This looks like a pretty good use of Oregon tax money: Law would jail war protesters as terrorists. It mentions that Police unions oppose the bill, too. They fear the effect it could have on police relations with "vulnerable" populations. Stupidity transcends ideology. At a recent protest/march here in San Diego, a woman protester with a baby in a stroller and a dog on a leash was wandering too close to traffic in adjacent lanes, and a cop on a horse kept telling her to stay inside the lines, away from the moving vehicles that could run her and her charges over. She ignored him and gave him the peace sign.

For those who may not have caught this: The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld. Here's an excerpt:

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity 
               As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
               But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

Bush and his religion: This passage from Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" has been bothering me for a couple of weeks. It's about Bush's first meeting with Vladimir Putin:

In an interview, he [Bush] described his first meeting with Putin on June 16, 2001, in Ljubljana, Slovenia: [Bush talking:] "And in comes Putin, and he sits down, ... And he wants to get started. And I said, 'Let me say something about what caught my attention, Mr. President, was that your mother gave you a cross which you had blessed in Israel, the Holy Land.' And he said, 'It's true.' I said that amazed me, that here you were a Communist, a KGB operative, and yet you were willing to wear a cross. 'That speaks volumes to me, Mr. President.' "...And he [Putin] said, 'The rest of the story is, is that I was wearing my cross. I hung it on a dacha. The dacha burned down, and the only thing I wanted recovered was the cross.' And he said, 'I remember the workman's hand openning, and there was the cross that my mother had given me, as if it was meant to be.' And I think I told him then, I said, 'Well, that's the story of the cross as far as I'm concerned. Things are meant to be.' [Still Bush talking:] "He then went immediately to Soviet debt, how unfair it was that Russia is saddled with Soviet Union debt, and can we help. I was more interested in, who is this person I'm dealing with. I wanted to make sure that the story of the cross was a true story." ...Putin showed the cross to Bush a month later at a meeting in Genoa, Italy.

So here, in his very first meeting with the Russian President, George Bush insists on setting aside pressing matters of international diplomacy in order to have church chat. He's more interested in Putin's religious superstitions than in governmental affairs. I have nothing against the President having his own religious convictions, but am I alone in thinking that his decisions as a political leader should be made a little closer to the Earth? What frightens me about George Bush is that he believes he is guided by God. This is a recipe for disastrous overconfidence. To Bush, his "victory" in the 2000 election is not an accident of the electoral system, it is a gift from God. One would think that a President who lost the popular vote might act with a dose of humility. But Bush's mandate does not come from the American people. It comes from God. How can he truly make a mistake when the hand of God is guiding him? Enter the New American Century, brought to us by our Pope, Prophet and President, George W. Bush.

From The New Yorker: Hendrik Hertzberg is a great commentator, but for investigative gold you might look to Seymour Hersh. His stuff regularly provokes the ire of those in the Bush Administration whose ire is most worth provoking. His most recent piece is pretty scathing, and reportedly pissed off Donald Rumsfeld right good and proper. Also good is this Hersh piece from last week, in which we learn how stupid or deceptive (take your pick) the Bush Administration and the CIA really are. He discusses how the documents that were supposed to prove that Iraq bought a bunch of Uranium from Niger were obviously false. Ridiculously, obviously false. It says that throughout the documents

the problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that "they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."

I just watched a documentary on the Canadian channel "News World" which described how George Bush "drools" when he thinks about Iraqi oil. They provided no footage of the alleged drooling. The show included interviews with a French-speaking "Americanologist" who described her theory that the US is really invading Iraq in order to ensure an extra line of oil supply, because the supply of Saudi oil prevents the US from taking a hard line on Saudi Arabia over terrorism. The idea is that the "liberation" of Iraq will send a strong warning to Saudi Arabia, and will free the US to take action if future connections are established between the Saudi government and terrorist activities. Tres interresant.