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This week’s visit to Pravda (have we missed a visit somewhere back there?) gives us this brief piece outlining a possible threat to humanity from the latest strain of avian (or “bird”) flu originating in Far Eastern chickens and travelling via ducks (the old Marx Brothers bit… China? Marx? Never mind…) quite possibly into a strain transmittable to humans. The reference to the Spanish flu, of course, refers to the pandemic that broke out right after World War I, and killed well over 20 million world wide (around the same number as the world war itself). The reference to the...

Scott Peterson was found guilty of first degree murder in the case of his late wife Laci and of second degree murder in the case of their unborn son Connor (Laci was eight months pregnant), according to a California jury. Peterson, who has used what I’ll call a “chutzpah defense” strategy, was, as you will recall, found shortly after the death of his wife having $15,000 in cash and having dyed his hair, and reputed to be headed for Mexico (rule one: when fleeing the country after committing a heinous crime, flee). Peterson had also (coincidentally) bought a boat shortly...

After a sudden illness and two weeks of near death, Palestinian Authority President and P.L.O. Chairman Yasir Arafat died at 75 in a French military hospital. The cause of death is currently a mystery. Palestinian institutions appear to be orderly engaging in their succession process. Israeli PM Sharon has announced that this could trigger a “historic turning point” in the Middle East as to peace possibilities. (Ordinarily, one would want an American honest broker along for the ride, but the American voters recently made that impossible by returning the Imperium.) I have long held that Arafat (naturally rewarded with a...

The ink wasn’t even dry on John Ashcroft’s long overdue resignation, before the President announced his choice to replace Ashcroft as our nation’s attorney general: White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. Notice that the usual Democratic spokesmen, Senators Chuck Schumer and Pat Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both expressed what appeared to praise of the (perceived to be moderate) Gonzales. They are simply telegraphing what I assure you will be a smooth and painless confirmation process for Gonzales, because… he is perceived to be moderate… Of course, Gonzales is anything but, having penned memoranda justifying the President’s “inherent” power akin...

Not even his resignation today (along with that of Commerce Secretary Don Evans) could stop Attorney General John Ashcroft from continuing to pursue the Bush Administration’s obsession with pre-cradle to grave control of the most private aspects of your lives. Case in point, is the appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision which precluded federal prosecutions against Oregon doctors (acting pursuant to a state law) who prescribed lethal dosages of drugs to cancer patients to hasten their deaths and ease their pain. I’m sure we can look forward to the Supreme Court backing up their boy by the usual 5-4 decision....

A federal district judge in Washington halted the process of military commissions deciding the fates of at least four of the perpetual prisoners now in illegal confinement in the American gulag at Guantanimo Bay, Cuba. “Unless and until a competent tribunal determines that petitioner is not entitled to protections afforded prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention … of Aug. 12, 1949, he may not be tried by military commission for the offenses with which he is charged,” U.S. District Judge James Robertson said in his ruling. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen, was lucky enough to...

In my case, completing the preposterous “two marathons on two consecutive weekends”, that featured a 5:55 (and still alive) finish in Washington, D.C.’s Marine Corps Marathon, and today, completing what appears to be the fastest marathon I have run since I was 19, with today’s ING New York City Marathon finish in a shade under 5 hours, 4 minutes. Many thanks to Mrs. TD and the Loquacious Pup, for cheering us on in Brooklyn, TD friend Paul for cheering us on in Queens, and Mr. Crabcakes for coming out in Manhattan (and buying your talking dog a much needed bottle...

Care of everybody’s favorite blogging ventriloquist Joe Gandelman we give you this (apparently documented) story of a talking dog out of Russia. Given that our own site features a talking dog (already), visits from a typing crab, frequent references to a simian president, and hosts an entire “dog run” of over 200 assorted other creatures (most of them classified as dog breeds), let’s just say… we don’t really need the competition. Anyway, let’s wish Yula a hearty zdrastvityeh, or however you say “howdie” bi ruskya.

Having achieved their mission (the reelection of the Imperium), our military men and women now get their reward: the opportunity to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent civilians in the course of an insanely ill advised all-out assault on Falluja. It is widely believed that the combination of the casualties and the resentment we will cause by doing this will help to undermine “the elections in Iraq scheduled for January” that we dangled out there to the rube voters here. In the end, there was no reason for Bush to have done that. Our voters came out in record numbers...

Two stories out of the Middle East. First, in Axis of Evil TM news, this brief BBC retrospective and interviews of two of the players on this, the 25th anniversary of the taking of American embassy hostages in Tehran, Iran. While many, like me, believe that our ongoing refusal to engage Iran in any meaningful manner (for twenty five years now, and counting) is probably not the greatest of ideas, most likely because of it, the Iranian people by and large like us (joining perhaps only the Israelis in the region in doing that). Of course, in honor of the...