Quickies

Does anyone else think that the quagmire being created in Somalia is looking a lot like Afghanistan in the 80s? Is this just another effort on Bush's part of fixing what he feels as his father's errors? It could make Bill Clinton's problems in that country look like a victory if it goes the way of Afghanistan (either yesterday or today).

Reporting that the CIA set up a station in Iraq in 2002, Ken Silverstein in Harper's also has this line:

Several other former CIA officials I spoke with said that everything they have heard from colleagues at the agency points to an early decision to go to war.

And then, later, this:

“They say everyone else was wrong,” said this former official, “but we conditioned them to be wrong. We spend [tens of billions of dollars per year] on signals intelligence and when we reach a conclusion, the people who spend less than that tend to believe us. They weren't wrong, they chose to believe us. The British, Germans, and Italians don't have all those overhead assets, so they rely on us. Historically they have been well-served, so they believe us when we tell them the earth is round. The French have their own assets—and guess what? They didn't go with us.”

But the last 3 paragraphs are the most damning. Go read the article and shiver when you get to this predictable line:

The White House is trying to keep the ball in the air though November [to get through the mid-term elections] and if it falls apart afterwards they can say ‘we did our best.

The Washington Post had a great article explaining how the inability of getting access to Plan B caused one person to have an unwanted abortion. Thanks, pro-family nuts!

Tennessee, that bastion of the progressive movement (cough, cough!), requires people who want marriage certificates to have social security numbers. Originally it was designed to assist in future child care payments, but it now has the added benefit of preventing immigrants from having their marriages recognized in Tennessee. To be clear here, we're not just talking illegal immigrants, but rather all immigrants - legal or not. Keeping the gays out from being married? Check. Keeping the immigrants from marriage rights? Check. Whose next? More pro-family nuts! (hat tip to Tennessee Guerilla Women)

The Pentagon has decided to give up their ruse and dump the portions of the Geneva Convention that it doesn't like. Specifically, the parts about torture (take that, McCain!). Even though the treaty was signed and ratified by Congress and the Pentagon is not a representative body of legislators. In defense of this position, the Pentagon spokesperson stated that the department was just following the policies set down by the President when signing legislation. (OK, I made that last bit up, but readers will recall that when Bush signed the McCain anti-torture legislation, he also had a signing statement that basically said he could ignore the legislation at will. Hence the Pentagon is just codifying this position in the new Field Manual for soldiers).

Read excerpts of Stephen Colbert's commencement address at Knox College in Illinois.

Headline (wait for it...the pun will kick in in a moment) on the BBC site today: More severed heads found in Iraq. I had no idea that they were entertaining the troops.

Recent reports showed that Allofmp3.com was the second largest online music retailer in Europe behind iTunes. Now, the music industry is in a full on press to claim that the site is illegal and must be shut down.