What a monster of a human being:
Q: But Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?
CHENEY: I think so.
It’s a shame he’s already had a long and prosperous life. He deserves the fate of those he condemned to death so early in life.
Financial manager Marcus Schrenker, who officials say tried to fake his own death by parachuting out of a plane while over Alabama, was found late Tuesday at a campsite near Quincy, Florida.
And this song:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HohEh4PGLc[/youtube]
For D.B. Cooper and the money he took . . .
If your flight through IAD is delayed this weekend, here’s where to direct your ire:
One of the four runways at Washington’s Dulles International Airport will be closed starting Friday to park private planes flown to D.C. for President-elect Obama’s inauguration.
Opened in November, the 9,400-foot runway will be closed from Friday, Jan. 16 through Thursday, Jan. 22 to accommodate what the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority expects to be around 500 private planes flown in for the occasion.
This post should not be construed as evidence that I would do anything different, if I had my own plane . . .
Now that things are hitting a little closer to home for newspapers, maybe we’ll get some real journalism on the impact of outsourcing on American jobs:
On Wednesday, the Sun-Times Media Group, at a meeting in the Sun-Times led by CEO Cyrus Freidheim Jr., told their unions they needed to cut their overall wage and benefit packages by 7 percent; they asked the unions to come up with ways to do it.
[ . . . ]
Sure to be on the agenda too is an idea the company floated Friday afternoon at the Sun-Times. It’s to eliminate 25 to 30 jobs — about a fifth of the editorial jobs remaining at that paper — by outsourcing the copy editing and layout functions, possibly to India.
[ . . . ]
The Sun-Times Media Group would have to be in terrible shape to consider such an idea. To turn copy over to editors on the other side of the world whose idiomatic English is so different is to guarantee constant aggravation and frustration, not to mention published howlers.
They must mean different published howlers.
It’s so not fair, that people keep implying that racism lies behind the Bush DOJ’s actions:
In that incident in August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Schlozman asking Schlozman to bring coffee for him to a meeting both were scheduled to attend. Schlozman replied asking Tanner how he liked his coffee. Tanner’s response was, “Mary Frances Berry style – black and bitter.” Berry is an African-American who was the Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from November 1993 until late 2004. Schlozman forwarded the e-mail chain to several Department officials (including Principal DAAG Bradshaw) but not Acosta, with the comment, “Y’all will appreciate Tanner’s response.”
Just the sort of people you want in charge of Justice, no?
Looks like Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-VT) letter paid off:
The [Smithsonian’s new portrait of George W. Bush’s] caption, describing the Bush era, originally said that the 9/11 attacks “led to” the war in Iraq. After Sanders pointed out the obvious flaw in that causal correlation — Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 — Sullivan replied: “Our intention was to remind viewers of the portrait that the listed events were defining moments in the Bush presidency, within the limited space of an object label. I appreciate your concern, however, about the words ‘led to.’ We will revise the label and delete the words ‘led to.'”
That this is noteworthy says much about the state of the country. But it’s an encouraging start.
I’m a big defender of the DC Metro system.  Sometimes I think it’s because I came from a city with a pathetic public transport system (hi, Atlanta!), and other times I think it’s because I can’t stand the sound of one more twit from New York talking about how great the system is back home. But mostly I defend it because it’s a system that does a pretty good job – given its resources – of serving as circulation system for DC and its surrounding communities. They’ve got a really difficult funding situation, though – they essentially have to go begging four masters on a regular basis (the Fed, DC, MD, and VA gov’ts) and suffer all the risks and political vagaries that go with that. So, when faced with the rare chance to put their hands on some serious capital project spending power? They flub it:
Unfortunately, when WMATA sat down to talk about what kind of projects they had that fit the criteria for economic stimulus, they only came up with $529 million worth of stuff. That’s better than being dishonest and trying to get their hands on billions of dollars worth of money to go waste.
But it also reflects a failure of vision, planning, and leadership. A well-run agency ought not become so cowed by the narrow horizons of conventional political wisdom that it’s left with this little to ask for when the situation changes.
Oh, I could think of something . . .
This morning’s This Week contains a clue as to whether Obama is taking seriously the rule of law in the United States. In response to Stephanopolous raising the appointment of a special prosecutor to independently investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration (e.g., torture and warrantless wiretapping), Obama said:
We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, let me just press that one more time. You’re not ruling out prosecution, but will you tell your Justice Department to investigate these cases and follow the evidence wherever it leads?
OBAMA: What I — I think my general view when it comes to my attorney general is he is the people’s lawyer. Eric Holder’s been nominated. His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people, not to be swayed by my day-to-day politics. So, ultimately, he’s going to be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed looking at what we got wrong in the past.
This is simply wrong. You’re not going to know how to get things right in the future if you don’t know what and how you got it wrong in the past.  I understand that it would be a politically unpopular thing to do. But Obama wasn’t elected just to do popular things. He was elected to do a job. His job, as I noted the other day, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. You don’t do that by ignoring the people who have turned the Federal government into a vehicle for destroying it. You don’t do that by providing clear evidence that there are no consequences for breaking the law. You have Cheney out there essentially daring Congress and the incoming administration to do anything about his actions, and this is Obama’s response?
The saddest part? Is that we’ve seen this happen before. And following instincts like Obama’s here is a large part of what made the Bush Administration possible.
Which one should write a song about this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi8CeYozDlU[/youtube]
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