This story in CQ caught my eye:

Both the House and Senate have passed defense authorization bills (HR 1585) that would undo the provision in a law (PL 109-364) that augmented the circumstances in which the president may use the military, even without governors' consent, to enforce the law at home during crises. A House-Senate conference is writing the bill's final version, and the provision is unlikely to change.

...

Udall, who wrote the provision that would repeal the 2006 law, said the proposed change "restores this control of the Guard to the governors who, with their local law enforcement and emergency response officials, know their communities and are best able to respond to catastrophic events."

In a presidential candidate straw poll of 5,775 evangelical voters at the meeting and online, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney came out on top, narrowly ahead of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Giuliani trailed in eighth, with just 1.85 percent of the vote,

please, please, by all that is holy and good, no celebrity crime blog! while it may make for titilating reading, britney's or paris' latest run-ins with the law add nothing substantive to anyone's life.

did anyone but me notice that the boy scout's policy of discriminating against gay people is starting to get expensive? the city of philadelphia, pa is getting ready to hit the local council with a $200,000 a year rental bill, for propery they were paying a nominal $1 for, because they are now a private organization.

Halting the Telcom Immunity provision within the FISA bill was the pivotal battle and moment in history where mankind as we know it was saved.

Of course we can still be lost, but at that exact moment we were surely lost, and then Sen. Dodd stepped into the breach.

For those that don't understand this crucial play, let it suffice to say that at that moment, a component vitally necessary to the privatization of the Internet was blocked.

The implications of the issue of Telcom Immunity extend far beyond the mere questions of amnesty for violations of privacy owing to government/corporate eavesdropping. The privatization of the Internet is necessary to those who would add this wonderful vehicle of now free speech and free flow of ideas, to their already captured 4th Estate.

Enormous efforts are already underway to privatize the Internet. But in the structure of the balance of powers, so skillfully constructed by our forefathers, is a system with courts which act to check abuses of the executive and legislative powers. Telcom Immunity threatened to close our ability to use the courts in order to discover the means and methods by which the private takeover of the Public Trust is being done, (albeit ostensibly for national security).

The history of antitrust is a fascinating one. Suffice it to say in these brief remarks, that corporations incline towards monopoly. Monopoly seeks to eliminate competition and to maximize profit. It is more than just machinations to capture greater and greater wealth into the hands of the few. Where governments ostensibly look out for the people, to corporations, people are often the problem preventing them from monopoly. Ultimately, with monopoly, "excess population" must be destroyed. That often involves willful acts beyond just inadvertant acts that kill populations, (inadvertant acts, such as destroying the breathable air, or the groundwater, lakes and rivers, or the climate, or the rain forests).

The current Administration, has made it well known that its main ambition is the privatization, generally, of the Public Trust. But at that point at which the actions and ambitions of corporations become anathema to the public trust, we have antitrust. This Administration has failed its duty to regulate antitrust. Much to the contrary, it aids and abets antitrust.

A valuable new piece of the puzzle was delivered last night on Bill Moyers Journal. Jeremy Scahill explained the vast privatization migration of armed forces into the hands of corporations and the scheme of trends toward privatization generally.

Consume slowly.

' According to Yishai Karin: 'At one point or another of their service, the majority of the interviewees enjoyed violence. They enjoyed the violence because it broke the routine and they liked the destruction and the chaos. They also enjoyed the feeling of power in the violence and the sense of danger.' In the words of one soldier: 'The truth? When there is chaos, I like it. That's when I enjoy it. It's like a drug. If I don't go into Rafah, and if there isn't some kind of riot once in some weeks, I go nuts.' . . . One described beating women. 'With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with any more.'

When we cannot understand why Arab audiences, who are perfectly aware of what the Israeli army has been doing to Palestinians for decades, are outraged, it leads us into policy mistakes in dealing with the Middle East. No one in the US media ever talks about Zionofascism, and the campus groups who yoke the word 'fascism' to other religions and peoples are most often trying to divert attention from their own authoritarianism and approval of brutality.

The mayor of the Indian capital said Monday that authorities could not deal with the scourge of violent monkeys, blamed for the death of a top city official over the weekend.

The danger posed by the estimated 10,000 monkeys that roam the city was brought home sharply on Sunday when deputy mayor S.S. Bajwa, 52, died after falling from his apartment while fighting a horde of wild simians.

"We have neither the expertise nor the infrastructure to deal with the situation," said Delhi's mayor Aarti Mehra, amid a barrage of criticism.
...
The animals routinely invade parliament, ministries, courts and government offices.