Last week, he insisted in some interviews that we knew Saddam had WMD, and that we knew Saddam was in bed with Al Queda.

Trouble is, both of those claims have been repudiated by the CIA, the Pentagon, and his own administration. Ooops.

For months — well, years — the Bush administration has been stonewalling the group empaneled to investigate the events around the 9/11 attacks. Specifically, they’ve been trying to figure out how Atta, et. al., managed to get their elaborate plan to fruition without anybody noticing, or least without anybody noticing and DOING something about it.

Perhaps because of the uncooperative nature of Bush’s White House, they want more time. Predictably, the administration opposes this, and perhaps consequently the chairs are reluctant to force the issue. The families are, of course, livid. The media is, of course, giving the White House a pass on the issue; Salon’s coverage is the only I’ve seen.

Time reports that a Grand Jury has been convened to review the leak affair. We’ll see what happens now.

In a separate but related event, a group of decorated former CIA officers sent a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert this week calling for a formal Congressional inquiry into the affair as well.

I suppose there’s some hope that justice might actually happen. I wish I were more optimistic.

Yesterday, I got Jon Krakauer’s new book about Mormons — or, more specifically, about a disturbing and bloody murder committed by members of a fundamentalist offshoot of that sect.

Today, Teresa Nielsen-Hayden highlights a story about a similar batch of Mormons, this time concerned with forced marriages and escapse therefrom. Take a look.

Elizabeth Mitchell has pointed me toward a strange little story thatÕs developing in Colorado City (formerly Short Creek) Arizona: The townÕs children are fleeing. It started less than a week and a half ago, when two girls named Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm ran away for fear of being forced into polygamous “marriages”. It wasnÕt the first time children have tried to run away from Short Creek. The difference was that this time, the authorities didnÕt return the Fawns to their families. They escaped and stayed escaped. That story went round the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint) community at lightning speed, and in the week that followed, eight more children ran. All it took was the hope of real escape, and some indication that help was available in the outside world.

The Department of Defense is planning to use an Internet-based system called SERVE to streamline voting for overseas citizens during the 2004 primary and general elections. In brief, the system would theoretically allow these citizens (primarily military personnel and spouses) to vote from any Internet connection.

A review by outside experts — available at ServeSecurityReport.org — makes the argument that the SERVE system is so insecure that it should be shut down immediately. Frankly, it’s hard to read their conclusions without realizing they’re exactly right if you know anything at all about the Internet.

Ed Felton has more at Freedom To Tinker.

Two defendents apparently winning their medical pot case in California court have been arrested by the Feds to stand trial under Federal laws, which of course don’t recognize California’s decision to allow medical use.

While their defense attorneys were meeting in the judge’s chambers to discuss the case with Tehama County assistant district attorney Lynn Strom, Strom announced that she was dropping the state charges because Davidson and Blake were being arrested in the courtroom on a federal indictment.

Good God, when will this kind of crap stop? Actually, I know the answer: never, unless we get ideologues out of the White House and DOJ. Remember this in November.

Specifically, he lives in Oregon.

Some tourists saw some killer whales off Port Aransas this weekend.

That’s Port Aransas, TEXAS. Who knew? Well, apparently several people; the article notes that they suspect about 70 of ’em live in the Gulf, but they’re not often seen. Neat. Just don’t tell the game and fish commission, or some good ol’ boy will try to hook one.

Oh, and recognizing that this is a story linked to a TV station’s web site, let’s try not to imagine the dialog surrounding this story during whatever newscast it graced, since it almost certainly included “Some local fisherman had a whale of a time on Sunday…” Gack.

The Wacko Moonie Washington Times is reporting on a study ranking Mississippi as the most corrupt state in the union. Oh, joy.

The best part, though, is probably this Baton Rouge headline.

Some rural California firefighters are walking off the job to protest the fact that one of their colleagues has an adult web site.

In their never-ending quest to establish more-or-less unfettered, unregulated industry, the Office of Management & Budget is attempting to get control of governmental peer review. This is blatent power grab, and yet another attempt by this Administration to have ideology trump science.

Predictably, it’s getting very little coverage.

The second Gulf War had many victims, but perhaps the least of those was the career of Jerry Haleva, Saddam Impersonator (as we noted back in March).

Weep for Jerry no more; he’s back, and insurgent-quagmire be damned.

Wired News is reporting on the Administration’s newest power grab, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, which grants the FBI access to financial records without judicial oversight. The law also, of course, prohibits intitutions from disclosing that the Feds are sniffing around, natch.

The bill passed the House in November with no uproar at all — it’s of course part of a larger bill with politically untouchable provisions. The Senate approved it on a “voice vote,” which means there’s no record of how our representatives voted.

From the Wired News piece:

But Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota), who opposed the legislation, told the House, “It is clear the Republican leadership and the administration would rather expand on the USA Patriot Act through deception and secrecy than debate such provisions in an open forum.”

This Must Stop.

The Guardian is running an op-ed by Osama bin Laden calling for jihad.

While initially disturbing, there’s a significant argument to be made that this is a case of “give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.”