Until Tuesday, Web users who turned to search engines like Google and typed in the word Shanwei, the city with jurisdiction over the village where the demonstration was put down, would find nothing about the protests against power plant construction there, or about the crackdown. Users who continued to search found their browsers freezing. By Tuesday, links to foreign news sources appeared but were invariably inoperative.

But controls like these have spurred a lively commentary among China's fast-growing blogging community. "The domestic news blocking system is really interesting," wrote one blogger. "I heard something happened in Shanwei and wanted to find out whether it was true or just the invention of a few people. So I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn't do any searches." Baidu is one of the country's leading search engines.

If you remove the "hl=zh-CN" from that Google news search above you get VERY different results. There are some relevent links in the Chineese web search results right now, but the results seem odd given the amount of press coverage. This news search has relevent information, but its mostly coming from a handful of protesty news sources (peacehall & epoch times), same ones that show up in the google search, and not mainstream media. Its possible that these are approved dissenters. (Although VOA also shows up.) More totally unreliable information here. Stratfor has coverage here.

Beijing Casts Net of Silence Over Protest - New York Times

Richard Pryor, the caustic yet perceptive actor-comedian who lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off, died Saturday. He was 65.

Pryor died shortly before 8 a.m. of a heart attack after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.

Richard Pryor, Rest in Peace.

Comedian Richard Pryor Dies At 65

The 6th Amendment right to legal representation did not afford everyone "the most resourceful defense attorneys with bountiful investigative support."

"The 6th Amendment is satisfied when [defense] counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, thereby ensuring that criminal defendants receive a fair trial," he said.

This case is interesting... Muddy... IMHO If the state is going to kill you it ought to consider all of the evidence. The idea that it need not seems ignorant of the finality of death.

Alito and the Death Penalty

An unnamed Bush administration official told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward the identity of a CIA analyst almost a month before it was publicly revealed, the reporter said in a statement published Wednesday.

Woodward said he was contacted to testify after his source went to Fitzgerald to discuss his contact with Woodward related to the leak investigation.

In his statement, Woodward did not disclose the name of his source, citing the official's refusal to waive that aspect of their confidentiality pact. All three sources cleared the Pulitzer Prize-winner to testify, he said.

The plot thickens...

So if Woodward continues to refuse to disclose his source, are they going to toss him in jail? Keep in mind, this is one of the two reporters that blasted open Watergate. He is a much stronger target than Judith Miller, and it creates an interesting situation. When it came to Watergate, by not disclosing Felt's identity he was protecting a whistle-blower. This time around, it is to protect someone who was basically attempting a character assassination.

CNN.com - Bob Woodward: My CIA leak source not Libby

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.

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

Saturday night a suicide bomber blew himself up near a packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma. One person (the bomber) is dead and five others are injured. So far, as expected, there are very few details and the accuracy of many things is in question. The police are supposedly seeking two suspects described as middle-eastern that fled from the scene. There appears to be reason to believe that the bomb went off prematurely, and that the intent was to kill people as they exited the stadium after the game. There are rumors of a second bomb which the police found and the bomb squad detonated.

Reports are mixed. Some say it was an individual suicide while others say terrorism is suspected. I'm not drawing any conclusions... This story can be expect to develop.

If this was in fact a botched terrorist attack, would it make more sense to downplay it or make a big deal about it?

As the post points out, there are a number of connections between Norman, Oklahoma and the 9/11 terrorists.

Update: The bomber has been identified. Authorities are saying it was just an individual suicide. However, it seems confirmed that there were two bombs. Why would someone who was only trying to commit suicide in a flamboyant manor have two bombs? That implies at least two people and premeditation to kill more people than just himself. Strange. Also, nothing more about the two people the police were said to be searching for.

Another good round-up can be found at GatewayPundit.

Flopping Aces: Oklahoma Bombing (Round-Up Post)

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

This is really interesting, but one suspects wildly inaccurate. Dolphins that are trained to shoot people? Really? Even if its true I find it hard to believe that the Navy would have left them armed as the storm approached. They tend to have fairly careful security proceedures.

The news this past week has been unusually surreal. Between attack dolphins and weather machines, its getting a little hard to take anything seriously. Ok, so I wasn't taking the weather machine thing seriously. Maybe I took the SuicideGirls thing a little two seriously... But in the face of killer dolphins, I think I have some leeway to work with. I love these moments in time when everything sounds a little closer to fiction then reality. Somewhere between weather machines and killer dolphins, I hope to find the balance.

Update: The Navy denies trailing dolphins to attack humans or deliver bombs to ships. That means no suicide bomber dolphins.

The Observer | Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk.

The mice were unaccounted-for at the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government.

Health officials say 10 to 20 people in the United States contract plague each year, usually through infected fleas or rodents. It can be treated with antibiotics, but about one in seven U.S. cases is fatal. Bubonic plague is not contagious, but left untreated it can transform into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person.

Decius informed me of this earlier today. Its not as serious as it sounds.

Update: DefenseTech has a roundup of links about this.

Mice Infected With Bubonic Plague Missing in Jersey

Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee Judge John Roberts listens to a question from Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) during the second day of his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington September 13, 2005. Roberts was pressed by senators for his views on the strength of established legal precedent with regard to the controversial issue of abortion rights and the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion case. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

I think this is an edited photo. Otherwise, its worrying. The eyes are looking in different directions and have different pupil sizes. The left eye is focused on the camera, the right eye is focused on something off axis and upward in the distance...

The Crazy Eyes of Supreme Court Nominee Judge John Roberts on Flickr

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing.

Thomas Friedman checks in on Katrina and 9/11.

Osama and Katrina - New York Times