This would have been great for Crowleymas, but I suppose it's better late than never.

The Yale Herald - Oct 24, 2003 - Of skulls and bones: More secrets of the tomb: "An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch] Bush entered and started to dig...Pat[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself...I showered and hit the hay...a happy man...'' So recounts a document thought to be an internal record from the Skull and Bones Society. "Pat[riarch] Bush" is Prescott Bush, father of an American political dynasty. His "trophy" is the skull of Geronimo, the Native American spiritual and military leader laid to rest in 1909 at Fort Still, Oklahoma, where Bush and fellow Bonesmen were stationed nine years later.

RedNova News: Tech Ignorance Leads to Wrong Conviction: "McDanel was convicted in a nonjury trial on June 25, 2002. His sentence of 16 months was the maximum at the time; the limit is now two years. 'What's happened here is you have this perfect storm of a vague statute, a kind of general ignorance about computers and computer security and a system where prosecutors get a lot of press and money for pursuing computer crime cases,' Granick said. For instance, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act bars anyone from sending information, with the intent to cause damage, to a protected computer. But the law's definition of damage includes 'impairment to integrity' of a system or data - a phrase so ambiguous that a judge in an unrelated 2000 case resorted to a dictionary for clarification. In McDanel's case, prosecutors claimed and the judge agreed that 'impairment to integrity' includes the publication of a security vulnerability. In other words, the conviction hinged on McDanel's message, not just his method. 'He let people know it was insecure,' said Granick, who is executive director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. 'And that required them to fix it and deal with angry customers - the theory being they didn't have to fix it as long as nobody knew about it.'"

In case you were wondering, the answer is no: archaic, irrational and destructive attitudes toward and ideas about sex are not dead, but are alive and well in the youth of France. VIGNEUX-SUR-SEINE, France — The boys were patient, standing in line and waiting their turn to rape. [NYTimes]

In the recent court case, the assault on the two girls was either oral or anal; vaginal sex would have stolen the girls' virginity, which apparently was not the goal of the attackers. "In many cases, the violence of a band of young men against a girl is considered a rite of sexual initiation to prove one's manhood," said Hugues Lagrange, a sociologist at the Center for Scientific Research in Paris who specializes in adolescent sexuality. "In the boys' minds, if a girl's virginity is respected, then nothing bad has happened."

I love it when fundamentalists talk. Especially when they attempt to make analoges:

Fundies Say the Darndest Things!: "OTOH, if they simply cannot control themselves and they are compelled to go rut in the bushes with everything they meet like animals in heat, then they takes their chances with whatever they get. Blaming that kind of behavior on the Catholic Church [spreading misinformation about condoms] is like blaming Smith & Wesson for somebody that plays Russian roulete with one of their pistols." - Claudius Lysias, ChristianForums

So, to complete his analogy, Smith & Wesson should be free to misprint the instructions on every gun they sell, and perhaps publish warnings that "keeping the safety 'on' may cause gun to fire accidentally." This would match up well with the Catholic church's "Condoms cause AIDS" educational campaign in Africa. The site linked above is great. I had a really hard time choosing a quote for this entry, because there are so many great ones .

Ashcroft Briefed Regularly on Inquiry Into C.I.A. Leak [NYTimes]. Congressional Democrats are concerned that a very hands-on Ashcroft could seriously stifle the independence of the Plame-thing investigation. They also question the Justice Department's use of the Patriot Act. So, of course, the Honorable Senator Orrin Hatch, of the Great State of Utah, had to chime in:

At the hearing, Mr. Wray and two top federal prosecutors said that the Patriot Act was a vital tool for the Justice Department to gain and share intelligence about terrorist suspects. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who heads the judiciary committee, blamed "intellectual babbling" and distortions and misrepresentations by opponents of the measure for public unease about it.

It's really too bad I don't live in Utah any more. I miss being able to vote for Orrin. When's he going to run for President?

Here's a concise statement of the Clark "scandals" I've been mentioning:

GOP Wannabe Clark Caught in Lie (What, again??): "GOP Wannabe Clark Caught in Lie (What, again??) NewsMax.com ^ | 9/23/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff Posted on 09/23/2003 12:36 PM PDT by kattracks Presidential contender Wesley Clark has claimed, 'I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.' Not true. As Fox News Channel's excellent Brit Hume pointed out last night, Weekly Standard has noted that the White House, which logs every incoming phone call, has no record of Clark ever calling Rove. Nor does Rove recall speaking with Clark."

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

This is a great story:

Spinsanity - How media myths are created: The continuing saga of the Wesley Clark phone call narrative: "Following the dramatic success of such a campaign against Vice President Al Gore in 2000, the latest target is Democratic presidential contender General Wesley Clark, who is being tagged as an inveterate liar based on statements that were at worst simply unclear."

I've been following this struggling "Wesley Clark lied" story for a while, and it still doesn't make any sense, even though it is now several unrelated stories which don't make sense, and they continue not making sense when read backwards, upside down, or with one eye closed. I also tried doing the magic-eye thing; no dice. I've come up with an allegorical version of the scandal to help me figure it out, using the characters Bob, Alice and Nancy, who are about to attend their high school prom.

Headline: "Bob lied about calling Nancy" Perhaps he was trying to look tough, to impress the other guys, but it looks like bob is in hot water tonight, and his chances with Alice may be in jeopardy unless he can explain certain phone calls that he did not make to Nancy. According to Nancy's brother Todd, when he found out that Bob was asking Alice to the prom, he was confused. Todd says he asked Bob: "Hey, Bob, I thought you liked Nancy. Why are you going with Alice?" According to Todd, Bob replied (winking), "If Nancy had returned my phone calls I would have gone with her." Yet when asked about the incident, Nancy stated that she received no phone calls from Bob, and that his phone did not appear on her Caller ID. She added that she didn't care, because she had always planned to go with her boyfriend anyway. So now it seems that Bob has some explaining to do. Did he lie about making those phone calls? When questioned, Bob responded that he had never phoned Nancy and had no interest in her. When confronted with Todd's story, Bob said he did not recall ever talking to Todd, but that if he had said those things it was probably a joke. A likely story. It was now Alice's turn to weight in on how she felt about having a liar for a prom date. "I don't even understand this story," she said. So it seems that Bob had completely falsified his phone calls to Nancy. Digging himself even deeper, he now admits that he never made any phone calls. Bob will have a very difficult time explaining himself on prom night.