Thunderbolts and the wrath of God. In recognition of God's recent lightning strikes against gay-fearing Boy Scouts, we bring you the NOAA's Lightning Safety page.

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Woefully uninformed. "One summer weekend in 1998 at the family estate at Kennebunkport, Me., former president George H. W. Bush introduced his ambitious son George W. to a 43-year-old political science professor, Condoleezza Rice. One of the rare African-American women in the field of Soviet studies, she was rarer still for her archly conservative views. She had interrupted a teaching career at Stanford to work from 1989 until 1991 on the elder Bush's National Security Council staff as a specialist on Russian and East European affairs, and remained a vocal Bush loyalist. George W. Bush was planning on running for the White House and was woefully uninformed about world politics. At Kennebunkport, the politician and academic hit it off right away, and Rice was entrusted with a vital task: 'to instruct and protect G.W. at his most vulnerable,' as a friend put it. How the woman who became his National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State has fulfilled that trust has had fateful consequences for the United States, other nations, and not least for George W. Bush."

From a fascinating article about Condoleeza Rice's involvement in Rovegate by Roger Morris.

{ 9:42 AM }

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"Bin Laden at Tora Bora is a subject that is very sensitive in Bush Administration circles, especially as it appears that bin Laden was allowed to escape." — Xymphora

{ 9:38 AM }

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Protect the homeland by closing the restaurants! Last year we wrote about Ibrahim Parlak, a Kurdish restaurateur in Harbert, Michigan, who was taken into custody for supposedly posing some threat to United States security through his delicious Middle Eastern food.

Since they couldn't hold him in jail, things are taking a turn toward a typical Rovian smear-and-destroy campaign: if you can't deport him, take away his livelihood (Dennis Cogswell, Herald-Palladium, reg. req'd):

Frustrated because they have been unable to get Ibrahim Parlak deported to Turkey as a terrorist, federal officials are now going after the Harbert restaurant owner's business and family, his spokesman claims.

Martin Dzuris of New Buffalo says Department of Homeland Security agents went to the Michigan Liquor Control Commission (MLCC) in order to have Parlak's liquor license at the Cafe Gulistan revoked. "They're going full out against his business, his family, everything," Dzuris said. "You fight in court, you don't try to take away people's livelihoods."

He said he learned of the Homeland Security involvement from someone in the MLCC and added the wording of the complaint against Parlak is very similar to that in charges filed against him by the federal agency.

"If they can't get you through the courts, they'll make your life miserable," Dzuris said. "That's not the way the system is supposed to work. That's (the possible loss of the liquor license) going to kill his business."

[...]

"We don't have a personal vendetta," [Homeland Security spokesman Greg] Palmore said. "We abide by due process.

"Our job is to protect the homeland. There is nothing personal about this. We're going about our task, which is to uphold the law."

[...]

Ibrahim Parlak, 43, is free on $50,000 bond while he appeals a judge's order deporting him to Turkey because of his ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which was declared a terrorist group in 1997.

Homeland Security claims Parlak failed to disclose his conviction in Turkey for Kurdish separatist activities when he was granted asylum in the U.S. in 1992.

With the liquor license issue undecided, Dzuris said Parlak has been unable to open an addition to the restaurant because it would have to be included under the license.

"He's got all his money invested in an addition he can't use. By the time he can use it, the (tourist) season will be over."

Dzuris said the Parlak brothers want nothing more than to be left alone.

"All they want is what so many immigrants want - to run away from persecution and live free."

Unfortunately, Ibrahim Parlak did not own a magic time machine in 1992 when he was granted asylum in the US. Otherwise he would have known that five years later the Kurdistan Workers' Party would be declared a terrorist group and that he would be held somehow accountable for their actions.

Interestingly, neither did George W Bush own a magic time machine in August 2001 while he was on his annual month-long vacation. Yet he was mysteriously not held accountable for the breach of homeland security that happened a month later, despite receiving a personal memo with the headline: "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US."

It all goes to show — when it comes to Homeland Security, the incompetence of this administration is destroying lives left and right.

⇒ More on Ibrahim Parlak at the Chicago Sun-Times from Carol Marin.

{ 4:39 PM }

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Paging Senator Durbin. Not so long ago, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin made an ill-timed tearful public apology for rightfully calling our attention to behavior like this:

Prosecutors have focused on an incident caught in published photographs, when the two [interrogating] men allegedly cornered a naked detainee and allowed the dogs to bite him on each thigh as he cowered in fear.

The dog handlers [at Abu Ghraib] also allegedly participated in a "contest" to see who could make more detainees urinate or defecate on themselves, but defense attorneys contended that there is no actual witness to such a game and that the claims were merely rumors that spread throughout the prison.

One possible reason there was no actual witness to such a game (yet) is because the Pentagon suppresses evidence.

The Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib connection could hardly be clearer. "Bad apple" Lynndie England could not have invented the interrogation techniques at Guantanamo — the few bad apples are in the White House, Cabinet, and Pentagon.

The disconnect between the detainees and any actual national threat of terrorism, coupled with therse extreme interrogation techniques, is a form of American barbarianism.

Senator Durbin, don't apologize to barbarians. Choose your words more carefully, and go back and talk about this issue until the real guilty parties are held accountable.

{ 11:51 AM }

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