There are unclassified reports and declassified reports, but in the case of the U.S. military report on the shooting of Italian journalist and Iraqi hostage Giuliana Sgrena and the killing of her protector, Intelligence Agent Nicola Calipar, there's a big oops! Kevin Drum has the details on the report.

• View 1 (pdf)
• View 2 (MS Word)

Update: The AP has noted a CBS report that aired Thursday night(that does not appear to be online) that satellite imagery was used to establish the speed of the Sgrena vehicle.

Now that I've had a few days to reflect on Bush's proposed plan for social security, I unequivocally find it warrants rejection. The New York Times reports today on how it would work:

Under Mr. Bush's approach of "progressive indexation," a typical low-income worker who earns about $16,000 a year today would be entitled to retirement benefits equal to about 49 percent of his or her wages, the same amount that is promised today.

But those earning an average income, about $36,500 in today's dollars, would see big changes. Instead of replacing 36 percent of that person's working pay, as promised under today's system, benefits would cover only 26 percent of pay by 2075. And people who earn $90,000 a year in today's dollars would continue to pay as much as ever in taxes but would receive benefits equal to only 12 percent of their pay.

There are intellectual and economic reasons to oppose the plan, as Josh Marshall points out every day. I like the plain English reasons, like this one from Matt Yglesias who is guest-blogging for Josh this week.

by TChris

Florida's Department of Children and Families, having been thwarted in its effort to interfere in the Terri Schiavo case, is acting to prevent a 13 year old girl from exercising her constitutional right to have an abortion. The department claims the girl is too immature to decide whether to undergo the procedure, although the department doesn't seem to care whether she's sufficiently mature to give birth.

The girl, who got pregnant in a group home, now lives in foster care. When she learned of her pregnancy, she immediately told her caseworker that she wanted an abortion.

The procedure had been scheduled for last Tuesday, but then the morality police from Tallahassee arrived. That very morning, DCF lawyers filed an emergency motion with Palm Beach Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez. He signed a temporary order blocking the abortion and ordered a competency examination for [the girl].

Before the girl decided to exercise her constitutional right, nobody had suggested that she was incompetent. Not only is the department interfering with the girl's ability to exercise a constitutional right, the decision to force a young girl to have a baby she doesn't want is bad policy.

In the U.S., Tom Cruise makes headlines because he's found a new girlfriend, a 26 year old actress named Katie Holmes. In Europe, at least in Germany, the headline is that Cruise has brought Scientology onto the movie set of the new Spielberg film, War of the Worlds, and brags about how many drug addicts he's cured with his religion - and, astonishingly, claims that his religion has the only successful drug treatment program in the world.

From a Der Speigel interview with Cruise and Spielberg:

SPIEGEL: Do you see it as your job to recruit new followers for Scientology?

Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

The presumption of guilt never takes a rest with Nancy Grace. Via Crooks and Liars,on the missing bride-to-be:

That which is Nancy Grace...

4/28 transcripts

GRACE: Well, look, I don`t have a degree in being a police chief. But I can tell you this much: This is not cold feet, all right? This is not cold feet. I know that much.

4/29 Transcripts

GRACE: Another question. Could you tell me, Jonathan, what was the fiance doing at the time she was jogging? Was he there in the home? Does he have an alibi?

by TChris

St. Louis police officer Reginald Williams' career as a "renegade cop" has ended with federal convictions for civil rights violations arising out of a false arrest.

The arrest, during a traffic stop on July 5, 2002, turned frightening when Williams punched [Michael Banks]in the stomach, and later took him into a darkened room and threatened to "lock me up and throw away the key," Banks said.

After Williams pulled Banks over, he reached into Banks' pocket and found cash that Banks had just withdrawn from his credit union. Williams accused Banks of earning the money through drug sales. Williams reported that Banks had cocaine in the car, but the cocaine "mysteriously disappeared." So did Banks' cash, which wasn't mentioned in Williams' report.

by TChris

TalkLeft has long been critical of Ahmad Chalabi and his once cozy relationship with the neocons in the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd has a perceptive take on Chalabi's new role in Iraq.

Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister. Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher? Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?

Mr. Bush wanted Iraq to have a democracy like ours. It's on its way, nearing an ethics-free zone where a corrupt official can hold sway and a theocracy can curb women's rights.

by TChris

The New York Times reports that there is "growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation" as part of the government's rendition program (background here). It appears that the United States transported dozens of prisoners to Uzbekistan.

While the Bush administration claims it has no reason to believe that foreign governments participating in the rendition program mistreat prisoners, that claim cannot credibly be made with regard to Uzbekistan. According to a State Department human rights report issued in 2001:

Bump and Update: In case you weren't around yesterday, and wonder what's going on here, you now need to register to comment on TalkLeft. From Friday:

Sometimes, all it takes is one person to ruin a good thing. Due to mass obscene comments by a single person this morning, all of which were directed at me or falsely claimed to be written by me, everyone will now have to register with TypeKey to post comments. Typekey provides answers to privacy concerns here. TalkLeft's webmaster, Mike Ditto, is setting this up now. Just click on the comments to any post to register. You can register with the same posting name you've always used.

Your first comment will require me to approve you. Once you are approved, your comments will automatically appear as before. I personally will be doing the approving, so if I'm offline when you make your first comment, it may not be instantaneous. I'm going to try to remain online through the weekend as much as possible.

You have to give typekey an email address to register, but it will not appear in the comments. Also, you have the choice of not having your email address forwarded to me. So, you can remain anonymous if you'd like. For those of you who allow your e-mail address to be forwarded to me, I will not share it with anyone else.

Update: Only two people have had a problem registering and posting comments. If you have a problem, try registering at Mike Ditto's site, so that we can determine if the problem stems from Typekey or TalkLeft.

**********
Original Post:

There's a nasty troll on board today with multiple IP addresses. Comments are shut down until further notice.

How many stories about the missing bride, whom we now know fabricated her abduction, have you seen in the past three days on cable news?

Where is the coverage of Barbara Dehl, the one-time Bush administration crusader against domestic violence, an Ashcroft appointee to the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women, now charged herself with kidnapping and methamphetamine offenses.

Barbara Dehl, 49, conspired with her live-in boyfriend and another man to abduct a young couple after the three found money, jewelry and drugs missing from Dehl's safe, police said in court documents....Dehl was indicted by a grand jury this week on two felony counts of kidnapping and one count of trafficking methamphetamine. The men also were indicted on a variety of charges.

Will she blame it all on an abusive boyfriend?

One step forward, two steps back. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made progress with his prison reform plan stressing rehabilitation over punishment, only to step in it bigtime by inviting the Minutemen to patrol California's borders.

No wonder his approval rating has dropped from 60% to 47% in the past three months. The ACLU weighs in here. The Mexican Government here.

Perhaps the Governor already sees the error of his ways. He is now tempering his support for the Minutemen.

It was 30 years ago today that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.

An estimated three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed during the war....But the legacy of what the Vietnamese call the American War lingers in unexploded ordinance, in wounded veterans and in victims of Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant U.S. troops used to wipe out the jungle foliage that provided cover to their opponents.

....The Vietnamese government blames Agent Orange for the serious health problems of at least one million people. The Vietnam Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims says more than 200,000 Vietnamese live with birth defects, deformities and disease that can be traced to exposure to the chemicals.

Some more stats from the final section of the excellent BBC series, War and Protest: the U.S. in Vietnam, which begins with the period of 1946 to 1964.