Steel yourself for the greatest blogging ever. Today. Starting now.
9:15am
Gas prices at an all time high. Seriously, does this make any sense? Are we driving a lot more all of the sudden? Are the Chinese driving a lot more? Supply is increasing if you believe the reports that Saudi Arabia is bumping up production, so [...]
(Three Updates below)
In a scathing post yesterday, Glenn Greenwald accused MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann of carrying water for the Obama campaign. Greenwald says Olbermann abandoned his rhetoric on telecom immunity / warrantless domestic spying now that Obama supports it.
Here was Olbermann addressing Bush in January:
There is not a choice of protecting the telecoms from prosecution or [...]
This news from the NY Times just blew my mind when I read it:
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.
Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency [...]
This weekend my girlfriend gave me Herpes:
*******
Freeblogging
10:00am
What’s up with Shaq?
10:50am
Damozel at TMV keeps us informed about the telecom immunity / FISA fight in the Senate.
11:20am
Chris Dodd’s speech on FISA from yesterday:
2:20pm
CNN says, “the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that child rapists cannot be executed, concluding capital punishment can be applied only against murderers.”
Child rapists [...]
Juan Cole compiles the numbers for us:
By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were [...]
The always emotional Arthur Sibler wants us to keep the impending FISA “compromise” law in perspective. He’s not saying we should support the Democrats and Obama despite their betrayal (or cowardice), because they are the lesser of two evils. What he is saying is that we ceded the right to privacy long ago:
I do not [...]
Updated Below
From page 5 of the The FISA Amendment Act of 2008:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be promptly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies [...]
I noted Monday that Congressional Democrats were planning to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications corporations (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) who aided the Bush administration in illegally spying on us. (Read my explanation of the telecom immunity issue here and/or check out this scathing NY Times editorial)
The Hill and Dow Jones are reporting that this is indeed [...]
A recent New Yorker profile of MSNBC star Keith Olbermann has revealed some startling information about the inner-workings of major American news outlets.
Shaping the news and commentary for ratings or for some other form of personal greed is just about the worst thing a journalist can do. But apparently that’s not out of the ordinary at [...]
In the last decade the Republican party has methodically tacked further and further to the fringe. I’m reluctant to say they’ve moved more to the ‘right’ because I still associate the ‘right’ with conservatism. However, I don’t think there is anything remotely conservative about the prevailing Republican ideology.
Republicans are now the party of endless war, [...]