The violation of the no-fly zone Wednesday led more than 30,000 people to quickly leave the White House complex, the Capitol and the Supreme Court and triggered an eight-minute "red alert" at the White House.

At the time, Bush was riding a bicycle at a wildlife center in suburban Maryland and wasn't told of the alert until after he had completed his ride at 12:50

According to the latest campaign finance report, Wal-Mart has spent more than $280,000 trying to overturn one local ordinance. This makes this little local election the most expensive in Flagstaff's history. The Wal-Mart money is spent on full-page newspaper ads and mailings, both full of vicious Orwellian rhetoric implying that a zoning ordinance that limits store size is somehow the same as burning books. Yeah, go figure.

So, when H. Lee Scott Jr. says that Wal-Mart doesn't do that sort of thing anymore, he's a liar....I'm so surprised.

well sir I believe THAT would be crossing the line into the realm of improbability Fafblog!

Oh, this can't be true!

Spying on you at the library, indefinite detainment, torture, preventive wars on the wrong country, oh sure I can see that. But nuking Iran? Well that'd just be crazy.

Legislating From the Bench   Balkinization

President Bush demonstrated his usual capacity for double-speak when he praised Judge John Roberts as a jurist who would "not legislate from the bench." As note on this blog and more extensively in Keck, THE MOST ACTIVIST SUPREME COURT IN HISTORY (mandatory reading during the confirmation hearings), the Rehnquist Court does nothing but "legislate from the bench" with Justices Thomas and Scalia being the most active judicial legislators. Consider the numerous areas in which they impose or would impose limits on state and federal officials.

1. They insist most campaign finance laws are unconstitutional.
2. They insist that most regulations of advertising are unconstitutional.
3. They insist that state legislatures can do little to protect abortion clinices from organized mayhem.
4. Thomas has suggested that elected officials have very limited capacity to regulate handguns.
5. They would use the fifth amendment to dramatically limit the capacity of local legislatures to pursue urban redevelopment.
6. They regard the fifth amendment as also limiting environmental regulations and limiting conditions that local legislatures can attach to private development.
7. They insist that affirmative action is unconstitutional, even though the persons responsible for the equal protection clause passed numerous laws providing special benefits to persons of color. nuking Iran? Well that'd just be crazy.

Conservatives like Malkin will go to the ends of the earth to blame brown people for all the problems in the world.

It's no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave - Loudoun County, Va., California's Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters - also happen to be some of the nation's largest illegal-alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Regional reports across the country have decried the subprime meltdown's impact on illegal-immigrant "victims." A July report showed that in seven of the ten metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, Hispanics represented at least one third of the population; in two of those areas - Merced and Salinas-Monterey, Calif. - Hispanics comprised half the population. The amnesty-promoting National Council of La Raza and its Development Fund have received millions in federal funds to "counsel" their constituents on obtaining mortgages with little to no money down; the group almost succeeded in attaching a $10-million earmark for itself in one of the housing bills past this spring...read on

The National Review should be ashamed to print this garbage, but we all know their history on racial issues. This is why Latino voters need to turn out in huge numbers this November.

I'd say more, but Digby spells it out for Michelle.

I guess Malkin has never heard of something called "No Doc" loans which mean No Income, No Asset, No employment Verification. It's got nothing to do with immigration.

And, like most racists, she forgets herself from time to time and forgets to distinguish between illegal immigrants and Mexican Americans. It makes no difference to her, of course, but they are usually a bit more scrupulous in their obfuscation.

The idea that the trillion dollar credit crunch was caused by illegal immigrants is so ludicrous that I can't stop laughing.....This meme is absurd, but it's the only way the conservatives can explain things within their world view. And there's nothing new here. The historical American resistance to government action is historically tied to a reluctance give money to people of color...

It's astounding how little attention Afghanistan gets.

A roadside bomb killed three service members and a local-national interpreter in a coalition convoy in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition said.

With the deaths, the number of foreign forces in Afghanistan killed in June has reached 39, the highest monthly toll of the war, according to a CNN count of official figures.

The bombing occurred Thursday in the Sayed Abad District in Wardak province during a combat patrol.

The comes after a breathtaking piece in th LA Times this week:

Insurgent activity is increasing sharply in Afghanistan and has spread into once stable areas, with attacks up almost 40% in the eastern provinces alone, according to new American military data that have prompted alarm among senior Pentagon officials.

Rising attacks against Afghan and NATO troops in the east represent the latest in a series of troubling developments that have led to markedly higher U.S. casualties and have prompted the military's top leadership to order a review of its strategy in Afghanistan, including how to make do with limited numbers of American troops.

The Stranger: Joe Lieberman never forgets a favor.

Tomgram: One man's online journey through Bush's Alphabet Soup

The Left Coaster: Senate Republicans filibustered a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies. Oh, and they also blocked attempts to extend tax incentives for companies pursuing renewable energy development.

at-Largely: A Bush administration deal with the extremist Saudi government for US nuclear tecnology.

Whiskey Fire: The dauntless truth seekers of Wingnuttia

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: bloggy, his vorpal sword, bookforum, vidiot speak

I don't know what this means other than something the Bush administration will grab it with both hands to further their aggression towards Iran.

NYTimes:

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained "a matter of serious concern" and that Iran continued to owe the agency "substantial explanations."

The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be intended more for military use than for energy generation.

Part of the agency's case hinges on 18 documents listed in the report and presented to Iran that, according to Western intelligence agencies, indicate the Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing and a missile warhead design - activities that could be associated with constructing nuclear weapons.

"There are certain parts of their nuclear program where the military seems to have played a role," said one senior official close to the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic constraints. He added, "We want to understand why."

The atomic energy agency's report highlights the amount of work still to be done before definitive conclusions about the nature of the program can be made, a task that the official associated with the agency said would require months.

If the IAEA is getting their information from a corrupted US intelligence agency (much like the UN was given "intelligence" on Iraq that came primarily from Curveball), I would hope that they double and triple check sources before issuing their final report.

Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-N.J.) Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act seemed like the kind of bill that should sail through Congress. The legislation would help local governments pay for paper trails and audits for electronic voting machines, adding safeguards to potential recounts and a layer of integrity to the election process.

Indeed, Holt’s bill was so obviously worthwhile, when it came for a vote in the House Administration Committee a few weeks ago, even House Republicans voted for it — unanimously.

It was a very encouraging development. Five years ago, Holt nearly passed a similar bill, before it was blocked by far-right lawmakers. That the bill cleared committee unanimously suggested the elections in 2008 would not be marred by some of the problems we’ve seen in recent cycles. Finally, something everyone could agree on.

Or not.

[T]wo weeks later, those same Republican members voted against moving the bill to the House floor. It would have taken a two-thirds vote to push the bill to the floor; with most House Republicans opposed, the bill didn’t make it that far. [...]

The result: The elections in November will likely be marred by the same accusations of fraud and error involving voting machines that arose in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential race.

And we'll know who tried to help -- and who got in the way.

Altercation:

The Federici family and the E Street family have requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. The fund's website is now up and running, where it is described as "dedicated to the research and development of new and effective treatments for melanoma through funding for additional clinical trials based upon Danny's melanoma treatments and other methods headed by Dr. Paul Chapman [at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center]. Our other objective is to raise awareness for this aggressive disease."

I met Danny before he got back together with Springsteen's band in the 90's and he was a very kind and gentle man who really loved his music and his family.

Today is the anniversary of my mom's passing away. She suffered with Diabetes (a terrible disease) for many, many years which left her legally blind for a while and in April of 2003---she was diagnosed with a form of bone cancer that quickly spread throughout her body.

I was fortunate enough to talk with her on the phone for a few minutes the day before she died and I was able to tell her how much I loved her. She was barely lucid yet somehow knew I was on the phone. "I can hear you, Johnny. I'm not in pain," she said. " I'm proud of you." " I love you mom," was all I could say. "Johnny, I have to go," and then she drifted off.

She was like many Italian moms in New York, marrying a guy named Rocky and raising two kids in the early fifties. She valued family above all, was semi-religious and was one of the many working class moms that handled the checkbook and worked a second job whenever possible to help make ends meet.

She had an inner strength about her that I never really understood or appreciated until I started to have my own physical problems and made the rounds through our health care system. She had to take insulin twice a day just to stay alive and endured many experimental eye surgery's in Manhattan and Johns Hopkins in the early eighties just to try and stave off blindness---which in the end was the one thing that scared her the most. But she always fought through it and lived many years beyond the conventional medical predictions.

She died comfortably with my sister and father (they were married for over 50 years) at her side as I traveled to Florida to see her. I don't usually write these type of posts, but I just wanted to say, "I miss you, Mom."

03/12/1930--04/23/2004

Josephine Amato RIP

...are we allowed to examine it? I'm not talking about a swiftboating, but actually take a look at his flight record as a pilot before Vietnam. Is that fair game? I'm just asking because the Media will report on what his campaign feeds them and call it the 'Re-branding of John McCain' or something like that instead of a political maneuver before the general election.

Here's the full text of the speech.

Matt hears a little dog whistle politics.

Update: Jane writes about his speech:

He goes on to admit that he was "surprised" by developments in Iraq. Kind of like Dick Cheney was "surprised" when we weren't greeted as liberators.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Worlds collided on Sunday and I found myself actually agreeing with George Will. Apparently, EVERYONE on the This Week with George Stephanopoulos agreed with George Will when he posited Will's Law:

WILL: Can I propose Will’s Law? We can all agree on this. Three liberals and Will. Will’s Law is that no company, such as JPMorgan now, or BearStearns, that is getting substantial subvention from the federal government shall be allowed to pay any of its executives for than the GS-15, that’s $124,000. That would stop the run to Washington.

REICH: That sounds pretty good to me.

[crosstalk]

REICH: Let me say one other thing. I think the Will’s Law ought to be expanded to include oil companies should not get extra money from the government, pharmaceutical companies should not have their research and development subsidized by the government. We should have no corporate welfare, at all in this country.

WILL: For it.

REICH: Well, good. Well, let’s go forward. I think we have a great deal of agreement.

Absolutely brilliant. Can you imagine how Kenny Boy Lay would have reacted if he had to accept a mere $124K during the Enron scandal?