The number of hunger striking detainees at Guantanamo has grown to 75.

It's way past time we closed Guantanamo and sent the detainees home.

What awful news. A CBS cameraman, Paul Douglas and sound tech, James Brolan, both based in London, were killed by a roadside bomb in an attack on their convoy in Iraq. CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier is in critical condition.

The CBS team -- which was embedded with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division -- was reporting from outside their Humvee and they were believed to have been wearing protective gear when the blast went off, according to CBS.

More than 50 people in all were killed today in Iraq.

by TChris

Congressman James Oberstar argues that the best way to remember those in the military who sacrified their lives is to "keep our promises to those still with us."

The U.S. government must once again fulfill our moral obligation to those who have fought for freedom and democracy. ... The comprehensive New GI Bill of Rights for the 21st Century will strengthen benefits for our men and women in uniform today, and it will provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served. For those returning from the front lines - 18,000 troops have been wounded in Iraq alone - we are continuing our efforts to invest adequately in veterans' health care. Our New GI Bill of Rights for the 21st Century focuses on improving veterans' health care, including mental health care, to meet the needs of our returning troops. More than 30,000 veterans are waiting in line for their first appointment with the Veterans Administration (VA), and that problem will only worsen with the growing numbers of returning service men and women.

Rep. Allen Boyd shares that goal. Instead of moving forward, Republicans this month approved a budget resolution that would underfund veterans' health care in the future, despite evidence that veterans' access to health care is already severely underfunded.

Lucian Reed, World Picture News Network

Here is a video of a young girl whose father and grandparents were killed Nov. 19 in Haditha by U.S. Marines who burst through their door. She not only details what happened, but shows her own shrapnel wounds from the incident.

In all, 24 civilians were killed by members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regimen, (Kilo Company) which was brought in due to their "success" during the 2004 Fallujah raid. The Independent, Human Rights Watch and others have compared the killings to the 1968 My Lai Massacre.

The Senate Armed Forces Committee will investigate the killings.

The New York Times has interviews with additional survivors. As to who was responsible, the Times reports:

ABC11 Eyewitness News in Durham has obtained a copy of a police report that outlines in greater detail how the accuser changed her story.

A British legal rights group asserts that 60 of the Guantanamo detainees have been children under 18.

They include at least 10 detainees still held at the US base in Cuba who were 14 or 15 when they were seized - including child soldiers who were held in solitary confinement, repeatedly interrogated and allegedly tortured.

The disclosures threaten to plunge the Bush administration into a fresh row with Britain, its closest ally in the war on terror, only days after the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, repeated his demands for the closure of the detention facility. It was, he said, a "symbol of injustice".

The blogging cool kidz will be in Vegas the weekend of June 9 attending the first Yearly Kos convention. So will many Democratic party leaders. The Sunday New York Times Magazine gives it a big shout-out.

Next week, 1,000 devotees of the liberal blogging universe -- people who know one another only as pseudonyms on a screen, connected by only their running commentaries -- will descend on the Riviera Hotel in hopes of affixing names and faces to their online personas.

by Last Night in Little Rock

I have been provided with the link to a copy of the search warrant for Rep. Jefferson's (D-LA2, New Orleans) Congressional office as well as defense counsel's excellent memorandum for sealing the records pending litigation of speech and debate privilege and separation of powers. I'm impressed with both. The affidavit online has several things redacted, but, what is there is damning. It is painful to read.

by Last Night in Little Rock

While the President and Congress rail against Immigration and non-English speaking immigrants, even objecting to the National Anthem in Spanish (while the rest of the Administration, including First Lady Laura Bush never got the memo), they are seeking to manufacture an election year issue that Lou Dobbs, of course, could love. After all, if there are 11-12 million illegals in the country, they sure aren't voters. (For additional background, see "Immigration Debate" at WaPo, and note the fact that the State Department has four versions of the National Anthem in Spanish on its website, the first dating from 1919.)

And, we see that the White House website also appears in Español.

"Welcome to America. Now learn the language." "Just kidding. Look us up in Spanish, if need be."

A Bronx grand jury is investigating Bernie Kerik. You remember him -- at the suggestion of Rudy Giuliani, Bush nominated him for Homeland Security.

Ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani - once mentioned as a possible head of the department - strongly lobbied the White House for his former driver, police commissioner and business partner.

"Rudy cashed in a chip on this one," said a White House source, who earlier this week predicted there was "no way" Kerik could land a cabinet-level job in the Bush administration.

He later withdrew his nomination after mutiple problems surfaced with the nomination.

Here are some of his current problems. Hopefully, this will come back to haunt Rudy as he prepares for a 2008 presidential bid.

If you are online today, and not because you are at work, chances are, like me, you are avoiding or procastinating doing something else. In the spirit of 100 Things I've Never Done by Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review (also see his 100 Things About Me), I'm going to list as many projects as I can that I haven't finished -- mostly because it's easier to sit at the computer and surf the net or blog. I'm hoping that by writing them out I'll not only have a written list but actually do some of them.

What could or should you be doing other than reading this? Feel free to list them in the comments. No need to list 15, any number is fine. If you number them, you can post a followup later should you get any done.

Ok, here's my list, in no particular order:

Bob Dylan: Live at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Fair Grounds, Acura Stage, April 28, 2006.. The audio of the entire set is online here. [Via commenter Squeaky.]

This is also an open thread. I'm probably going to avoid politics this weekend unless there is breaking news. I'm setting up my new digital video camera, i-sight webcam, and i-Movie software and trying to figure out how to capture streaming audio and video and whether it's easier to do it on a Mac or a PC. I recently got Apple's 23 inch cinema display monitor to hook up to my powerbook G4 but I'm still pretty clueless on Apple stuff except for iTunes.