Now, at least, we know why they caved on the extension

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After stonewalling the 9/11 commission for months, fighing the extension tooth and nail, and doing their level best to keep Dr Rice from testifying, it should come as no surprise that the White House is saying that atheir vetting process may well prevent the commission’s report from being released this summer, and that it may well not see the light of day until after the election.

We’d call it a hat trick, except all three sort of rob us of our sense of humor

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  1. Atrios comments on the widening scope of the Plame inquiry; others suggest Rove may well be in legal jeopardy on this.
  2. Author Bruce Sterling reproduces comments by Tom Dachle concerning the administration’s abuse of power.
  3. Sidney Blumenthal echoes Daschle’s concerns in this Guardian editorial.

Oh, and the White House is also blocking the release of Clinton-era papers requested by the 9/11 commission. Er, why might that be?

Mmmm, thorax

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I’m not sure if these people are medical or not, but anybody who makes a Thorax Cake MUST be on the same wavelength with people like my stepsister, who amused us on Thanksgiving about finding an erection-restoring appliance in her med school cadaver.

So, just what IS this Clarke guy saying?

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A mysterious and shadowy mailing list post sent us off to this blog, which reproduces a bit of the transcript from Clarke’s appearance on NPR‘s Fresh Air. A bit, just to tease:

GROSS: You say in your book that you think invading Iraq actually increased the problem of terrorism. CLARKE: Well, in three ways. First of all, it’s costing us $180 billion in the first two years, and may be even more than that. That money could have been used to reduce our vulnerabilities here at home. […] Well, many things in the United States are not protected. There’s a long list of vulnerabilities which we could reduce. […] But we didn’t do that. And in large part we didn’t do that because the money that would have been necessary is being spent on Iraq. So that’s the first thing: It’s costing us the alternative of reducing our vulnerabilities. Second, actual military and intelligence assets that were in Afghanistan — looking for al Qaeda, looking for bin Laden — were removed and sent to Iraq. Now, in the last few weeks, they’ve been returned. But that’s two years too late. Two years during which al Qaeda has morphed into a hydra-headed organization with independent organizations and independent cells, and likely the group in Madrid. So we didn’t go after al Qaeda the way that we should have. And we didn’t secure Afghanistan. There are more police in Manhattan — not the city of New York, but just Manhattan — there are more police in Manhattan than the United States put troops into Afghanistan. And yet we were supposed to secure and stabilize the country so that never again would it be a base for terrorism. We were supposed to be draining the swamp. Well, we haven’t. And one of the reasons we haven’t is that we withheld forces that should have been going into Afghanistan. We withheld them for the war in Iraq. […] The third way is that, al Qaeda had been saying, bin Laden had been saying, that the United States is the “new crusader,” the new westerner come to occupy an Arab country, an oil-rich Arab country. And we did exactly that. We did exactly what bin Laden said we would do: We invaded and occupied an oil-rich Arab country that had not been threatening us. And the sights on Arab television of American troops fighting in Iraq, and now occupying Iraq, have infuriated Arab opinion. […] We can’t just arrest and kill terrorists. Even Donald Rumsfeld figured that out. In his internal memo in the Pentagon, which leaked, he said it may be the case that we’re turning out new terrorists faster than we’re killing and arresting them. He’s right; we are. And we have to win the war for ideas. And we can’t do that so long as we are reviled by occupying a country like Iraq.

Of course, the government isn’t the only entity that lies

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Airlines are almost as bad. Since 9/11, they’ve pounced on the “must have ID” thing as if it were an edict from the FAA, when in fact it’s no such thing. All the 9/11 terrorists had ID; ID does nothing to increase safety on planes. What it does do is enable airlines to crack down on the resale of unrefundable tickets.

Given all that, it comes as no surprise that the prohibition on some electronics has essentially no basis in reality, either.

Turd Blossom Gets His

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Several hundred protestors converged on Karl Rove’s home over the weekend. (Washington Post link; username nogators@nogators.com, password nogators for access.)

He didn’t take it well, apparently.

Update: additional coverage at CNN, which sensibly doesn’t require registration.

Dept. of Our Cousin

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Cousin Charles — who is not a racist, but who still shouldn’t be on the appeals bench, as recess appointments are cheesy — was on 60 Minutes last night. It appears he came off well, which is nice. It’s always pleasant to see national media do a story on Mississippi that doesn’t make us look like unreconstructed rubes.

All of us, anyway.

Dept. of Stuff We Wish Our Mother Hadn’t Thrown Away

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Sam’s Toybox is a compendium of all the neat ephemera we had in the seventies and eighties. As we are ubergeeky here at Heathen Central, we remember things like this quite fondly; it was with just such a kit that we learned a brutal secret: all electronics are powered by smoke, and when that smoke escapes, you have to play with something else, and pretend nothing happened.

By popular demand: a brief bibliography

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Some of you have asked for a brief rundown of the political sites I read (and cite) here at Heathen. In no particular order, the usual suspects include:

There are, of course, countless other sources worthe perusing, typically written by thoughtful people and usually devoid of the kind of rancor and shouting that typifies broadcast media. Read on.

Gee, Condi, with all this “rebutting,” why not just testify?

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Must be that pesky “oath” thing.

Condi Rice is wasting no time in attempting to spin-doctor and rebut Richard Clarke’s testimony, but she’s not doing a very good job of it. In refusing to testify to the Commission proper, she asserts at least two very odd things.

First, there’s the whole issue of refusing to testify under oath, but having no compunctions about saying whatever she wants while in the safety of her own office (and without threat of perjury indictments). There’s definitely something screwy about that.

Second, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, the historical precedent for aides refusing to testify isn’t as clearly on her side as she appears to think; there’s even precedent for people in precisely her position testifying under oath before such commissions (Brzezinski in 1980; Berger in 1997). Of course, Marshall’s source — the Congressional Research Service — also lists five examples when presidential aides refused to testify; anybody want to bet which administration employed four of those five?

Is that really a parallel this administration wants to encourage?

In which we discuss our new boarders

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A while ago, we mentioned the bird family that had taken up residence in the faux-balcony on the front of our townhouse. We’ve been tracking their growth carefully, much to the chagrin of the mother bird (who gives us The Eye if she sees us) and the cat (who would very much like to play with the guests, and by “play” we mean “eat”).

On Saturday, the babies were, well, gross. They were all pink, completely devoid of feathers, and damned near translucent. Also, their beaks are entirely too large for their heads. Here’s a picture; pardon the glare. We were in a hurry, as Momma Bird had just left.

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p class=”center”>pink, hairless, and goofy

Today, they’re actually starting to look like birds. Or, at least, tiny pinkish birdlike things, except for the enormous beaks and lack of discernable eyes. Still, they’ve got some feathers, and you the wings are taking shape. Also, if you walk across the wood floor close enough to the nest, the birdlike things appear to believe Mother is near, and begin waving their heads about, open-beaked, awaiting whatever mush Momma yacks into their gullets.

Hey, nature’s nasty that way. Plus, birds don’t have tits. Here’s a newer picture.

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p class=”center”> bigger birdlike things

More updates as they become available.

Well, there’s definitely one thing we can’t blame Bush for

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Actually there are probably several — the rise of tagging in Houston; the wholesale sucktasticness of Internet Explorer; the cancellation of Angel; etc. — but the one we’re concerned about right now is gas prices.

I’ve seen a couple references to “record gas prices” in the news, and even in blogs. The fact of the matter, though, is that gas is NOT anywhere near a high point, and the reason is inflation. Dollars are worth less today than they were 25 years ago. According to InflationData.com, gas is currently at about half its 1981 high of an inflation-adjusted $2.94.

Of course, we still need to get this guy and his minions out of 1600 Pennsylvania. That he’s not to blame for this doesn’t ameliorate the blame he does shoulder for a thousand other “points of light.”