HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii - The airman's possessions, laid out on a table in a military lab, offer a peek deep into the past.

His pockets produced 51 cents in dimes, nickels, and pennies dating from 1920 to 1942. A neatly handwritten note tucked inside a faded address book reveals the words "all the girls know," though the rest of the letter is mostly decomposed and unreadable.

Forensic scientists at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command are using these and other clues to help them identify the body of World War II airman found in a California glacier last month. The Hawaii-based experts have spent the last few weeks meticulously examining his bones, taking DNA samples, and studying his teeth to learn who he was and when he died.

Scientists Examine Airman Found in Ice

IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

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The White House cabal - Los Angeles Times

CONGRESSMAN WELDON SPEAKS OUT ON SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST LTC SHAFFER; CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION
WASHINGTON,
Oct 20�-
Last night, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives decrying efforts within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to smear the reputation and career of 23-year defense intelligence officer, LTC Anthony Shaffer. Congressman Weldon also brought forth new information on the destruction of data and findings of the Able Danger planning effort.

Below, is the full text of the floor speech as recorded in the Congressional Record.

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Curt Weldon on Able Danger-Atta Data Destruction, etc.

About the Author
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is the author of The Michael Eric Dyson Reader, Open Mike; Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur; Why I Love Black Women; I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.; Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line; Between God and Gangsta Rap; Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X; and Reflecting Black. He is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia.

Memed for herodom. This is the smartest guy I've seen on TV. Maybe thats James Burke, actually. Anyway, he's a leftie who can spit hot fire with the best of the right-wing fuckos. Needs his own show/radio program.

Michael Eric Dyson

In mid-September, with Miller having been in jail for more than two months, further negotiations involving Fitzgerald, Tate and Miller's lawyers, including Bennett, took place. The result was the Sept. 15 letter from Libby to Miller, in which he again told her that he wanted her to testify. But the letter included this sentence: "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me."

Bennett said the sentence "was a very stupid thing to put in a letter," and though he would notsay it was another possible attempt to steer her testimony, "it was a close call and she was troubled by it."

According to Miller's first-person account, Fitzgerald asked during her grand jury testimony about Libby's letter. Miller said, "This portion of the letter had surprised me, because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say that we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity." But she added that "my notes suggested that we had discussed her job."

So... Rove AND Libby were talking about this CIA agent being an agent... but its only a crime if they willfully harmed the USA by doing so?

Miller's Lawyer Says Aide Faces 'Problem' in CIA Probe

The people of Belgium have been left reeling by the first adult-only episode of the Smurfs, in which the blue-skinned cartoon characters' village is annihilated by warplanes.

Anyone who comes across a torrent of this, please post it.

PLEASE!

Telegraph | Unicef bombs the Smurfs in fund-raising campaign for ex-child soldiers

If you think of insurance as producing wasteful consumption of medical services, then the fact that there are forty-five million Americans without health insurance is no longer an immediate cause for alarm. After all, it’s not as if the uninsured never go to the doctor. They spend, on average, $934 a year on medical care. A moral-hazard theorist would say that they go to the doctor when they really have to. Those of us with private insurance, by contrast, consume $2,347 worth of health care a year. If a lot of that extra $1,413 is waste, then maybe the uninsured person is the truly efficient consumer of health care.
The moral-hazard argument makes sense, however, only if we consume health care in the same way that we consume other consumer goods, and to economists like Nyman this assumption is plainly absurd. We go to the doctor grudgingly, only because we’re sick. “Moral hazard is overblown,” the Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt says. “You always hear that the demand for health care is unlimited. This is just not true. People who are very well insured, who are very rich, do you see them check into the hospital because it’s free? Do people really like to go to the doctor? Do they check into the hospital instead of playing golf?”

The New Yorker: The Moral Hazard Myth

Decoding Health Insurance

By Robin Cook

New York Times

5.22.05

Nearly five years ago, President Bill Clinton had an all-star gathering at the White House to announce the completion of the first draft of the human genome's approximately 3.2 billion base pairs. Speaking to an audience that included eminent scientists like Dr. James Watson, who helped discover DNA, Mr. Clinton pronounced that "today we are learning the language in which God created life." Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain chimed in via satellite, "For most of us, today's developments are too awesome to comprehend."

Out from behind the wall of flames.

California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA)

This commercial is badass. I don't know much about Areva. But this commercial is just really fucking cool. Reminds me of something Edward Tufte would do.

I guess this is part of the campaign to build new nuclear reactors. You know what? It worked. I'm now pro-nuclear. That pretty cartoony happy-fun nuclear commercial has me sold. Also, I want to play sims now. And if I can get it that way I want my nucular in Blue. I think it would look good in blue.

Areva TV Ad: Super Cool

Among the memos that are absent is the only one written by Roberts in a box of documents about the Bob Jones University case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to revoke the school's tax-exempt status because it prohibited interracial dating; a memo he wrote on presidential pardons; and 20 of the 27 pages in a box of documents on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At least one Roberts document -- a copy of handwritten notes from a White House daily staff meeting -- was withheld on grounds of presidential executive privilege.In addition, the National Archives' chief archivist, Allen Weinstein, issued a statement saying that the library "has been unable to locate" one folder from Roberts's files, containing correspondence relating to affirmative action, since it was reviewed by administration officials in mid-July. Weinstein said library staff members appeared to have misplaced it but believed they were able to reconstruct its contents.

Jesus... i just wonder what was in these other documents?

Memo Cited 'Abortion Tragedy'