Politics

An Iraqi judge warrant was issued for Ahmed Chalabi’s arrest today, on charges of counterfeiting. A warrant was also issued for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, for murder. There are two basic possibilities here. One: Ahmed Chalabi is guilty, in which case it’s about time we started admitting that the guy behind a lot of our evidence against Iraq (original) is a liar and a crook. Those Iraqi defectors? He found them. He made up the meeting between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague. He may have been slipping information to Iran. He made up wacky stories about Saddam (original). He had the New York Times in his back pocket. Talk about a brilliant con man… ...

This clip (original) is pretty surreal. A Fox news host is quizzing Disney’s president about the new Disney computer for kids, and he takes a sudden right turn into attacking him for sponsoring Gay Days (original) at the theme parks. That’s what I call good clean utterly insane fun.

I really enjoy Eric McErlain’s Off Wing Opinion. It’s a great sports blog, very well written, with a lot of hockey coverage that I’d otherwise not get. Eric’s a Republican, and from time to time he makes political posts. So what? For that matter, Jim Pinto is pretty conservative, and it doesn’t stop me from reading Baseball Musings. Again, why would it? If I had to agree politically with everyone I talked to, there are a lot of good people who I’d never see again. ...

A while back Jere commented that he thought the best way to handle gay marriage civil disobedience was to stop giving out marriage licenses — you still make the point about equal treatment, but you don’t give out licenses which are unlikely to remain valid. Benton County, Oregon, agrees. (original)

What I’m doing during the interminable classic rock segments is cranking up Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and pretending that’s the DNC soundtrack. It works particularly well when CSPAN goes to a flag waving shot: the combination of flags and dance music has that edgy mechanical appeal that Madeline L’Engle ascribes to IT on Camazotz. The people dancing are a little out of sync with the music, but you can ascribe that to a failure of the controlling intelligence.

Glenn Reynolds is curious about Atrios. More precisely, since Atrios has unveiled as Duncan Black, who works for a group that’s partially funded by George Soros, Glenn Reynolds wants to know why nobody’s making a fuss about it. The money quote: “… if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody — like, say, Duncan Black — would be making something of it.” As it happens, Glenn Reynolds has a paying gig with Tech Central Station, which is funded by the DCI Group, which is a top-notch Republican lobbying organization. So I guess Glenn actually is working for Republican money-men after all. Funny how that works out.

At MTV’s Rock the Vote event, Howard Dean told the audience (original) there are two bills in Congress to reinstate the draft. “If you want a draft, vote for George Bush!” Bad, bad Howard. No biscuit.

I just clued into the other thing that bugs me about the Annie Jacobsen story. Michelle Malkin, among others, writes smugly (original) that this event highlights the stupidity of a policy against secondary questioning of more than two Arabs per flight. See also Ann Coulter’s racist whine, which Annie Jacobsen cited in her original article. But Annie Jacobsen also noted that the 14 Syrians on her flight were… pulled aside and questioned in LA. This was confirmed by government officials. So, ah, doesn’t that kind of undercut the concept that the airlines have a policy against questioning groups of Arabs? ...

It’s followup time! a) The White House found those missing Bush military records (original), which contain no useful information. b) Sandy Berger resigned (original). Thomas Kean, the Republican who chairs the 9/11 Commission, says they got copies of all the documents Berger removed anyhow (original). c) The air marshals on board Northwest Airlines flight #327 were worried that Annie Jacobsen was in danger of panicking and creating a dangerous situation. Quoting at length, cause it’s too good to miss: “The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.” Nice. In related news, the myth that you can’t question more than two Arabs per flight? It’s a myth.

Everyone’s seen the Kerry/Bush flash funny, but my mother hasn’t, and while my response time is not as good as Google I give more personalized search results. So there it is.