Chronological list of state primaries, caucuses, and conventions, with hyperlinks to the nitty-gritty on each one.

2004 Election Calendar

Here's a full list of nominees from the official Oscar site.

OSCAR.com - 76th Annual Academy Awards - Nominee List

This is a collection of photos, videos, and journals from when U.S. Rep Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) visited Iraq in September 2003. I ran across it because he made a visit to the Tuwaitha nuclear facility and has some video of the yellowcake canisters there (Tuwaitha is still a major story that I'm following).

Unfortunately, this site is mostly summaries, and his "journal" often seems more optimistic spin than genuine observations. There are pictures and video of Tuwaitha, but he never mentions them in his journal, and their significance isn't covered at all.

Still though, after having read through portions of the site, I find myself encouraged. Especially as he recounted what it was like to land at Baghdad Airport, I was reminded about just how dangerous this trip was for him -- He put his life on the line to go visit Iraq and see for himself what it was like, and I have respect for that.

September 2003 - Congressman's 'blog' in Iraq

Thrynn writes:

Ok. I haven't talked about Iraq in a while so here's some interesting data to chew on:

Murder numbers:

] [Chicago] ended 2002 with 646 murders, second to Los
] Angeles, which had 653. New York was third with 580.

According to: http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

The total number of U.S. soldier fatalities stands at 512. This is 11 months of data.

512 killed in a WAR, compared to a 643 in L.A.

Just some food for thought.

Deaths in Iraq., vs Deaths in Los Angeles

] Just in time for today's New Hampshire primary, here's a
] candidate scorecard. It rates members of Congress on how they voted
] on technology-related legislation and awarded them a score
] of 0 to 100.

Other information on how recent candidates stand on technology can be found at ontheissues.org, in the "infrastructure/technology" category.

Where Democratic presidential candidates stood on tech in 2000

] A new e-mail worm that first appeared on the Internet this
] afternoon is spreading rapidly, according to leading security
] companies.
 . . .
] The worm arrives as an e-mail with an attachment that can have
] various names and extensions. The message can have a variety of
] subject lines and body texts, but in many cases it will appear
] to be an error report stating that the message body can't be
] displayed and has instead been attached in a file.

Computerworld: New 'Mydoom' worm spreading faster than last year's Sobig-F

This site (mostly in Polish) is maintained by the Dunin Society. The crest with the swan ("Labedz") is my family's crest.

Elonka :)

The Dunin Society

] Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in
] relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and
] difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search
] procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the
] bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we
] would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger
] than a two car garage.
 . . .
] We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program
] activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq
] concealed from the United Nations during the inspections
] that began in late 2002. The discovery of these
] deliberate concealment efforts have come about both
] through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials
] concerning information they deliberately withheld and
] through physical evidence of equipment and activities
] that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to
] the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these
] concealment efforts . . .

There's an extensive list here of specific things found as of October 2003. Many many items which clearly should have been declared to the U.N. inspectors, which were not.

Iraq was systematically and provably hiding things, and any Democratic candidates who try to say that this all was just "made up" by Bush are being hypocrites.

Text of David Kay's statement - Oct. 2, 2003

] LOS ANGELES -- A federal judge has declared
] unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that
] bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups
] designated foreign terrorist organizations.

Good, the system works. I don't think the whole Patriot Act needs to get overturned, but there are definitely parts of it that need to be removed. This court case is reassuring.

Let the good stuff in the Patriot Act stay, and let the bad stuff get challenged and shut down.

Federal Judge Rules Part of Patriot Act Unconstitutional (washingtonpost.com)

Here's a summary of how some of the Democratic candidates are jumping on Kay's report.

- Kerry says that it confirms we were misled. Though it's also pointed out that Kerry voted *for* the war. And he also says that he "trusts Colin Powell implicitly."

- Clark says the administration was playing politics with intelligence. He's also trying to finger-point at Rumsfeld. "A lot of us who have not been privy to secret intelligence simply listened to what people told us."

- Lieberman says, "The fact that David Kay now says they weren't there doesn't say [Iraq] never had them."

If I were voting in tomorrow's primary, I'd vote for Lieberman.

CNN.com - Democrats attack administration over Kay's comments