It’s blockbuster day…

So much going on, I don’t even know where to start…
Bruce the Veep, who has been hot, hot, hot of late, sends us this gem: a report that the President was informed by the CIA of no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein… get this… ten days after the 9-11 attacks. In its usual counter-constitutional way, the Bush Administration has refused to share this report (a famous “PDB”, or Presidential Daily Briefing) with the Senate Intelligence Committee… as Drudge would say… “developing”…
Meanwhile, the White House has dismissed reports that in 2004, British PM Tony Blair talked the President out of an intended bombing attack against the Al Jazeera broadcast network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar. It would certainly be consistent with the Bush Administration M.O.: Al Jazeera had the audacity to broadcast a view of events from Iraq that the Bush Administration wasn’t happy with. Further, Al Jazeera operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had been the subject of American attacks (perhaps intended… perhaps not…) before. Of course, a plan to attack the only independent broadcast journalist in the Arab world, in the heart of the capital of one of our most important allies in the region (Qatar was a key staging area for the invasion of Iraq), would have been so ill-advised that maybe even the Bushmen would have thought better of it… Well, once again… developing…
And at last… a story near and dear not only to me (I have actually interviewed two of his lawyers…) but to all freedom and constitution loving Americans concerned with the President’s purported authority to lock up citizens at his whim… it seems that the Government, a few days ahead of having to write a responsive brief to his petition for review to the U.S. Supreme Court, has decided to charge former “dirty bomb suspect” and “unlawful combatant” Jose Padilla with a variety of conspiracy counts in Miami of all places… Of course, while the Government will argue that holding a U.S. citizen in limbo in a military brig for over three years will be mooted by this sudden change of heart (both of Padilla’s lawyers that I spoke to indicated that they were looking forward to the day their client was indicted!), it’s up to the Supreme Court as to whether it will accept review, and if it does, whether it decides this is a live issue…
And I haven’t even mentioned Israel’s upcoming national elections in which wildman PM Sharon has bolted the Likud Party he helped found to form his own liberal/moderate party, one of the nation’s largest private employers, General Motors, announces massive plant closings, which still won’t save it money,
and Branjelina (that’s Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) take their do-gooding act on the road to Pakistan earthquake victims, which, let’s just say, is a tragic wasted opportunity to show the Moslem world (and the only country in the Moslem world confirmed to have nuclear weapons) that we are committed to aiding it in its hour of dire need… so if it takes Hollywood stars to call attention to it and maybe get those people some help… well, so be it…
But on the whole… all you can say is… what a day!!!