Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' son, Ben Stevens, was one of the state legislators whose office was searched by the FBI Thursday looking for evidence of improper links between the legislators and VECO Corp., an oil field services company and

Federal agents raided the offices of at least six Alaska lawmakers Thursday in a search for any ties between the legislators and a large oil field services company, officials said.

Tam Cook, the Legislature's top attorney, said the company named in the search warrant was VECO Corp., an Anchorage-based oil field services and construction company whose executives are major contributors to political campaigns. Two legislative aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from federal agents who told them not to talk to reporters, said FBI agents were looking for any ties including financial information and gifts.

Here's who got searched:

The Chicago Tribune today credits and praises "pork-busting bloggers" with outing Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and W. Va. Senator Robert Byrd as the anonymous senators blocking a bill that would establish a database showing how the Government spends our tax dollars.

Sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the measure would create a searchable online database of federal grants and contracts. An unnamed senator (or senators, as it turned out) was blocking that bill from coming to the floor. Under an arcane Senate rule, any member who has concerns about a bill can block it--anonymously. Party leaders know the blocker's identity but don't have to tell anyone, even the bill's sponsor.

Porkbusters, a group of bipartisan bloggers, went on the warpath. They asked bloggers to contact their senators and ask outright if they were one of the anonymous blockers of the bill. 98 Senators said "no." That left Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, both of whom eventually 'fessed up.

This is so funny....a caller into the Michelangelo Signorile radio show provides his impromptu reaction (mp3) to seeing President Bush's motorcade passing through Little Rock yesterday.

by TChris

What to think of Michael Brown? His job with the Arabian Horse Association didn't work out, and only cronyism can explain his appointment to manage FEMA. Brown seemed less informed about conditions in New Orleans than CNN viewers, and more interested in fine dining than in the grueling work of disaster relief.

After being thrown overboard by the president who assured him he was doing a heck of a job, Brown worked hard to rehabilitate his image, with some success. Many of his criticisms of the Bush administration are justified, and the monumental failure of the federal response to Katrina cannot rest on Brown's shoulders alone. Still, there's little doubt that "Michael Brown was completely in over his head in running a federal agency and dealing with an actual disaster," and it's fair to argue that he "can't bring himself to actually take responsibility for his own failures."

A new series, "AIR: America's Investigative Reports," takes another look at Michael Brown, exposing "a pattern of Brownie's incompetence that merely foreshadowed the breathtaking malfeasance to come."

by TChris

For more than a hundred years, veterans desiring to pursue disability claims haven't been able to hire a lawyer to bring those claims -- unless they can find one who will work for $10 or less. The Department of Veterans Affairs' legislative director wants to keep it that way. He says a proposed change in the law, allowing lawyers to be paid for helping veterans win disability claims, "sends the wrong message to our brave troops fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that they need to hire an attorney to obtain the benefits a grateful nation has provided." Of course, if DVA gratefully paid disability claims, disabled veterans wouldn't need lawyers, making it difficult to understand why DVA would oppose the change.

Here's why it might be helpful for a veteran to have a lawyer fighting to win benefits from DVA:

On Aug. 16, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims rendered a 31-page decision in a veteran appeal which determined that the Department of Veteran Affairs has been unlawfully denying presumptive disability compensation for exposure to Agent Orange for service members who served in the waters offshore of Vietnam and earned the Vietnam Service Medal.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

President Bush repeated today that:

"If we withdraw before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here,'' Bush said, attributing the line to Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Two things. Who's they? And did Abizaid really say that? I seriously doubt it. I think that is another Bush lie.

Why would the Al Sadr's Mehdi army follow "us" home? Or the Badr Brigade? Or the Sunni insurgents? Why would these "terrorists" follow us home? As I understand it, the violence in Iraq is sectarian in nature. Why some folks believe Iraq is in a civil war. So, according to Bush, the "terrorists" will interrupt the violence in Iraq in order to follow us home? Does that make sense?

Well, General John Abizaid DID say this (as I stated before, I do not believe Abizaid said what Bush says he said):

I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war," Gen. John Abizaid testified at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Bush is a moron and a liar. He is capable of saying stupidities like Bush's line. Abizaid, to now, has not shown himself to be that. I think Bush should stand bravely by his own stupidities without trying to foist them on General Abizaid.

Be careful what you do with your old cell phone when you upgrade to a new one. Even if you think you have deleted your e-mails and text messages, you haven't.

Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think.

A popular practice among sellers, resetting the phone, often means sensitive information appears to have been erased. But it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet.

Happily, I never caught the Crackberry addiction and don't even own one. Nor do I e-mail or text message on my cell phone. Even so, after reading this article, I'm glad I've never sold an old cell phone or computer. Better to dismantle them and destroy their innards.

by TChris

Christine Wilhelm drowned her son in a bathtub, and tried to drown her other son. Common sense might cause one to wonder whether this behavior was the product of mental illness, but it was only after Wilhelm's convictions were reversed last week (decision in pdf here) that the prosecutor, Patricia DeAngelis, said that she is "considering the possibility of giving a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity." What took so long?

Wilhelm has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic but DeAngelis had pressed for a 50 year to life prison sentence and denied her mental health treatment.

This columnist notes that many have criticized DeAngelis for "getting convictions at all costs."

Bump and Update: I've found 200 or so of your unposted comments. They are in the "junk comment" folder inside Movable Type, along with a few hundred spam comments for drugs and ringtones. I have to go through them individually to get them posted, but you should start seeing them soon.

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I know many of you are having problems posting comments. Even though I've opened them up to everyone with no typekey required, many people are still getting an erroneous message stating that your comments are being held for moderation. That's not the case, but I don't know how to fix it. I think I messed up the comment listing template while trying to fix the problem.

Crooks and Liars has the video of Keith Olbermann's commentary last night on Donald Rumsfeld.

Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld's comments echoes other times in our world's history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.

From the transcript:

Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat

Choose - 1. To select from a number of possible alternatives; decide on and pick out. 2. . . . To determine or decide: chose to fly rather than drive.

The Decider says he didn't decide to go to war in Iraq.

Around two "Friedmans" (6 month intervals, see generally atrios on "Friedmans") ago, Bush said much of what he repeated today:

We removed Saddam Hussein from power because he was a threat to our security. He had pursued and used weapons of mass destruction. He sponsored terrorists. He ordered his military to shoot at American and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones. He invaded his neighbors. He fought a war against the United States and a broad coalition. He had declared that the United States of America was his enemy. . . . The United States did not choose war -- the choice was Saddam Hussein's. . . . Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat -- and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power. We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place.

Of course Bush has been and continues to lie about Iraq. Bush chose this disastrous war. Bush chose to undermine the fight against terrorism. Bush chose to launch Iraq into chaos.

by TChris

Some cab drivers terrorize their passengers with bad driving, but what evidence does Conrad Burns have to support his latest whacky accusation?

At the campaign event with [Laura] Bush, Burns talked about the war on terrorism, saying a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

Which cabbies are these, pray tell?