changed our concealed handgun law to allow law-abiding citizens of
the state of Arkansas the right to defend themselves and others should a
situation happen in one of our churches," said state Rep. Beverly Pyle.
The bill doesn't say whether atheists can bring guns to church.
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How that conversation might go....
"Sure I believe in God. He hangs out under a toadstool at the bottom of my
garden, along with the fairies who also live there."
"Now, can I have the job?"
"Oh, you mean YOUR PARTICULAR God? Golly gee! I didn't realize that. OK, show
me a picture of him. If he looks like a nice guy I'm sure I can believe in him
too...."
********************
A Stroke Of Bad Luck
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cartoon/2009/feb/17/nuclear-weapons-military
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