A plane with 155 aboard went down in the Amazon jungle in Brazil yesterday. Today, the wreckage was spotted, and authorities in Brazil say it's impossible anyone survived.

The plane was en route from Manaus to Rio. I took that flight in the late 70's, spending a week in Manaus after a week in Rio. Manaus is a top tourist destination. It has a fascinating history. I remember staying at the Tropical Hotel Manaus which reminded me of the Taj Mahal (which I've never seen, only imagined) with hallway floors that were all marble and huge ceilings. The outdoor zoo was incredible. [Click on the "Manaus" section under destinations.]

Just another thing to love about Amsterdam, a city where all data packets are created equal.

by TChris

This is what happened when "Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, and Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor of the State Department, urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies":

[The recommendation] so angered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that his aides gathered up copies of the document and had at least some of them shredded.

"It was not in step with the secretary of defense or the president," said one Defense Department official who, like many others, would discuss the internal deliberations only on condition of anonymity. "It was clear that Rumsfeld was very unhappy."

England and Zelikow also wanted the administration to obey the Geneva Conventions. Nothing ticks off Rumsfeld like these crazy liberal notions of following the law or respecting the other branches of government.

by TChris

Today's depressing read: Ohio documents the last hours of the condemned.

After Ohio resumed executions in 1999, the state began documenting prisoners' last days down to the minute and second. Twenty-three convicted murderers have died by injection.

The executions are carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where guards maintain a running computer log from the time a condemned inmate arrives at the prison in the Appalachian foothills to the moment a funeral director leaves with the body a day later.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

John Aravosis notes E&P's essential post on the explosive revelation in Woodward's new book:

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser. " For months," Woodward writes, "Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy... that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.... Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

"Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? "

. . . The result? "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting though to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off . President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies." "Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long....

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Hypocrisy and distasteful whining from Lieberman Again:

Lieberman's campaign spokeswoman, Tammy Sun - "Joe Lieberman is running for Senate because he's trying to change the kind of partisan name-calling apparent in Wes Clark's recent statement supporting Ned Lamont ," she said. "This is just more of the same negative attacks from the Lamont campaign."

Joe Lieberman, when being a partisan Democrat suited his purposes:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) accused [Wesley] Clark of making a "journey of political convenience, not conviction" after Clark described in the debate how he had become a Democrat after supporting Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon and just two years ago praising President Bush at a Republican dinner when Democrats were fighting Bush's tax cuts. . . . "I was fighting that reckless economic strategy [of the administration] while Wes Clark was working to forward the Republican agenda by raising money for the Republican Party," Lieberman said.

Joe is truly unprincipled and shameless. A man of no honor.

The Democrats in the Senate fail us once again. After Thursday's approval of the torture - denial of habeas bill, Friday they voted to approve the House bill to build a 700 mile fence across the border.

House Republicans, fearing a voter backlash, had opposed any approach that smacked of amnesty and chose instead to focus on border security in advance of the elections, passing the fence bill earlier this month. With time running out, the Senate acquiesced despite its bipartisan passage of a broader bill in May.

Congress also passed a separate $34.8 billion homeland security spending bill that contained an estimated $21.3 billion for border security, including $1.2 billion for the fence and associated barriers and surveillance systems.

Politics suck. No one has a spine. Everything is about compromise. If the minority party wants any of their bills to advance to a hearing or a vote, they have to capitulate to the party in power on their issues. I learned this first-hand many times, the last time being on a visit to Congress in 2003 to advocate for the Innocence Protection bill. Congressman Sensenbrenner's aide made it clear that if Democrats didn't cave on a bill he wanted -- the Feeney Amendment which would increase federal sentences -- neither the IP bill, nor any bill the Democrats sought to advance, would ever make it to a vote. They controlled the calendar. Congressman Bill Delahunt and Sen. Patrick Leahy's staff confirmed this.

I wondered then and I wonder now, who has the stomach for this? I certainly don't. I'm trained as an advocate, fight to the finish, if you lose, at least you fought the good fight.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Joe's Pajama Party:

SIMON: -- on this. That if you do win -- and you're doing well at the moment -- if you do win as an Independent, you will still then become a Democrat, stay as a Democrat and caucus with the Democrats.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. The critical thing is to caucus with the Democrats because if you don't caucus with a party, you don't have the opportunity to hold your seniority in the committee assignments that you've got and that's important to the folks back home

So he caucuses with Dems not because he believes in Democratic values, but for "seniority." No wonder the Bush and the GOP thinks he'll switch:

George W. Bush moved a step closer to Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman's re-election bid in Connecticut as an independent candidate when Tom Kuhn, the president's college roommate and close friend, co-sponsored a Lieberman fund-raising luncheon Thursday in downtown Washington. . . . Republicans backing him against antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee, hope for a change of heart by Lieberman.

More than hope looks like.

You gotta love it....after a large, months-long undercover drug operation in Aspen using wiretaps, snitches and car tracking devices, the DEA had this to say in defense of its undercoverwork:

Undercover work isn't always popular in Aspen, but "to quote a movie, 'our job is to protect democracy, not to practice it,'" [DEA Agent Jeffrey] Sweetin said.

The TL mom fell at her skilled nursing facility last night and fractured her hip. At 83 with Parkinson's and dementia, it's difficult. But, she just came through surgery and they said it went well. They've put a pin in her hip and were able to do it with a spinal anaesthetic instead of general. So I'll be hospital blogging on and off through the weekend, as my wireless connection holds up.

I'm sure I'll miss some news, so here's a place for you to comment away.

by TChris

Lloyd Gaines sued to gain admission to the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. Gaines wanted to be the all-white law school's first black student. His case made it to the Supreme Court in the separate-but-equal days of 1938. The Court ordered Missouri to admit Gaines or to make other arrangements for Gaines to receive an equal legal education in Missouri.

Disgusted by the "law school" that Missouri created for black students (occupying a building that formerly housed a beauty academy), Gaines moved to Michigan, where he earned a master's degree in economics. Gaines was last seen in October 1939. The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved.

Yesterday, the Missouri Supreme Court awarded Gaines a posthumous law license. Welcome to the profession, Attorney Gaines. You displayed the commitment to justice that should characterize the profession.

by TChris

Republicans are having a devilish time staying out of trouble this year. The latest to bite the dust: Rep. Mark Foley.

Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, submitted a letter of resignation from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former male page, according to a congressional official. Foley, 52, had been considered a shoo-in for re-election until the e-mails surfaced in recent days.

Here are some of the creepy emails (pdf) Foley wrote to a 16 year old boy. (Emails or IM's not yet released are said to be even more questionable.)

Update: Foley, of course, was all about protecting kids from sexual exploitation. A real "family values" kind of guy.