[Quote:]

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in the personal e-mail. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”

[..]

“When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, ‘Biting The Hand That Fed Me,’” he wrote. “Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.”

– Bob Dole, the former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, who also made clear he has no plans to read the book.

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Scott McClellan charges that White House staffers colluded to get their stories straight on the Plame outing.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank compiles the reactions of the current White House staff to that obviously ridiculous claim:

Dan Bartlett is “puzzled” by Scott McClellan.

Dana Perino is “puzzled” by Scott McClellan.

President Bush, Perino says, is also “puzzled” by McClellan.

What puzzles you, dear reader?

Puzzling.

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Washington: Looking at the most recent Rasmussen daily polls, I see that Hillary manages a tie today against McCain, but Barack is down by five points to McCain. What piqued my interest was that while Hillary had a “highly unfavorable” rating of 32 percent (i.e., as I see it, people who never will vote for her) Barack was at 35 percent. On Jan. 30, as we entered primary season’s main show, Barack’s “highly unfavorables” were 20 percent and Clinton’s were 35 percent. Is this something superdelegates may be watching?

Paul Kane:I’ve spent the past several months talking to as many super-delegates as any reporter in America, I’d guess, since I cover on a day-to-day basis about 280 of them here on Capitol Hill.

I hate saying this, because all the Clinton people are going to flip out and say, You’re biased, you’re biased, you’re biased. So go ahead and flip out if you want, but the simple basic truth is that the super-delegates stopped paying attention to the Clinton-Obama race about a couple days after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

They’ve stopped paying attention to the primary, and instead they’re focused on an Obama-McCain matchup in November. That’s the basic, simple, definitive reality that has happened in this race. The “undecided” super-delegates at this moment are not going to “decide” any time soon, because to them the race is over, they’re just waiting for Clinton to drop out.

[..]

Centreville, Va.: I was surprised and disappointed that The Post did not seem to address the Gallup poll yesterday which seemed to say Hillary Clinton had somewhat of an advantage over Barack Obama in the so-called swing states. The news of that poll was bandied about all day on the political blogs, and I have to say the Obama supporters seemed to be getting the worst of it. (Or is it “worse” with only two candidates in the poll?)

Paul Kane: Again, don’t yell at me because I’m only the messenger here. But the super-delegates have moved on, they’re no longer looking at how Hillary Clinton fares in battleground states against McCain. This is very hard for Clinton supporters to hear, I’m sorry, but the super-delegates are not paying attention to your candidate anymore. These head-to-head matchup polls (Clinton v. McCain, Obama v. McCain) are not having the impact on people’s thinking anymore.

[Quote:]

On Monday, Marnina Norys, a 39-year-old PhD student of social political thought at York University, was forced to remove a piece of silver jewellery cast in the shape of an antique pistol by airport security in Kelowna, B.C., who feared the trinket posed a security risk to the passengers on her WestJet flight.

[Quote:]

You’re gonna fend off Google and cloud computing with a touch screen?? Good luck. I do hope there’s a skunkworks Plan B in the labs. No wonder buying Yahoo “isn’t strategic.”

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Angel Falls, Venezuela (also called Salto Angel) is the Earth’s highest uninterrupted waterfall. It is 979 metres (3,230 feet) tall – think of it as 2.5 times as tall as the Empire State Building and full 15 times higher than Niagara Falls!

More pictures at the link

Remember the autistic kid who was “voted” out of class? Here are the official reports on the case.

[Quote:]

A prototype European system uses multiple cameras and “Big Brother” software to try and automatically detect terrorists or other dangers caused by passengers.

The European Union’s Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project uses a camera in every passenger’s seat, with six wide-angle cameras to survey the aisles. Software then analyses the footage to detect developing terrorist activity or “air-rage” incidents, by tracking passengers’ facial expressions.

The system performed well in tests this January that simulated terrorist and unruly passenger behaviour scenarios in a fake Airbus A380 fuselage, say the researchers that built it.

[..]

Ferryman admits that his system will require thousands of tests on everyday passengers before it can be declared reliable at detecting threats.

Ehm, no – sorry, it will require thousands of tests on real terrorists as well before it can be declared reliable at detecting threats. You need to take both false positives and false negatives into account. Which means it will never work, but it will sure be a handy tool to give manufacturers of the system billions of euros income, and it will be loved by all security goons… “the camera says you’re a terrorist!”

And don’t you love how it assumes terrorists wouldn’t ever be calm or completely resigned to their fate?

I just wish the ‘nice security folks’ would go back to their old jobs. they were certainly skilled enough to inquire if I needed any fries with my order and I was happy with their overall service. Why did we need to change that?

Special note this time: all the cartoons below are from non-US (mostly European) cartoonists.

[Quote:]

Flying British Airways, leaving from terminal 5.

Go through security, get pulled to the side. I’m wearing a French Connection Transformers t-shirt. Bloke starts joking with me is that Megatron. Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I’m not allowed to fly. WTF? It’s a 40 foot tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I’m going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?

With the liquids ban in place I guess it’s only time before t-shirts with bottles on them are banned as well.

I sure feel safer that way!

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This is ingenious and a little scary. Normally, Javascript doesn’t have access to your browser’s history URLs. But Aza Raskin found a way:

How does SocialHistory.js know? By using a cute information leak introduced by CSS. The browser colors visited links differently than non-visited links. All you have to do is load up a whole bunch of URLs for the most popular social bookmarking sites in an iframe and see which of those links are purple and which are blue. It’s not perfect (which, from a privacy perspective, is at least a little comforting) but it does get you 80% of the way there. The best/worst part is that this information leak probably won’t be plugged because it’s a fundamental feature of the browser.

Incredible.

Now any website has a reliable way to detect whether you have recently visited any particular URL.

I just helped Vanessa open a online store with her reproductions… amazing how easy creating online stores and integration of payment systems is these days…

Book advance paid to Ari Fleischer: $500,000.

Book advance paid to Karen Hughes: $1,000,000.

Book advance paid to Karl Rove: $1,500,000.

Book advance paid to George Tenet: $4,000,000.

Book advance paid to Scott McClellan: $75,000.

Odly enough only one of these books has critics on the right frothing at the mouth about an author “cashing in” on his White House service. . .

Oh dear…

[Quote:]

The military judge in the Omar Khadr trial in Guantanamo Bay has been relieved of his duties, a move that Mr. Khadr’s defence counsel claims is a direct result of the judge siding with the defence on a number of evidence disclosure issues in the controversial military tribunal case.

In a brief e-mail message circulated Thursday afternoon, Military Commissions chief judge, Colonel Ralph Kohlmann, announced that Colonel Peter Brownback, who has served until now as the judge in the Khadr case, is to be replaced by another colonel, Patrick Parrish.

‘evidence’ is classified and thus unavailable to the defence, judges who rule for the defense are replaced, the accused is assigned counsel who must be a member of the US military (who commits career suicide if raising a real defense)..

I think I know what this is…

[Quote:]

In what appears to be the biggest case of corruption in Iran, and perhaps in the Middle East, the Tehran-based Shahab News reported that the chief auditing office of the Iranian parliament (Majlis) has revealed that close to $35 billion of oil income from the financial year 2006-07 is missing.

According to Iranian law, this money should have been paid by the government of President Ahmadinejad into Iran’s central bank. Once there, the government can request the withdrawal of funds for projects, depending upon the approval of the Majlis. However, the new investigation shows that the government never paid the money into the central bank, and no one knows what has happened to it. Although it has not yet been proven, many suspect that the money has been used to finance corrupt activities of politicians surrounding the president, or the president himself. After all, it is very unlikely that this could have happened without his knowledge.

This is a serious allegation, as this amount constitutes almost half of Iran’s total oil income for that year.

[Quote:]

This has me gobsmacked. Remember how Bush and McCain were having trouble getting more donors than protesters to show up at their recent Arizona shindigs? Michelle Obama didn’t have that problem:

While the staffs of the president and of Arizona’s sitting senator scrambled to find smaller gathering spaces, Michelle Obama, stumping in Phoenix, McCain‘s hometown, filled a large banquet room just around the corner from where the Republicans originally planned their event– many of the Obama donors driving through the Bush-McCain protests on their way to hear the Democratic candidate’s wife speak.

This just amazes me. The wife of the Democratic front-runner outdraws, handily, both the Republican front-runner himself and the guy he wants to replace in the White House — and does so on the Republican front-runner’s home turf.

[Quote:]

A Superior Court judge ruled May 27 that “there is no fundamental right for a voter to vote for the party of their choice” and threw out the state Libertarian Party’s challenge to North Carolina’s elections laws.

[..]

The judge agreed with the State’s argument that the number of elected offices that may appear on the ballot in Presidential election years, along with the use of optical scanning equipment, can cause “voter confusion.”

“The more parties there are that are recognized by the State and that place candidates on the ballot, the greater the chance there is for ballots that are so long as to be unwieldy and to risk voter confusion and frustration of the electoral process,” Judge Hobgood wrote.

[Quote:]

It was a localized version of the Michigan/Florida debate in Grand Prairie today and once again, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters were at odds.

Local Clinton supporters advocated Thursday for unseating ALL of the Democratic delegates from Collin County because their senate district conventions were held on the wrong day.

Officials with the Collin County Democratic Party said they chose to hold the convention a day late because there wasn’t a large enough venue in the county available for the scheduled date of Saturday, March 29. Party officials warned at the time that the eligibility of their delegation may be challenged.

I wonder what Hillary supporters are thinking about those other two places where the primary was held on the “wrong” day…

[Quote:]

On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war.

But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration.

“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.

“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”

[Quote:]

One of Brazil’s last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday

The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.

Funai said it photographed “strong and healthy” warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.

“Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years,” Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.

The tribe sighted recently is one of the last not to be contacted by officials. Funai does not make contact with such tribes Indians and prevents invasions of their land to ensure their autonomy, the foundation said.

Survival International said the Indians are in danger from illegal logging in Peru, which is driving tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated 500 uncontacted Indians now living on the Brazilian side.

[Quote:]

First and foremost, I am 15 weeks pregnant, unmarried, and I just graduated from college. This should be an exciting time for me, as I’m starting two new chapters in my life; unfortunately, enrolling for health insurance has become a burden.

Pregnancy is considered to be a “pre-existing condition” much like diabetes, cancer, or any other kind of health malfunction that would label me as less than perfect. I am a non-smoker, was a varsity athlete in college, and am of average height and weight. I have no other pre-existing medical conditions at all: I have no allergies, no asthma, and I’ve never had any major surgery. When I called Blue Cross Blue Shield, they denied me coverage due to my “condition”. When I asked if this would be a common concern for other health insurance companies, they said, “Yes, you will find this with all health insurance companies.”

[Quote:]

Senator Barack Obama emerged as Europe’s favourite candidate for America’s presidency today when a poll conducted for Telegraph.co.uk gave him 52 per cent support across five of the world’s richest nations, including Britain.

John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, received only 15 per cent of the vote in unprecedented survey covering Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

The poll also found a striking level of anti-American feeling in every country. A clear majority of Russians – 56 per cent – believe the US is a “force for evil” in the world. In Britain, only 33 per cent see America as a “force for good”.

Opinion towards America has become steadily more hostile throughout the presidency of George W Bush, with the Iraq war probably being the single most important factor.

[Quote:]

You know it’s silly season when Republican wingnuts start questioning the service of veterans, and start arguing that some Nazi concentration camps weren’t all that bad (since the deaths were merely in the tens of thousands).

And now it’s become even funnier.  This idiot right winger Steve Gilbert, hot on the trail of the “truth” regarding Obama’s great uncle’s service liberating Buchenwald, wrote to WWII vet Raymond Kitchell and his son Mark Kitchell, who together run a site dedicated to the 89th Infantry.

What has ensued is a total pwning and smack-down the likes of which only a WWII vet can deliver.

Read the whole thing.

Two Irishmen walk into a pet shop in Dingle, they walk over to the bird section and Gerry says to Paddy, “Dat”s dem.” The owner comes over and asks if he can help them. “Yeah, we’ll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere,” says Gerry.

The owner puts the budgies in a cardboard box. Paddy and Gerry pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Gerry’s truck to drive to the top of the Connor Pass. At the Connor Pass, Gerry looks down at the 1000 foot drop and says, “Dis looks like a grand place.”

He takes two birds out of the box, puts one on each shoulder and jumps off the cliff. Paddy watches as the budgies fly off and Gerry falls all the way to the bottom, killing himself stone dead. Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Paddy shakes his head and says, “Fook dat. Dis budgie jumping is too fook’n dangerous for me!”

Moment’s later; Seamus arrives up at Connor Pass. He’s been to the pet shop too and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another cardboard box in one hand and a shotgun in the other. “Hi, Paddy, watch dis,” Seamus says.

He takes a parrot from the box and lets him fly free. He then throws himself over the edge of the cliff with the gun. Paddy watches as half way down, Seamus takes the gun and shoots the parrot. Seamus continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body.

Paddy shakes his head and says, “And I’m never trying dat parrot shooting either!”

Paddy is just getting over the shock of losing two friends when Sean appears. He’s also been to the pet shop and is carrying a cardboard box out of which he pulls a chicken.

Sean then takes the chicken by its legs and hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine.

Once more Paddy shakes his head.

“Fook dat, lads. First dere was Gerry with his budgie jumping, den Seamus parrotshooting… And now Sean and his fook”n hengliding!”

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Is it just me, or has the stupidity of the RIAA lawyers attained new heights? To bring an ex parte discovery application before a judge who already has suggested they should be subjected to Rule 11 sanctions, based upon affidavits of “emergency” which have been previously shown to be false, and which are based on illegally procured evidence, at the same time that there is also a Rule 11 motion pending against them for bringing an unauthorized “action in aid of discovery”? Or is it the record companies who are stupid, since they’re the ones actually paying these lawyers to do these things?