A girls’ school is attacked and burned by armed men.
The Yellow Elephant Campaign
Because ranting is safer than enlisting.
Edit: With a hip-hip-hooray for Jesus’s General!
Yes, they are requesting library records
In spite of insisting that they’ve never used the Patriot Act to investigate library records, a recent survey by the American Library Association found over 200 incidents where library records were requested either formally or informally.
…Gonzales told Congress in April the law had never been used to force a library or bookstore to turn over records. Mueller told lawmakers that some libraries have turned over material voluntarily….
Sheketoff said it isn’t possible to verify Gonzales’s statement because people served with demands for records can be ordered not to discuss the request. The library association’s confidential survey of public and academic libraries was designed to bypass gag orders and find out if there have been any formal or informal requests for records, she said….
Chip Pitts, chairman of the board of Amnesty International USA, told a House hearing June 10 that “lots of librarians have been approached for records.” He said one in Seattle turned down a request by an FBI agent for “a list of all people who had checked out a biography of Osama bin Laden since 9/11.”…
The New York Times has more details.
A conservative speaks
“The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.'”
Not so good news
But pretty much par for the course given this administration. They want your ISP to keep records of everything you do online…
Your ISP as Net watchdog
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers’ online activities….
I don’t trust this administration even with normal stuff. I definitely don’t want them following my every move at will. Is this going to remain a free country, or not? I have my doubts these days.
This is good news too
Over at Pandagon, Jesse and Amanda raised over $2000 for Amnesty International through their 24-hour blogathon!
Cheerful news
Amid all the bad news from Iraq and the economy, one piece of really good news reached me today. Apparently the media are starting to notice that Bush is a very unpopular President, and most people dislike nearly all of his programs. Now that’s being reality-based! Way to go, MSM.
Yes, yes…
…it’s outrage fatigue. Too much evil, too little good. All I really wanna do is garden.
Memorial Day
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning cameThis is bad, potentially very bad
I was unhappy when I learned that a deadly flu virus had been sent around the world by mistake. When that happened, it seemed inevitable what would come next:
Two-thirds of flu virus shipments destroyed, but 3 still missing: WHO
GENEVA-Health experts have destroyed two-thirds of the specimens of a killer influenza virus sent as part of routine test kits around the world, but were still trying to trace three shipments that were supposed to go to Mexico, Lebanon and Chile, UN officials said Friday.
The World Health Organization has been urging thousands of labs in 19 countries that received vials of the nearly 50-year-old H2N2 virus to destroy the samples amid fears of a global pandemic should the virus be released. The original number of countries was 18, but on Friday it was learned that one lab in the United Kingdom also had been sent a sample.
WHO influenza chief Klaus Stohr said late Friday that 13 of the 19 countries that received samples had confirmed their labs had destroyed the virus.
However, labs in Lebanon, Mexico and Chile “never received the specimen, even though they were on the distribution list,” Stohr said.
Is it just me, or does that sound like they aren’t entirely sure of all the places the samples were sent? They report that the WHO is investigating the missing samples. I sure hope they find them.
