I thought Rumsfeld's response to Russert's question was weird and John just explained why.

MR. RUSSERT: The Times of London reports this morning that there have been two meetings between Iraqi and U.S. officials and some members of the insurgency. Is that accurate?

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Oh, I would doubt it. I think there have probably been many more than that...... They're not going to try to bring in the people with blood on their hands, for sure, but they certainly are reaching out continuously, and we help to facilitate those from time to time.

Don't all terrorists have blood on their hands?

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AmericaBlog: Reuters is reporting that top military leaders in Iraq have insisted absolutely NO talks have been started or contemplated between the US military and the insurgents.Rumsfeld chastised the news media for the attention given to the subject. "I must say, I've been impressed how overblown these meetings are, these, quote-unquote, meetings. I don't know anything about specific meetings on specific days, nor does General Casey," Rumsfeld said....read on

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff. Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington, said “military action was now seen as inevitable . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action”. Straw agreed with Dearlove. He said Bush had “made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin”.

via Rox Populi

Well Operation Yellow Elephant is producing results way past our expectaions. Steve Gilliard has more. AmericaBlog found that Grover Norquist attacked three GOP Senators over at the College Chickenhawks conference: Speaking to the same group a few hours later, party strategist Grover Norquist lambasted three Republicans who broke party ranks over the issue of judicial filibusters. He referred to them as "the two girls from Maine and the nut-job from Arizona" - Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and John McCain.

Way to go Grover, he must have read our Special Ops manual.

I have some more Special Ops planned after my encounter with the YRNC that helped to kick off the whole project. DU Top Ten Conservative Idiots of the Week was kind enough to list the project at #9. Check it out for a highlight. I've almost got a radio talk show host commited to go down to Las Vegas and set up shop for the July 6-10 convention. Stay tuned...

C&L now has four servers running to try and keep up with the bandwidth. It looks like a new one is not far away. The Weekly Stats Report: 20 Jun - 26 Jun 2005 shows that we averaged 117,582 page loads, 66,687 unique visitors, and 38,316 first time visitors a day on StatCounter. Totals vary on Blogads, Site Meter, and Radio Userland as well.

I wanted to give you an update after the donation drive to see what is happening.

I enjoy hearing the right wing hackers trying to feign outrage over The Truth about Hillary. Sean Hannity is appalled that Klein chose such intimate and unsubstantiated personal attacks against her that even the man with more morals than Jesus was not buying it. Yet, as he tries to scold Klein about the book he made sure that ever sordid detail which he found so offensive got out into the public discourse. A back handed way to promote your propaganda and deny it at the same time.

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TNR (reg.req.) says "another problem is conservatives have loved nothing more than to brandish Klein's credentials as a member of the liberal media elite.....But a truer test of the right's recent Hillaryphilia is on the way. National Review reports that Dick Morris has another Hillary takedown coming soon. If conservatives have, with their response to Klein's book, accidentally created sympathy for New York's junior senator among swing voters, then another Clinton-bashing publishing phenomenon will send only one message to those people: Hillary '08."

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This might be the case too, and the toe sucking Dick Morris is also writing scathing attacks on Mr. Klein which is probably motivated by his unease at the diluding of the Clinton marketplace he makes a living off of. (Remember that Klein made a few bucks writing attack books on the Kennedy's) Dick is probably worried that he will have to wait for Chelsea to come of age so he can get some new material.

What happens when another religious group tries to put up a monument of their own, possibly side by side to the Texas Ten Commandments pillar? What then?

Watching the clip on This Week, I forgot that Billy Graham is a Democrat. The right wing fake preachers have tried so hard to steal religion as their own and the media has givien them the license to do it. emailer Frank says: I can't believe Cal Thomas, Doctor Laura and James Dobson aren't calling for Graham's scalp.

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Splitting 5-4 in the first of two rulings on government displays of the Ten Commandments, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal court order against a display of the religious document on the wall of a courthouse in Kentucky.

Jeralyn is blogging up a storm on all the cases that came before the "high" court. No sense in picking out one single post.

The Carpetbagger Report: A win for separation of church and state.

Greg writes :Supreme Court Swings Both Ways on Hot Church-State Action

I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes," said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. "I don't think they want to get involved in a political fight." Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, "I don't think it's the Nats that get hurt. I think it's Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions" from anti-trust laws.----------------

Is he saying what I think he is saying? Right wing owners good , left wing owners bad...so bad we'll screw you, we'll screw you good. I watched a great baseball game last night between the Yanks and Mets. There's no politics involved when Randy Johnson takes the mound and Mike Piazza steps up to the plate. As the Stakeholder says: Apparently the government can have a hand in the free market after all....

emailer mw says: What would happen if Moon bought the Nationals?