Meet Majid Khan, one of the 14 alleged terrorists held by the CIA in overseas secret prisons and recently transferred to Guantanamo.

Majid and his family came to the Baltimore area in 1996. He went to high school in Owings Mills, Md. where he was considered a serious student. From his English teacher:

This week's allegations stunned Sanford, who said the young man she taught in her English-as-a-second-language class could not, as alleged, have plotted to blow up gas stations or poison drinking water in U.S. reservoirs. "It doesn't make any sense to me," said Sanford, who taught many of the school's foreign students. "I can't imagine it.

In the remembrance of those killed on 9/11, Wonkette reminds us:

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan has already surpassed the death toll of 9/11.

Steve Gilliard of the News Blog writes at Firedoglake about his recollection of being in New York on 9/11. And the media aftermath:

The people rebroadcasting their 9/11 broadcasts are no better than vermin. Matt Lauer should be placed on a glue trap in the sun.

This doesn't belong to America. It isn't some grand national cause. It is a tragedy some get to live with forever. You can remember the dead, but because you became scared of brown people or of someone blowing up your mall or of airplanes, you can share in it. You cannot and if you were smart, you wouldn't want to. No one should want to carry the burdens of another because they feel they should.

As to our government officials, particularly Bush and Giuliani:

Following it's fictionalized version of The Path to 9/11, ABC's Nightline has a ten minute special on the Hunt for bin Laden, says it has new evidence on the hunt.

It reports that two months before the Africa Embassy bombings, there was a plan to arrest bin Laden, anesthetize him and take him to the U.S. George Tenet, according to ABC, pulled the plug on the operation. Richard Clarke says the plan wouldn't work.

I watched a half hour. I found it bathetic. The acting is miserable. It's disjointed and hard to follow. It's a GOP commercial for more wiretapping, racial profiling and xenophobia.

I'm changing the channel now. Did anyone else watch it?

Update: I tuned back in for the last half hour. They replayed the disclaimer that this is not a documentary and that it is based on several published reports in addition to the 9/11 Commission report, and some scenes are fictionalized. They also shamelessly played President Clinton's statement that he did not have sexual relations with "that woman" and showed a picture of Monica Lewinsky. Then they played scenes with Sandy Berger, basically alleging he made a decision not to kill bin Laden when he could have, which in turn resulted in the Embassy bombings.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Powerline's John Hinderaker says:

Just A Thought

First the Senate Democrats browbeat a television network into changing a program so it won't reflect badly on a Democratic administration. Then a Senate committee puts out a report that airbrushes history, leaving out the most important evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda, for the sole purpose of making a Republican administration look bad. I think it's really important to work hard to get a Republican majority in the Senate, so the Dems won't be able to pull stunts like these!

Geez, did ABC not run "Path to Truthiness" when I wasn't looking? And Bill Frist and Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, are Democrats now? No kidding. What, if anything, is Hinderaker up to? Some possibilities in extended.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Taking IOKIYAR (It's OK If You Are a Republican) to new heights, while simultaneously engaged in a full bore defense of ABC's "dramatized" smear of the Clinton Administration the extreme Republican web site Red State also has time to attack Dana Priest's bombshell article that features the fact that George Bush Let bin Laden Go:

Intelligence officials think that bin Laden is hiding in the northern reaches of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking on a trail toward Pakistan at the end of the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when U.S. forces came close but failed to capture him.

by TChris

Katherine Harris is so deservedly unpopular that she has almost no chance of winning a Senate seat. Incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson claims to take her seriously, but no one else does, and her efforts won't be helped by news that an investigation into her campaign fundraising practices is ongoing. While Harris maintains she isn't a target, the FBI recently interviewed her former campaign manager, Jim Dornan. It's fair to think the FBI asked a question or two about the candidate.

The Justice and Defense departments are examining Harris' dealings with Mitchell Wade, who made illegal campaign contributions to Harris and later asked her to help secure $10-million in federal money for a company project. They have subpoenaed records from Harris' campaign office and have interviewed at least three former staffers: senior campaign consultant Ed Rollins, congressional chief of staff Fred Asbell and Mona Tate Yost, a congressional aide who later went to work for Wade.

TalkLeft background concerning the scandal can be found here and here.

by TChris

Sunday funny:

by TChris

A review of Inside: Life Behind Bars in America by Michael Santos:

Mainly, though, [the book is] a diary of "a gladiator school," "a walled city of madness." Guards act savagely -- a natural outcome in a culture where "the only thing lower than an inmate is an 'inmate lover,' a 'hug-a-thug.' " They can also be infuriatingly petty. "Guards are the only people I see throwing cigarettes on the ground," one prisoner says. "They walk across lawns and then order inmates to rake up behind them." Meanwhile, prisoners stab and rape one another and make weapons out of everything from a heavy pipe to a tube sock filled with combination locks. Violence, or the threat of it, permeates Santos's life.

Not surprisingly, Santos sees a need for change:

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

NYTimes' Jennifer Medina is caught by mcjoan of dailykos in one of the most blatantly dishonest news articles that I have seen:

The article then goes on to describe the contents of an e-mail Lamont had sent to Lieberman following his floor speech scolding Clinton. Well, partially describes the contents of the e-mail. Here's what the NYT says he wrote:

"At the time, Mr. Lamont wrote that he had 'supported the moral outrage' Mr. Lieberman expressed reluctantly because he 'thought it might make matters worse,' adding that 'unfortunately, the statement was the beginning of a process that has turned more political and morally offensive.' He urged Mr. Lieberman to 'stand up and use your moral authority to put an end to this snowballing mess,' and suggested that 'It's time for you to make up your mind and speak your mind as you did so eloquently last Thursday.'

'I'm the father of three and the thought that Clinton testifying about oral sex before the grand jury may be broadcast into my living room is outrageous,' Mr. Lamont wrote. 'This sorry episode is an embarrassment to me as a father and to us as a nation.'"

Some careful editing there.

More than just careful, dishonest and a gross violation of journalistic principles.Medina purposefully omitted the opening and closing sentences of the second paragraph, utterly changing the meaning of Lamont's "outrage." The full text (provided on the flip) of the Lamont e-mail makes patent the dishonesty in Medina's reporting - Lamont was urging Lieberman to criticize the Starr inquisition and to not allow himself to be an enabler of Republican outrages (sound familiar?) Of course, Lieberman did not heed Lamont' s call. But see for yourself on the flip.

by TChris

This news will upset the "America is for white Christians" crowd:

Muslims appear to be moving [to the United States] again in surprising numbers, according to statistics collected by the Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau. ... In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents -- nearly 96,000 -- than in any year in the previous two decades. More than 40,000 of them were admitted last year, the highest annual number since the terrorist attacks, according to data on 22 countries provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

They believe in the ideal of freedom -- something they might find after the Bush administration is out of office.