Items that lately caught my nictitating eye:
- Torture from the top: The ACLU’s FOIA endeavors have turned up a Bush executive order and a DOD memorandum authorizing torture. Or whatever they’re calling it nowadays. In a Spiegel interview, Ron Suskind confirms that Bush knew who was waterboarding whom.
- Go, Go, Go: WaPo today passed on the deliberations of a Pentagon review of three Iraq options: Go Big, Go Long, Go Home. Consensus is forming on bumping up in country numbers by 20 or 30K “for a while”, then scaling back quickly to 60K for forever or until The End Of Evil.
- A Connecticut Patriot: Senator Dodd introduces legislation to repeal the noxious portions of the Torture Act. He does a commendably thorough job.
- Sneak Thieves? For reasons I may expound later, I’m dubious about this. But O’Dell and cohorts at Election Defence Alliance believe they have a smoking gun that November 2006 was rigged, but the ploy fell short because the riggers didn’t realize how big the Democratic wave would be.
- Euphemism of the Week: A Vietnam Vet commenting at TPM Cafe recalls how he and his fellow draftees, thrust to the front lines, summed up their job positions: “Ordnance Absorption Technicians”.
- Goo Is Good: Nanotechnologists at Rice University have come up with a high tech manufacture/ low tech distribution way to clean up the arsenic poisoning most of the drinking wells in Bangla Desh and southeast India. Rust particles, each smaller than a virus, can adsorb the toxin on their surfaces. Once they’ve done their work, an ordinary hand magnet can scoop them up, with their cargo, leaving potable water behind.
Tinsel Wing 