ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

THE TIME HAS COME ...
to speak out against the Lies and Propaganda and let 25,000 of your closest friends know just how you feel about this war and the lying sons of bitches who dragged us into it.

Starting July 5th, freewaybloggers across the nation will begin placing signs on the freeways voicing their opposition to the war. These signs will continue going up through July and August and on until impeachment hearings begin in September.

The Founders of this Nation gave us the right to free political speech for a reason, and at least part of that reason was to sound the alarm if we felt our country, or its democracy was in danger. If you feel that this is an illegal and immoral war, speaking out is not just your right, it's your duty as a citizen.

A follow-up question found that seven-in-ten (70%) voters believe the parties should be broad-based, and should pursue compromise—while less than one-in-four (23%) favored putting base issues first, even if it means nothing is accomplished.

These views are held by members of both major political parties, as well as independents, although Republicans, whose party controls both houses of Congress, are more likely to favor the parties focusing on the desires of their base than are Democrats and independents, with 31% of Republicans favoring this approach—more than the 20% of Democrats and 17% of independents who hold that view.

Just one week ago, President Bush's job approval stood at a previous low of 44%—but it has now slipped another point to 43%, despite a speech to the nation intended to build support for the Administration and the ongoing Iraq War effort. The Zogby America survey includes calls made both before and after the President's address, and the results show no discernible "bump" in his job approval, with voter approval of his job performance at 45% in the final day of polling.

Where voters live has some impact on their perceptions. The President's job rating remains relatively strong in the South, with 51% rating his performance favorably; in all other regions, those disapproving his performance are in the majority.

The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.

President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."

"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.

"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."

Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.

Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.

Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.

President Bush's latest address to the nation, urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure, Nielsen Media Research reported Wednesday.

Live coverage of Bush's half-hour speech Tuesday night from the Ft. Bragg military base in North Carolina averaged 23 million viewers combined on four major U.S. broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels, Nielsen said.

Designed largely to bolster sagging public support for the persistently bloody conflict in Iraq, the speech fell 8.6 million viewers shy of Bush's previous low as president, his August 9, 2001 address on stem cell research, which was carried on six networks.

Some bloggers who built their Internet followings with antiestablishment prose are lobbying the establishment to protect their livelihoods from federal regulations, working with a political action committee, lawyers and public-relations consultants.

"There's a certain responsibility I have to help protect the medium. I have the platform, the voice to be able to do so," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of www.DailyKos.com.

He testified Tuesday at a hearing on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.

"What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program, but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?" Krempasky asked the commission.

ACTION ALERT:
MSNBC's Pro-Bush "Town Meeting"

June 29, 2005


After George W. Bush's June 28 speech about Iraq, MSNBC's Hardball presented
viewers with a decidedly skewed "town meeting" featuring a panel
dominated by Iraq war boosters.

The two-hour coverage, hosted by Chris Matthews, was anchored by a panel
discussion that featured MSNBC reporter Norah O'Donnell, Islam scholar Reza
Aslan, and four conservative Bush supporters: Tony Perkins of the Family
Research Council, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, Bobbie Patray of the Eagle Forum of
Tennessee and Jerry Sutton, pastor of the Two Rivers Baptist Church in
Nashville, Tennessee, where the event was held.

MSNBC's coverage also included interviews with Newsweek's Jon Meacham,
Democratic Sen. Joe Biden (who called for "more boots on the ground"),
and Republican senators John McCain and John Warner.

In other words, MSNBC's "town meeting" excluded forceful critics of
the Iraq war--a war that polls show most Americans no longer support, or believe
the White House is mismanaging.

MSNBC's O'Donnell was careful to note that while war critics were the majority,
"at the same time, a majority of Americans also believe that we should stay
and finish the job. Only 1 in 8 Americans believe that we should cut and run.
There are liberal groups like Moveon.org that say we should get out. That's the
minority in America. People think that we should stay and finish the job."
O'Donnell was apparently referring to a Washington Post poll question (6/28/05)
that asked about increasing or decreasing troops, in which 13 percent of
respondents wanted U.S. troops to "withdraw immediately."

Most polls, however, show that support for withdrawing U.S. troops is
substantially higher than 13 percent. In response to another question in the
same poll, 41 percent said that the U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq.
In a recent Gallup poll (6/8-12/05), 46 percent said that the "U.S. should
bring its troops home as soon as possible," while a Harris poll (6/7-12/05)
found 63 percent in favor of "bringing most of our troops home in the next
year."

Audience participation also tended to support Bush, causing host Matthews to
comment: "It's been a great group. As you can see, the people are
passionate. And they have strong patriotic beliefs and moral beliefs, and yet
it's been very nice here. No fights or anything." Of course, having an
unbalanced panel discussion makes it easy not to have any "fights."
Matthews also praised the audience for being supportive of Bush, asking one
guest: "Why do you think the people in this part of the country seem to be
more manifestly patriotic about this president, and this war, and this
situation? What do you think it is, the separation from the coasts?"

Does Matthews really believe that supporting the Iraq war makes citizens more
"patriotic"? And is supporting a president the same as being
"patriotic about" the president? Were citizens who opposed President
Clinton being "unpatriotic" about him?

One member of the audience who disagreed with the consensus provided by MSNBC
was actually booed by the town meeting audience, causing Matthews to remark:
"Don't boo, now, please, ladies and gentlemen. It's been a good night here.
Howard Dean is going to come on our program tomorrow, a different point of view.
We have diversity run amok." Has it really come to the point where having
the leader of the Democratic National Committee on TV qualifies as
"diversity run amok"?


ACTION:
Contact MSNBC and tell them that serious discussion of the Iraq war should
include critics of that war. Ask Chris Matthews if he really thinks war
supporters and Bush supporters are more "patriotic."

CONTACT:
MSNBC
Hardball
hardball@msnbc.com

Phone: (202) 783-2615

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you maintain a
polite tone.

Social conservatism is a belief in traditional morality and social mores and the desire to preserve these in present day society, often through civil law or regulation. Social change is generally regarded as suspect, while social values based on tradition are generally regarded as tried, tested and true. It is a view commonly associated with conservative religious groups, militarism and nationalism.

Social conservatives emphasize traditional views of social units such as the family, church, or locale. Social conservatives are a product of their environment, and would typically define family in terms of local histories and tastes. To the Muslim or fundamentalist Mormon, social conservatism may entail support for polygamy. To the Protestant or Catholic, social conservatism may entail support for "traditional" marriage.

Social conservatism means a serious fidelity to those beliefs and traditions which keep us civilized and decent without resort to laws, regulations and bureaucrats.

Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don't you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever – when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters – the sober judgment of our military leaders.

Pakistan's Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reopen an inquiry into the high-profile case of Mukthar Mai, an unlettered laborer's daughter from southern Punjab province who allegedly was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council in 2002.

The court decision overturned a judgment by the Lahore High Court, issued in March, that threw out the convictions of five of the men accused of involvement in the rape and commuted the death sentence of a sixth.

The Supreme Court also ordered the re-arrest of 13 of the original suspects in the case. The high court's decision, following two days of hearings, was a victory for Mai, 32, whose case has prompted an outpouring of international sympathy and also become a focal point for concern about violence against women in Pakistan.
...
The court began hearing arguments Monday on Mai's appeal to reopen the case. In March, a lower court overturned the convictions of five of the six men charged in connection with the rape on the basis of insufficient evidence. The men had been sentenced to death. The sixth man charged had his death sentence converted to life in prison.
...
In an episode that has become a focal point for concerns about violence against women in Pakistan, Mai was attacked in Meerwala, her village in southern Punjab province. The council allegedly ordered the rape to settle a score with Mai's brother, 13, who had been accused of an improper relationship with the sister of one of those accused

In a lengthy memo published the newspaper's Web site, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced several new policies in response to a recent report by the paper's Credibility Committee. Among them is a fresh attempt to diversify the Times' staff and viewpoints, and not in the usual racial or gender ways, but in political, religious and cultural areas as well.

The aim, he wrote, is "to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation."

The point, Keller wrote, "is not that we should begin recruiting reporters and editors for their political outlook; it is part of our professional code that we keep our political views out of the paper. The point is that we want a range of experience. We have a recruiting committee that tracks promising outside candidates, and that committee has already begun to consider ways to enrich the variety of backgrounds of our reporters and editors.

"First and foremost we hire the best reporters, editors, photographers and artists in the business. But we will make an extra effort to focus on diversity of religious
upbringing and military experience, of region and class."

Hardline President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced an uphill task on Monday to assuage concern in the West that he will adopt a tougher policy on Iran's nuclear program and roll back freedoms at home.

The ex-Tehran mayor, who defeated veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a crushing election win on Friday, has adopted a conciliatory stance since the vote, vowing to continue nuclear talks with Europe and to lead a moderate government.

But his track record as a former member of the hardline Revolutionary Guards and outspoken commitment to the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution have convinced some that what he says and how he will act may be very different.

"He's starting from a position of a confidence deficit," said one Iran analyst, who declined to be named.

"No matter what he says right now, people will assume the worst, even though what he's saying is not much different from what Rafsanjani would have said if he'd been elected or what the current government's position is."

Iran says it wants nuclear technology to generate electricity, not make bombs. It has agreed to freeze some nuclear work while it negotiates a long-term arrangement with the EU, talks on which are due to resume in August.

The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material. The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.

Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.

"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview.

"The insurgency could go on for any number of years," Rumsfeld said in a U.S. television interview. "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years"

# On Monday, a Lawrence, Kansas jury convicted Martin K. Miller, 46, a youth group leader and board member at Victory Bible Church, of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Kansas University librarian Mary E. Miller. Says the Lawrence Journal World:

The case included testimony about Martin Miller's four-year extramarital affair, pornography addiction, and desire to pursue more sexual relationships — all of which stood in contrast to his leadership roles at his church and his children's Christian school... Prosecutor Jones said in his closing argument that divorce wasn't an option because Miller stood to lose his roles as a youth-group leader at church and a board member for Veritas Christian School. "Murder?... Of course he knew it was a sin," Jones said. "But that was supposed to be a private sin. No one was supposed to know about that one."

# On Tuesday, a Mesa, Arizona Dennis Montoya, a minister at Word of Grace Church, appeared in court on two child molestation charges. The victim was reportedly an eight-year-old girl. Police said Montoya confessed and they fear there are more victims.

# A Rumson, New Jersey grand jury indicted Rev. Joseph W. Hughes, the pastor of Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, with charges related to the theft of $2 million from his parish. Hughes, who has a "fondness for expensive cars, upscale restaurants and Caribbean vacations," according to the Asbury Park Press, also bought a $47,000 BMW, jewelry and assorted household appliances for a church handyman named David Rogers who, it appears, is somehow related to Hughes. The moral bearings of the church community were perhaps revealed when a group of wealthy parishoners offered to repay the stolen $2,034,428 if prosecutors agreed not to send Hughes to jail. Officials rejected the deal, noting that "[t]his was money from fund-raisers and meant for charity. There are very few instances where we would even consider not seeking jail time for this kind of theft, and this is certainly not one of them."

here you fucking people UNDERMINING soldiers as they try to defeat terrorists. Your worries about some fucking asshole from afghanistan being questioned under sometimes extreme duress, you piss and moan about being fair yet you are never fair, you cry about fox news but love NPR and AirAmerica, you should all go to classes to perfect spitting and get your slogans in order, Just like mommie and daddie, and your idiot tattered animal house professor did during Viet Nam. Because as far as I am concerned and as far as the vast majority of troops are concerned you can all go straight to hell.

Word Play

1. Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The
ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my
electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies,
"Yes,
I'm positive..."

3. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve
you, but don't start anything."

4. A sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry we don't
serve food in here."

5. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

6. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and
says:"A beer please, and one for the road."

7. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this
taste funny to you?"

8. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home. '"
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?"
"It's Not
Unusual."

9. Two cows standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to
Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't
believe
you," said Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaimed Daisy.

10. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing
to look at either.

11. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

12. A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's
cross-eyed, is there any thing you can do for him?" "Well," says
the
vet, "let's have a look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines
his eyes. Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down."
"What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really
heavy."

13. Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there
are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either
my mom or my dad or maybe my older brother Calvin or my younger
brother Ho-Chin. But I'm pretty sure it's Calvin.

14. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I
couldn't find any.

15. I went to the butcher's the other day to bet him 50 bucks that he
couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, "No, the steaks
are too high."

16. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted,
"Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I
know
you can't - I've cut off your arms!"

17. I went to a seafood disco last week and pulled a mussel.

18. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a
fire in the craft, it sank, proving that you can't have your kayak and
heat it too.

19. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

You might not even notice the Manara nightclub if it weren't for the gradual flow of cars leading right to it. Just behind the Mosque of President Hafez Assad, the club's parking lot is crammed with cars, many bearing plates from neighboring gulf states. Inside, disco lights pierce the smoky air. Patrons pack the seats as they sip beer and lazily gaze at the dance floor. They watch teenage girls dressed in snug, revealing clothes awkwardly shuffling to thumping Arabic music. Many girls wear stilettos so steep they can barely walk. Some dance in pairs, often tightly pressed together, fingers entwined. Most seem bored and some, noticeably, are uneasy.

Male customers summon waitstaff to inquire about the availability and age of select girls. A Syrian journalist and I, posing as patrons, consult the staff ourselves. Farah, a 15-year-old, is brought to our table, dressed in camouflage pants and heavy makeup.

Farah sits, swings her long dark hair, shakes hands all around, then pointedly asks, "Who am I speaking to?" I'm taken aback by her businesslike tone and point to the Syrian reporter. Farah pleasantly chats with him, negotiating how much time she'll share, and if a "next step" will be taken. Farah locks eyes with the waiter, nods, and a bottle of champagne is brought to our table. "That'll be 7,000 Syrian pounds," says the waiter. That's $140. The champagne signals the beginning of the process. Conversation is next, and "anything else" will cost more.

As we empty our bottle of champagne, Farah tells us her story. Like most of the girls at the Manara disco, she is an Iraqi, a Sunni from Fallujah, one of Iraq's most war-torn areas. She got married in the United Arab Emirates, divorced four months afterward, and found work at the disco through a cousin. She says she's working "just to make some money for my family," who also now live in Syria. Farah says she's the family's breadwinner.

The story of a Sunni girl from Fallujah selling herself in a Damascus nightclub represents startling new fallout from the Iraq war, one human rights organizations and experts are only beginning to address. An increasing number of young Iraqi women and girls who fled Iraq during the turmoil are turning to prostitution in Syria, although there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are involved. That might partly explain why so little reporting has been done on the topic. For journalists and human rights workers, securing contact with Iraqi sex workers in Syria is difficult and dangerous because the topic is taboo.

"It's a serious problem because there are young girls doing this -- 11, 12, 13 years old," says Abdelhamid El Ouali, the representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who's based in Damascus. "It's amazing at first. But when you fight for your life, what are you going to do?"

I also would like to say that I think all you traitorous libs should be shipped to Gitmo and tortured until you die, and then cut up into tiny pieces and fed to the sharks.

Karl Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11 and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their actions.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, "I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble."

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

Hello all... the first pic shows what happens when you keep taking down my signs and then replace them with a lame,inkjetted "support our troops" sign.

The 2nd pic shows the cops that saw me putting up the sign, and yes, did want to speak to me. They asked me what it said and when I told them one replied, "Probably be a lot more too." and that was it. No hassles, no lectures, no ID check. They didn't even ask me to take it down. In fact, the sign stayed up for three days. Man I love San Francisco.

Why do they go?

Saudis captured in Iraq say it's because of pictures on Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

"We saw the Americans massacring the Iraqis," says one Saudi prisoner in Iraq via translation.

Radical Saudi clerics urge them to go to Iraq to kill Americans.

"I read the communique of the 26 clerics," says another Saudi prisoner in Iraq.

The war in Iraq is creating a new breed of Islamic jihadists who could go on to destabilise other countries, according to a CIA report.

The CIA believes Iraq to be potentially worse than Afghanistan, which produced thousands of jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the recruits to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida had fought in Afghanistan.

Photographers didn't have much luck getting pictures of Iraq's prime minister shaking hands with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, even though the United States was co-hosting an international conference on rebuilding Iraq.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met with Rice for about 15 minutes Tuesday at a downtown Brussels hotel and again at a working dinner Wednesday hosted by the European Union.

However, al-Jaafari -- a conservative Shiite cleric -- is rarely seen shaking hands with women. Islam calls for separation between the sexes, and many Muslim males who strictly adhere to the Islamic faith do not shake hand with females.

One photo shows EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner offering her hand to al-Jaafari -- and the Iraqi prime minister smiling, but with his arms firmly at his side.

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense -- although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now.

The irony of Deep Throat surfacing after all these years in the midst of this memo mess is almost too precious. Does The Washington Post have any hungry young reporters on Metro anymore? I'd say, start with: Who did Dearlove meet with besides George Tenet?

From the "What Planet Is He On?" department, Tom DeLay has weighed in on how things really are in Iraq. And it turns out that Iraq is like ... Iraq is like ... well, it turns out that Iraq is a lot like Texas, actually.

"You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston [would be about] violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways," DeLay says in an interview reported in today's Houston Chronicle. It's the media's fault, of course. People should just go to Iraq, DeLay says, and they'd see what's really happening there. "Everybody that comes from Iraq is amazed at the difference of what they see on the ground and what they see on the television."

REILLY: Well, I mean, you're telling the world, senator, that we're a repressive country because you don't like coerced interrogation. Now, the FBI report, for those of you whom missed it, centered around a detainee who was chained to the floor in the fetal position. You know what the fetal position is -- that's not an uncomfortable position. Most of us sleep in a fetal position. OK? So picture the fetal position, most of us sleep that way. But the guy's chained. Now he can't move, he's down there.

Then they either make the room unbearably hot or unbearably cold. And they keep the guy there for 24 to 36 hours in that position, so they can't go to the bathroom. OK? So that's what the FBI guy reported. That's what's got Durbin conjuring up images of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin. So you make the call, you make the call. It's up to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to think.

LIMBAUGH: Let me tell you something, folks, if we are hit again, if we are hit again, we need to hold these people in our country who are undermining our efforts responsible. It ain't going to be the FBI's fault next time. It isn't going to be the CIA's fault next time. It isn't going to be some bureaucracy's fault next time. It's going to be the fault of politicians, left-wing groups and the like who have names and identities and spend their every waking moment trying to obstruct our ability to secure intelligence information for our own national security.

You want some names: [Sen. Patrick] Leahy [D-VT], [Sen. Joseph R.] Biden [D-DE], [Sen. Richard J.] Durbin [D-IL], [Sen. Barbara] Boxer [D-CA], [Sen. Edward] Kennedy [D-MA], [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid [D-NV], Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Amnesty International. If we get hit again, these are the names of the people and organizations we need to look at when we're trying to find out why and how it happened.

LIMBAUGH: Club G'itmo and our brochure at rushlimbaugh.com now features two T-shirts, ladies and gentlemen. We put them on sale yesterday, and they are going like hotcakes. They're a reddish-orange t-shirt and you can buy one or you can buy both. One of them says, "Club G'itmo" on the front and then on the back, "Your Tropical Retreat From the Stress of Jihad."

The other one says, "Club G'itmo" on the front, and on the back it says, "My Mullah Went to Club Gitmo and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." They're both $19.95. They come in sizes small up to double-X, and we're also still checking on prices to come up with Club G'itmo bathrobes and soap on a rope or just soap. Club G'itmo, whichever, and we've also added the fact that kids might want to be sent down to Club G'itmo, except Americans, because American kids are not allowed to pray in school or anything else. It's a great place for young jihadists to go and take a break from their training.

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management made it easier to graze cattle on public land, despite objections from its own scientists. Grazing cattle can denude the West's arid lands, a special concern given the recent drought in the region. Two BLM scientists -- a biologist and a hydrologist, both of whom recently retired from the bureau -- predicted that easing limits on cattle grazing would hurt wildlife and water quality. But their objections were edited out of a BLM report. Who needs to trouble with dissent when you can just delete it?

"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada told the Los Angeles Times. "They rewrote everything," Campbell said. "It's a crime."

Campbell retired recently after 30 years at the agency. Here's more on how he was thanked for his years of service: "The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a 'significant adverse impact' on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are 'beneficial to animals,'" the Times reported.

His hands found my body, spilling my breasts bare to the wind. He drew his lips back from mine and lowered his face to my breasts, taking first one and then the other into his mouth, rolling the nipples in the warmth, spilling power.

Let me back up. Ms. Mukhtaran is the indomitable peasant whom I first wrote about in September after visiting her in her village. Three years ago, a village council was upset at her brother, and sentenced her to be gang-raped. After four men raped her, she was forced to walk home nearly naked before a jeering crowd.

She then defied tradition by testifying against her attackers, sending them to prison, and she used compensation money to start elementary schools in her village. She