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Scotland Yard's investigation has centered on Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, two Russian ex-KGB officers who were present at the Millennium Hotel in central London when Litvinenko fell ill on Nov. 1 after contamination from a rare, radioactive substance.
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Reporting from inside the courtroom in the CIA leak-related trial of Scooter Libby this week revealed that former White House spokesman Ari Fleisher sought immunity from prosecution because he was worried he might have committed treason — and even fearred [sic] he was in jeopardy of receiving the death penalty: [my em]
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"I get the sense if there was a bull in the china shop, Cheney would blame the china."
Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as “delusional.”
It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.
Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.
Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's father accused the news media of "personal animosity" toward his son and said he found the criticism so unrelenting he sometimes talked back to his television set.
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"I won't get too personal here -- but this antipathy got worse after the 43rd president took office," the former president said. He was speaking at a reception for a journalism scholarship awarded in honor of the late Hugh Sidey, White House correspondent for Time magazine.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In perhaps the boldest and most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare, gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death.
The U.S. military confirmed a report earlier Friday by The Associated Press that three of the soldiers were dead and one was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, about 25 miles from the compound where they were captured. A fifth soldier was killed in the initial attack on the compound.
The new account contradicted a U.S. military statement on Jan. 20, the day of the raid on an Iraqi governor's office, that five soldiers were killed "repelling" the attack.
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The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was conducted by nine to 12 gunmen posing as an American security team, the military confirmed. The attackers traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles -- the type used by U.S. government convoys -- had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English, according to two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials.
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... Things are much worse now, and bodies that breathe now and then are probably maxing their PT and rifle range scores via the Mark II pencil.
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Thirty generals agree, thirty senators agree, thirty Helens agree, and now thirty spies agree: the "surge" is the wrong way forward.
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AUSTIN, Texas - Liberal Texas columnist Molly Ivins has been hospitalized in her ongoing battle with breast cancer, her assistant said Friday.
Ivins may be able to go home Monday, Betsy Moon said.
"That's the day the doctors said," Moon said. "We're not sure what's going to happen, but she's very sick."
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N THE FICTIONAL world of the hit show "24," federal law enforcement agencies are pouring every last resource into the search for a nuclear terrorist in Los Angeles.
In the real world, federal agents apparently have so much free time that they can dress up in bulletproof vests and masks in order to raid clinics that serve patients battling cancer, AIDS and other diseases. That's what happened last week as Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed 11 medical marijuana dispensaries throughout L.A. and West Hollywood. We can all rest easier knowing that lollipops, cookies, candies and candy bars laced with marijuana are in no danger of reaching seriously ill patients.
The West Hollywood City Council recently voted to control the number of medical marijuana dispensaries operating in the city. Last week, the Los Angeles Police Department submitted more than 40 recommendations for controlling dispensaries, seeking to ban them from being within 1,000 feet of schools and to require owners to remove all litter "visible to the public within 100 feet of the premises at least twice daily." The dispensaries also have practiced self-regulation. Yes, there have been poorly run dispensaries and others looking to circumvent the system - but the feds didn't focus on them.
Instead, this raid hit one of the best-run dispensaries in West Hollywood - the Farmacy - where patients must present valid medical information verified by doctors; where purchases are limited to 1 ounce, even though the law allows patients to possess 8 ounces; where patients aren't allowed to medicate on the premises; and where anyone caught with forged documents is detained until police arrive and charged with a felony.
The Farmacy has been a leader in treatment and education. Caring for patients suffering from everything from cancer to glaucoma to multiple sclerosis, it teaches patients about the effects of different strains of indica and sativa marijuana and offers edibles and concentrated medicine in the form of oil to reduce the potential harm of smoking marijuana in plant form.
"The DEA is here to enforce federal drug laws," Special Agent Sarah Pullen declared, and, strictly speaking, she was right. In a 2001 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the "medical necessity" of a patient could not be used as a defense against federal drug enforcement. (The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with "no medical uses" - making it worse in the eyes of the feds than cocaine, methamphetamine and many other drugs.) In 2005, the court ruled that federal authorities could even stop a seriously ill patient from cultivating marijuana for her personal use.
In her dissent from that decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared that such "overreaching stifles an express choice by some states." Justice John Paul Stevens noted in his opinion for the court that Congress could revisit its outdated law to deal with the "strong arguments that marijuana does have valid therapeutic purposes."
Meanwhile, the DEA can still bully its way past California law while ignoring its own spectacular policy failures. The DEA has failed to significantly reduce marijuana consumption despite breathtaking increases in arrests and incarcerations. And its recent efforts aimed at keeping medicine from patients are shamefully transparent attempts to go after an easy target: Marijuana dispensaries operate openly, and cancer patients are limited in their ability to evade law enforcement.
The arcane classification of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act persists despite the government's own actions and data to the contrary. In 1992, the Food and Drug Administration approved Marinol pills, which use the active ingredient in marijuana (THC) to treat nausea and vomiting. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that "the evidence is relatively strong for the [marijuana] treatment of pain and, intriguing although less well established, for movement disorders."
So what can be done? Congress must reclassify marijuana in accord with the standards of science and medicine. The law simply needs to be fixed.
This reform is overdue. It should be an urgent priority for our new Congress to stop the Justice Department from arresting or harassing sick people in 11 states who have the legal right to use medical marijuana.
"I didn't get to go to Mass," recalled Donahue. "There were some other blood sacrifices being made to the ambitions of a hate-crazed power-maddened little man who wanted to take the place of God."
In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.
"He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' " (my em)
Question: What is the connection between a possible American attack on Iran and the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby?
Answer: Vice President Dick Cheney.
Sober heads see an attack on Iran as both essentially baseless and an invitation to a widening war we are not prepared to fight, thanks to Iraq. Because of this, the idea that such an attack may be undertaken is not considered a pressing reality by many analysts. Ali Larijani, Iran's top national security official, shares this view. "The possibility of this is very weak, and it's more a matter of psychological warfare," said Larijani on Thursday. "The Islamic republic's armed forces are in a state of complete readiness and are monitoring everything in order to give a crushing response to even the smallest aggression or threat." Larijani concluded his remarks by stating, "I advise Mr. Bush and his advisors to be rational and think about their own nation's interest."
This would be sage advice if Mr. Bush were the one doing the thinking. These days, all the thinking and management is being done by Dick Cheney, and if this Libby trial comes to pose a danger to his standing, all the sober analysis by policy experts may turn to dust. Nothing is more dangerous, after all, than a cornered animal.
FORT STEWART, Ga. - The sergeant major calls the name, Staff Sgt. John L. Hartman Jr., as it's unveiled on a granite marker at the root of a new eastern redbud tree on Warriors Walk _ where hundreds of these living memorials have been planted to honor the wartime dead.
Hartman volunteered for a third tour inIraq last year so an Army buddy could stay home with his newborn son. He was killed Nov. 30 when a bomb blast tore into his Humvee.
Last week, Hartman became the 318th soldier memorialized at Warriors Walk, a grove of eastern redbuds started with 34 trees in April 2003.
Read the full story here.
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Jack Welch is the guy who was CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. He acquired NBC for GE in 1985 as part of the RCA deal, and in 1993 had hired former Republican National Committee chair Roger Ailes to rework NBC's news division, particularly its CNBC channel, to be more to the GOP's liking. (Ailes was then hired in 1996 by another right-wing media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, to create and run FOX News. Funny how that works.) Welch took great pride in corrupting former liberals like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, seducing them with cold hard cash and then boasting about it:
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