The prototype car offers one more demonstration that the only thing shackling us to gas-powered cars is the inability of our lawmakers to stop taking money from Big Oil and Big Auto.
According to Time magazine, it’s not Karl Rove, but 26-year-old Blake Gottesman, who became the president’s gopher-in-chief (body man) after dating Bush’s daughter Jenna in high school.
The former veep trounced potential candidates for the 2008 race in an unscientific DailyKos poll. The closest runner-up, Russ Feingold, pulled a mere 15%.
In a ruling that could have major implications for Bush’s faith-based initiatives, an Iowa judge ruled that an evangelical Christian prison rehabilitation program was “pervasively sectarian,” and that the state of Iowa “is excessively entangled with religion” through the program.
For all you Molly Ivins fans out there, listen in to this “Prairie Home Companion” segment as she talks about keeping her community of Austin “weird” and delivers a bizarre story involving a snake and amphetamines.
The real shocker is that our image has tanked even among people in countries closely allied with us. In Spain, only 23% have a positive opinion--down from 41% in 2005.
A well-connected Texas oil executive reaches out to Karl Rove and presto!--thus disappears a new rule designed to keep groundwater clear near drilling sites.
The Bush administration distanced itself from a remark by a senior State Department official who called the suicide of three detainees at the Cuba detention center a public relations move.
In a newly released report, the Vatican described same-sex marriages as an “eclipse of God,” and said that feminism “reinforced the individualistic image of man and woman” and in doing so was “surpassing the family.”
The southern Iraqi city of Basra, once a pro-American oasis, has now changed its tune as mafia-style warlords terrorize the population. It’s a reality check for the world in the wake of the euphoria that greeted Zarqawi’s death.
Members of the American Medical Association’s annual conference will call for a levy on the sweeteners put in sugary drinks to pay for a massive health education campaign.
The editors at Buzzflash argue that in displaying the picture of Zarqawi’s dead, bloated face the way it did, the Bush administration is once again displaying the same kind of sophomoric bravado ("Bring ’em on") that it used to its great detriment in the past.
Read Truthdig contributor Nir Rosen’s account of the life, death and intellectual underpinnings of Zarqawi.
Al Qaeda in Iraq said in a Web statement that a militant named Abu Hamza al Muhajer had been chosen as the group’s new leader. Nothing is immediately known about Muhajer, except that his last name is Arabic for immigrant, implying that he is not Iraqi.
We missed this one a few days ago: Congress allowed the FCC to raise by tenfold the fines it can impose on radio and TV stations that air raunchy content. The vote was nearly unanimous in both houses of Congress.
Remember what the “Southpark” creators told us: Horrible, despicable violence is OK, as long as you don’t use potty language.
The commander of the Guantanamo detention center said the three detainees who killed themselves were “committed” and had carried out “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.” Rights groups, however, said the men were driven by despair.
Veteran N.Y. Times political reporter Adam Nagourney, reporting from the blog conference in Las Vegas, writes that “the blogosphere has become for the left what talk radio has been for the right: a way of organizing and communicating to supporters.”
Chevron in the White House
