The Agonist: The Iraq Study Group says the U.S. should leave one of these days...

BobGeiger.com: In what has become a routine event, the cultish bloggers for Bush have been proven wrong again...

The Brad Blog: An audit of Sarasota county's touch-screen voting machines has found several discrepancies, most prominently in Florida's disputed 13th Congressional District race

Hoffmania! "San Francisco Values"

The Intersection: Scalia, clown of Climate Science and self-confessed IDIOT

HOLY CRAP: Yet another Christianist pedophile (though not yet in rehab)...Alabama license plates...Catholic neocons went to Rome to try to sell the war to the Vatican...

A Chicago leader of a group of victims abused by priests plans to travel to Rome today to protest the participation of ousted Boston Cardinal Bernard Law in funeral services for Pope John Paul II. Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests will be part of a group protesting the inclusion of Law, who resigned from the Boston archdiocese in 2002 amid the unfolding priest sex abuse scandal. Law had reassigned priests despite abuse allegations against them.

Still a cardinal with a vote for pope, Law will preside over one of nine daily masses Monday at the Rome church where John Paul II appointed him archpriest. "Our concern is that many Catholics going there don't know the history with Cardinal Law and that's why we want to inform them," Blaine said.

Friday March 4, 2005 8:16 PM

ROME (AP) - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Friday that he has asked the U.S. ambassador for an explanation about the shooting death of an Italian intelligence officer in Iraq, shortly after an Italian hostage was freed from her Iraqi captors.

``Given that the fire came from an American source I called in the American ambassador,'' Berlusconi told reporters. ``I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility.''

We are trying to check this story out for more details before commenting...

ROME - Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena survived a month of captivity and horror at the hands of Iraqi insurgents, but little could she imagine the terror that lay just ahead: A shrapnel wound when American troops opened fire on the speeding car carrying her to freedom. read on

Military says driver warned to stop
The U.S. military said the car was speeding as it approached a coalition checkpoint in western Baghdad at 8:55 p.m. It said soldiers shot into the engine block only after trying to warn the driver to stop by “hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots.”

What a sad, sad story....

Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has described how she came under a "hail of gunfire" moments after being released from her Iraqi abductors in Baghdad."I was especially shocked because we thought that by then the danger was past," she told Italy's Rai radio. Ms Sgrena, who was wounded in the incident, has been sent to a military hospital in Rome for an operation. She denied US military accounts that the car was speeding past a checkpoint when it was fired upon.

US President George W Bush has pledged to fully investigate the shooting, in which a senior Italian security agent, Nicola Calipari, died.

I have a feeling that this story is going to tip Italy out of Iraq.

(Update) !

via Bloomberg: Sgrena told Rome prosecutors Franco Ionta and Pietro Saviotti that the shots didn't come from soldiers standing at a checkpoint.

`It wasn't a checkpoint, but a patrol that started shooting after pointing some lights in our direction,'' the Ansa news agency cited Sgrena as telling the prosecutors. ``We hadn't previously encountered any checkpoint and we didn't understand where the shots came from.'' ...

via Direland: Dramatic breaking news from Europe: the Nouvel Observateur 's daily news bulletin reports in a Saturday afternoon posting that Scregna says the conduct of the car in which she was being transported to liberty couldn't possibly justify the fusillade that riddled it and its occupants with bullets. "Our car was rolling along at normal speed, so it was impossible for there to have been a misunderstanding," Scregna told the Italian magistrates who've been charged with investigating the murderous incident, according to the Italian wire service Ansa-- which also says her account has been confirmed by one of the Italian secret service agents in the car with her, who was likewise wounded.

via Turkish Press: The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.

(Update): E&P adds this.

This is a terrible story. I don't want to judge this tragedy too early. These articles are all International.

U.S. bars Italians from examining victim’s car

ROME — The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday. Corriere della Sera said that the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command on Monday to abort the mission for security concerns.

SAN FRANCISCO - New York Yankees (news) slugger Jason Giambi injected himself with human growth hormone in 2003 and also used steroids for at least three seasons, according to his grand jury testimony reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The testimony given in December 2003 to the federal grand jury investigating BALCO contradicts Giambi's public proclamations that he never used performance-enhancing drugs.

Giambi described how he injected human growth hormone in his stomach, testosterone into his buttocks, rubbed an undetectable steroid knows as "the cream" on his body and placed drops of another, called "the clear," under his tongue, the Chronicle reported on its Web site Wednesday night.

Giambi testified that he obtained several different steroids from Barry Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is one of four men indicted by the grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. He said he got the human growth hormone from a gym in Las Vegas.

Anderson's attorney, Tony Serra, declined comment to the Chronicle, citing a court order.

Is Barry Bond's far behind? What should be the consequences for these players actions? Will they be suspended, fined! Should their contracts be nullfied? I say so. You don't get a hundred and twenty million dollar contract for hitting singles and doubles. There's a talk show host named Jim Rome who jokingly says "if you're not cheating, you're not trying." Well I guess he tried a little too hard. Will there be major backlash to the sport, that has shown an increase in popularity again in recent years? Or will the fans not care. The rumors have been flying since 1994, when hitters like Raphael Palmero who from 1986 to1992 hit a combined 95 hr's. Then from 93' till 04' averaged 38 hr's the rest of his career. We aren't' saying Mr. Palmero is a steroid user, but certainly the amount of HR's that increased throughout the league after that season has been a cause of major debate for some time.

From Sfgate:

Both Giambis testified that they had already used steroids before they met Anderson or heard of BALCO, and they said they were drawn to the trainer because of Bonds' success.

Bonds has denied using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.