Nothing wins those "hearts and minds" like fucking up the friendlies...

President Karzai today accused Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces of killing at least 89 civilians in an attack in the western province of Herat in what could be one of the worst cases of "collateral damage" in Afghanistan since 2001...

But an Afghan minister who visited the area put the civilian death toll at 90, a human rights group which also went to the scene estimated it at 78, and the Interior Ministry reported 76 non-combatants dead, including 50 children.

Link

First, let me say that, being from Tennessee, I'm no stranger to the strange things that "happen" in Mississippi, but we may have a cake-taker...

It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case.

In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn't and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz's statement into the record.

Let that sink in a moment.

Among the many revelations from Ron Suskind's book, Think Progress found this:

Usman is trundled from the SUV, escorted through the West Gate, and onto the manicured grounds. No one speaks as the agents walk him behind the gate’s security station, down a stairwell, along an underground passage, and into a room — cement-walled box with a table, two chairs, a hanging light with a bare bulb, and a mounted video camera. Even after all the astonishing turns of the past hour, Usman can’t quite believe there’s actually an interrogation room beneath the White House, dark and dank and horrific.

The "Usman" in question was a Pakistani national whose crime was "fiddling with his I-Pod" in Washington...

From our What Could Possibly Go Wrong Bureau:

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

Um, that would be the nuclear-armed Pakistan helping bomb an embassy belonging to nuclear-armed India, right?? How could this get worse?? Funny you should ask...

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

A couple weeks ago I posted this Diary on the dangers of driving while talking on cell phones. It was generally well-received, but as always there were a few who insisted that "they were different".

Not so much.

For years, psychologists who study driving and attention have argued that switching to "hands free" is not a real solution to the hazards caused by yakking on the mobile in the car. "The impairments aren't because your hands aren't on the wheel. It's because your mind isn't the road," says David Strayer, professor of psychology at the University of Utah, whose research has found driving while talking on a cellphone to be as dangerous as driving drunk.

Lost in the excitement of Obama's Berlin speech, Slate today has an excellent rundown of which top-level Bush Administration officials could face prosecution, and for what, related to five primary scandals:
Coercive Interrogation
Destruction of the CIA tapes
U.S. Attorney Firings
Hiring in the Justice Department
Wiretapping

At the top of any such list is Alberto Gonzales, possibly implicated in all five...

American history is sprinkled with Presidential Administrations who are looked upon, with hindsight, as less than stellar. Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan are generally viewed as failures, and in the modern era Richard Nixon, despite a few successes, has set the standard for failed administrations.

Pikers and pretenders, to a man.

Never in American History has any Presidential Administration run up a string of failures to rival Bush/Cheney; hell, there's really nobody in second place, both top spots being occupied by the two terms of suckitude the world has witnessed since the Supreme Court appointed these two.

We all know about Big Oil's push to get access to more offshore drilling sites, despite already holding rights to millions of acres both onshore and off where they aren't drilling (much like timber companies sitting on their own timber while cutting our National Forests). Now Bush is going to lift the Executive moratorium on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf to pressure Congress to capitulate yet again. We've all heard about how a shortage of refining capacity is driving up prices for gasoline.

So why are we exporting all-time record amounts of refined petroleum products??

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

Having never been taken in by Barack Obama's "New Politics" shtick, coming from an old-school Chicago Machine politician, I cannot claim to be surprised by his capitulation on FISA, despite his promises during the Primary. I don't know if we were suckered by a liar who said what folks wanted to hear then, or if he's just a coward who was afraid Republicans would say mean things about him.

It really doesn't matter.

I don't figure this will be the last time he'll betray either us or the Constitution he's supposed to be a scholar of, since he seems determined to raise "triangulation" to an artform between now and November.

It really doesn't matter.

I will not be citing any scholarly studies in this Diary, because I'm not aware of any that are based on gathering observations for over 100,000 miles a year since the advent of portable phones. I have watched, with interest, since "portable phones" came in bags with shoulder straps and weighed ten pounds, and were rare as virgin dancers in Las Vegas.

You, or a family member, are more likely to be injured or killed by a driver talking on a cell phone than a drunk driver!!

An individual driver on the phone is slightly less dangerous than a drunk, but in the aggregate they are far worse because they vastly outnumber drunks, particularly during the daytime. Their contribution to motor vehicle accidents is grossly under-reported and under-appreciated because, unlike drunks, there's a cellphone in damned-near every car and truck on the road, so it's usually not even worthy of note.

I utterly oppose granting immunity of any kind to ANYONE who participated in illegally wiretapping American citizens, no matter who told them it was legal or how much they were paid, and consider anyone who goes along with granting it a fucking coward.

Nothing new there, I've said that all before. There IS, however, a possible small bright spot in the abortion that is the FISA Amendment Act.

The text of the relevant Section across the jump...

Everybody has heard by now that John McCain was shot down over North Vietnam, captured, and held as a Prisoner of War; it apparently, to some, is his main qualification to be President.

According to what looks like a reasonably well-sourced page on Wikipedia, a total of 3,032 aircraft were lost to hostile action during the Vietnam War (the actual total was considerably higher, as these numbers don't include Army rotary-wing aircraft), which means at least that many pilots were shot down (yes, some were shot down more than once, but they are way more than offset by the many aircraft that had two pilots).

The Air Force lost 1737, the Navy 530, the Marine Corps 463 and the Army lost 302 (fixed wing).

This is from The London Times, so...

In defiance of traditional party labels, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, may ask the defence secretary of President George W Bush to stay on if he wins the White House.

Obama’s top foreign policy and national security advisers are pressing the case for keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon after he won widespread praise for his performance. The move would be in keeping with Obama’s desire to appoint a cabinet of all the talents.

I haven't seen this mentioned, here or elsewhere; as always, if it's a retread I'll disappear it.

Just when it looks like the "crisis" over North Korea's nuclear program has lessened (by essentially doing what Clinton agreed to a decade ago), comes this Press Release:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

Dannebrog yesterday and Libby Shaw today have tried, with little success, to get attention on the travesty that is the House vote on FISA and the excellent work done by MapLight. I have no illusions that I'll be much more successful but that's no excuse for not trying...

Since telecom immunity was rejected by the House in March 94 Democrats changed their votes to allow it to pass on the 20th. What do those vote-switchers have in common?? Telecom PAC money.

House Members who changed their votes received an average of $8,359 from telecom PACs while those who didn't averaged $4,987. Steny Hoyer got $29,000 since 2005, Nancy Pelosi $24,500, Rahm Emmanuel $28,000.

Let me state right off that in November I will vote for the Democratic Nominee, because I have no choice; my Country simply cannot have two or three more Scalias or Alitos on the Supreme Court.

I have stated probably 50 times in the past that I "didn't like Hillary and didn't trust Obama". The Hillary supporters never understood why I just didn't like her. I guess the Obama supporters are catching on, for their part.

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

We all know about the armed nuclear missles that "inadvertantly" wandered to Louisiana, and the missile nose cones mistakenly shipped to Taiwan and left there for a couple years [insert yawn here], all of which cost the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force their jobs. As they say on the late night infomercials, Wait! There's More!

The US military cannot locate hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components, according to several government officials familiar with a Pentagon report on nuclear safeguards.

Lets review here children, that's hundreds, which is dozens of dozens, or a bunch, any way you look at it.

There's this guy named Ed Hale, runs a website called Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McCain. Big clue about his intellect there, but wait.

This guy has a diabolical plan to strike a devastating one-two punch against Obama that all Obama supporters need to immediately gird themselves for (loin-girding optional).

The first part of his plan is an ad in the Chicago Sun-Times, yes, that Chicago Sun-Times, a tabloid. Follow me across the hump for his reasoning and the even more devastating second wave.