Bye Bye

1475, 1476

Wacky Joe

What is he really whining about? Doesn't he understand he concept of checks and balances, or what? Can't somebody please explain this to him?

The Senate and the House write the bills. That makes them the Legislators.

The Governor either signs the bill into law or he vetos it. If the Governor vetos something the Legislators really really want, they can over ride his veto if they get enough votes.

The Supreme Court makes their decisions based on the laws. I, for one am very satisfied to have people that understand how the law works interpreting it.

That is not legislating from the bench. That is doing the job they were elected to do.

If the Leguslature does not like the way the law is interpreted, they are free to change it.

If Mr. Bayleat cannot understand it in this form, then maybe it is time to take a good hard look at who paid his way into office.

That might be a good idea anyway.

When You're In You Are Really In

When you're in, you are really in.

1474

My condolences just seem so damn inadequate.

1469

Enjoy this number, 1469, it is as small now as it will ever be.

Serial Replicators

Holy Moly!

Identical nuclear plants are simultaneously popping up all over the place!

Spooky stuff.

Where will we ever find a superhero to save us from this menace to freedom and democracy? I'm waiting for Fox Mulder to save the day.

Brad Blog is another story, he's all over it

Trust Us, We're Good

Don't worry about it * cough* we know what's good for you.

Creeping Coffins

1462

Conflict Of Interest

She has already put the interests of the oil and gas industry above education once (I will have to search for the links again), but she's a cute girl from the Flathead, so why not give the only student seat to a paid member of industry again?

Why not just kill your kid if they don't get ready for bed?

It just goes to show you that when you are more powerful you get your own way.

To be absolutely fair though, Ms. French and her owners are making concious deliberate choices that they will never be called upon to pay for.

For The Love Of God

I think that Fred Phelps and his fearful followers are protesting the Montana Supreme Court today. I knew they were comming to Montana and saw some of the protest and counter protest on the Ten O'clock news last night.

Surely I could revisit the details of this occurrence and the one that was supposed to happen today through their websites, right?

No

Wrong again

Boobies!

It's just lovely to be so ill informed about what goes on in my own state. Maybe I should spend hours each day beating out every newspaper in the state...

Seriously though folks, won't you join me in prayer for the Reverend Phelps and his fellow Fearings? There is nothing like the love of God and the love for God to give you a mission in life that doesn't include stalking and terrorizing your fellow human beings.

Remember, the only behavior you can absolutely control is your own.

The Taxpayer Dollar Should Be Spent Wisely

Or not at all.

$250,000,000.00 for propoganda and perception management. That does not include anything that Demented Donny does with that thing that is no longer called the Office of Special Plans
.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.

(ed:expanded)

[...]

The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.

[...]

In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

[...]

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

[...]

The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.

[...]

... it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.

Do you think that dollars for deception is a wise use of our money? I sure don't.