android photography

Fun with cheesy romance novel covers.

Last December, it turns out, Congress repealed the 34-year ban on slaughtering wild mustangs for food. The reversal was tacked onto a spending bill, like so many other laws that sneak through below the radar. Ranchers are complaining that the horses eat forage needed by their cattle. And goodness knows, America doesn't eat enough beef.

The Bureau of Land Management is trying to find homes for the almost 9,000 horses expected to be killed.

Update: A bill has been introduced to reinstate the ban. You can sign a petition to support it at the link.

"WICHITA, Kan.: The attorney general of Kansas wants to know the detailed history of the sex lives of nearly 90 women who received late-term abortions.

"Court documents show that Phill Kline wants to search the documents for evidence of crimes under laws that limit late-term abortions and require mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse.

"Under the order signed by a judge, the attorney general would get records that would include each patient's name, medical history, details of her sex life, birth control practices and psychological profile.

"The Wichita Eagle says two medical clinics have asked the Kansas Supreme Court to intercede."

And the renegade U.S. wants to go even farther into cowboy mode (Washington Post, registration required):

The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said.

The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.

The Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials from the foreign country, if any.

The change is included in a highly classified "execute order"-- part of a broad strategy developed since Sept. 11, 2001, to give the U.S. Special Operations Command new flexibility to track down and destroy terrorist networks worldwide, the officials said.

"This is a military order on a global scale, something that hasn't existed since World War II," said a counterterrorism official with lengthy experience in special operations. He and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is classified.

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How long before our self-proclaimed right to kill anyone we want, anywhere we want, goes into all-out CIA/military black ops? Yes, there's now an Executive Order prohibiting assassinations; but if Bush can declare the fscking Geneva Conventions irrelevant, is he really going to pay any mind to a piddly little EO? I don't think so.

(via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

Rest in peace.

Update: Best obituary of Hunter I've seen.

The BBC provides pictorial proof of the phenomenon the Bush administration insists doesn't even exist.



(via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

A blog called Rigorous Intuition has a complex and very disturbing post about the connections between (among other things) international crime, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Christian missionary organizations, U.S. intelligence agencies, assassins, 9-11, and the modern GOP.



No, I'm not kidding. And neither is he. It's long, but read the whole thing.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its Institute for Legal Reform, spent $53.38 million lobbying the federal government during 2004, more than any other group. Which explains why the GOP is all in a lather about "tort reform"; they're being well-paid to serve corporate interests by depriving the public of one of its only weapons against malfeasant corporations.



And the 800-pound gorilla of malfeasant corporations, Wal-Mart, has just reached a settlement over its violation of child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the settlement, "the Labor Department agreed to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before [it] investigates any other 'wage and hour' accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime."



Fifteen days' notice. Wouldn't you love to get a special tipoff when you were about to be investigated, so you could (temporarily at least) "cure" the relevant violations? Travesty, thy name is Bushco.



(Both via Daily Kos)

If you remember, a few weeks ago Lawrence Summers stirred up controversy with his ill-advised comments about "innate differences" contributing to women's underrepresentation in mathematics and science careers. Now the presidents of Stanford, MIT, and Princeton have added their voices to the debate.

The AFL-CIO has set up a handy reference page that details the various ways that Wal-Mart is helping to destroy our economy . From the extra costs handed on to taxpayers, to the small, local companies forced out of business when the Big Box comes to town, to their mistreatment of their employees and the harm they do to the environment, it's all here. The next time someone tries to tell you Wal-Mart is good for America, you'll have the facts at your fingertips.

So remember those allegations back during the debates that Bush was wearing a listening device? Well, some reporters did some actual investigating, and confirmed that Bush was, indeed, cheating (the GOP's stringent list of conditions for the debates included an explicit prohibition of the use of any electronic devices).



Why didn't we hear about it? Because the New York Times killed the story. And why did it do that? Because the editors were afraid that revealing that Bush was an incompetent cheat before the election might, well, affect the election. If that sounds like a reasonable decision, just ask yourself one question: if the allegations, and the proof, had concerned Kerry rather than Bush, would we have heard about it, and would that have been fair? Of course we would, and of course it would. But Bushco expect to be treated by a different set of rules.



As David Neiwert at Orcinus points out, the Times' behavior amounts to "a gross dereliction of its Fourth Estate role as a public watchdog." As if that were anything new from our puppet press. (See Neiwert's coverage for all the pertinent links.)

"No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration."

--Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Advisor, now Secretary of State, in a March 22, 2004 column in the Washington Post.



"We urgently need . . . a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network."

--Richard Clarke, in a declassified memo written to Rice on January 25, 2001 (emphasis in original).

"'Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling . . . You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.'"



--Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, USMC

Great rant from an honest-to-goodness conservative.