On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … " The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

Now they're going after churches for preaching peace? It's okay if they support blowing people up? Funny, I don't remember seeing "Thou shalt not kill (unless you have a war, then it's okay)" in the Commandments. I don't remember seeing "Turn the other cheek, but if he hits that one too, you can kick the crap out of him," in the New Testament either.

Antiwar Sermon Brings IRS Warning - Los Angeles Times

At a maximum of 96 feet tall, the turbines can be placed in industrial areas where taller propeller turbines are not allowed. The speed of the blades is very low, making them less noisy and less dangerous to birds, officials said. In fact, they said no dead or injured birds have ever been found at the sites of their test models west of Cheyenne.

Cool. And they've got ones rated to produce a megawatt? Sounds like they're really onto something.

Cheyenne firm's wind turbines get makeover

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

Bluntly, it was recognized well before the war in Iraq started that it would have nothing to do with the war or terror. Since we also know that those WMDs were a lie, what then was the valid reason for going into Iraq?

To put that in plainer terms, with no national security interest, those interests were being easily handled under the UN sanctions US presence in the gulf already, and certainly nothing amounting to either a clear or present danger, the war in Iraq is best classified as "waging agressive war."

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions - New York Times

"You can't squeeze $3.7 billion out of this state to pay this bill. Period. That would be difficult for us on a good day," the spokeswoman, Denise Bottcher, told USA TODAY.

Staffers for the governor "about fell over" Wednesday night when they received the Federal Emergency Management Agency's estimate of the state's costs for hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Mark Merritt, a consultant working for Blanco.

Yep, FEMA supplies aid, they just do it late, poorly and then charge you back while you're trying to re-build. Forget it.

Louisiana can't pay Katrina, Rita bills

Rep. Tom DeLay's office tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff get a high-level Bush administration meeting for Indian clients, an effort that succeeded after the tribes began making a quarter-million dollars in donations.

Can you say "bribe?"

AP: DeLay's Staff Tried to Help Abramoff

Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

Let's avoid any of those inconvenient "laws" things and just do any damned thing that occurs to us. Why don't other people like us very much? Because we tout "rule of law" and "democracy" and "liberty" and then pull crap like this.

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

DeLay's attorneys cited 34 political contributions Perkins has made to Democrats since 2000, including donations to MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group that has waged a campaign against DeLay.

Perkins has said that his contributions to MoveOn.org were made before it launched its anti-DeLay campaign. Prosecutors also argue that six of the contributions were wrongly counted twice by DeLay's attorneys.

DeLay and his associates are a

So let me see if I have this right. DeLay, under indictment for money laundering. The judge is no good because he's a democrat, and that means he will be biased against him.

So here's the catch. Judges in Texas are elected, so they're either Democrats or Republicans. If DeLay gets a recusal on this one, then bag the Texas judiciary because the whole state is going to be a problem.

DeLay Lawyers Say Judge Should Be Removed - Yahoo! News

saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.

Once again, dubya demonstrates why Crawford needs their villiage idiot back. The current strain of bird flu is a great hazard to birds, and probably to the people who handle them, but making a vaccine for the current strain will do a whole lot of nothing other than throw yet more money down a hole.

Funding research is one thing, and creating a system to produce vaccines faster than the current system is a good idea, except the way to actually DO that would be to put it under the direct control of either CDC or NIH, and I think that'd be a bit too much socialized medicine for these guys. If this goes through it is yet another windfall for pharmaceutical companies and yet another shovel to the back of the head for everyone else.

Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

Rule: Don't piss off the guys at The Onion.

Onion Weekend Edition

George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

OMG! Sulu's gay! Well, they had a lech as captain, a grumpy russian at weapons, a green blooded repressed guy at science, the black chick, a country bumpkin doctor, I guess all that was left was someone to be gay. Makes sense in a weird way.

George Takei Discloses His Homosexuality - Yahoo! News