Quickies

Bill Maher's take on the recent Willie Nelson arrest for pot possession: don't the cops have something better to do? Of course, what happened to Willie is pittance compared to watching your under teenaged siblings being handcuffed and your dog killed for selling $60 of marijuana. Oh, go read that story...it gets much worse...when police act like SWAT teams chasing terrorists at the Olympics.

Angry drunken driver runs over himself.

Police are investigating a foot fetishist in Charlotte, South Carolina for approaching an 80 year old woman in a Wal-Mart. Fear not, brave citizens, Captain Heath Dykes is on the case.

$185 million. That's how much was spent to restore the Superdome in New Orleans and to bring overpriced football to it's citizens. Well, the ones that are left...the ones who have homes and can live in them...even if the schools and hospitals are still struggling...how dare ingrates question civic priorities!

Cablevision awarded stock grants to a dead man.

British Ministry accused of low-balling casualty figures in Afghanistan. Sounds like they've taken a page from the U.S. Iraq play book where we no longer count casualties of civilians unless they've been killed by roadside bombs.

Iraq's people now experiencing more terror than under Saddam, according to a report. A high ranking former CIA official, with 15 years experience in the agency's political Islam unit, answers questions from Harper's about what went wrong in Iraq and what needs to be done. Quick answers: no planning for the aftermath of the war and we need to plan an exit strategy. American soldiers are getting lessons in what not to do in Iraqi culture and, guess what? The lectures include pictures of former leader Paul Bremmer and Donald Rumsfeld making what Iraqis consider rude gestures. Sure, the lecturer plays it off and the troops laugh, but Rummy and Bremmer are allegedly Middle East experts...surely they knew what they were doing.

U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan "back into the Stone Age" says dictator/Bush ally Musharref.

Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, was acquitted of the crime of "insulting Turkishness" this week.

Read about Republican Bob Ney's guilty plea. Remember, this is the guy who swore he did nothing wrong on the House floor and who fought his own leadership when they told him that he had to resign.