Just when you thought there was nothing funny about the Global War on Terror, these guys come along.

You’ve heard the basic story, right? Around Boston they find these panels with blinking lights, they immediately determine they must be bombs, they spend almost a million bucks to disarm the threat, and then they catch and arrest the miscreants who planted these destructive devices.

It turns out they weren’t bombs, though, they were promotions for a cartoon on TV, so rather than look stupid, they charge these two guys with intentionally causing panic. (Did you know that was a crime? Me neither, and I’m a lawyer.) Apparently they’re all over the place, and nobody anywhere but Boston even looked twice at these things.

The judge clearly isn’t buying it, and it does sound as though he’s looking askance at the prosecutors.

The two guys seem to be living it up, and they get a link to their web page just for that. (Actually, when I just tried to go there it hung up, probably because it’s too busy, but it’s worth a shot.

So they get out of court, the press are all there, and their lawyer tells them what any smart lawyer would tell them: Don’t talk to the press. They say, no way, we’re going to talk to the press, but we’ll only answer questions about 1970’s hair styles.

You have to love it! “Sure, we’re idiots, but what does that make you?”

Watch the video

”We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war,” Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. ”We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!”’

I started reading Molly Ivins back in the 1980’s in The Nation. Her columns on Texas politics, about which I knew very little, were always funny, but with an edge that attacked the comfortable and powerful. It was only natural when W (“Shrub”, as she called him) hit the national stage that she would get more attention.

The Star-Telegram has some great stuff on her. (Free registration required.)

If you aren’t already familiar with her, pick up one of her books, like Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?

Boy, how long has it been since we could say that?

Still, here is definite good news. 
Evidently the second time was a charm as cloture was reached in the U.S. Senate a few minutes ago on the minimum wage legislation, thus ending the Republican filibuster of the wage hike that easily passed the House of Representatives earlier in the month.

Cloture was achieved by a vote of 87-10.

On the other hand, the R’s continue to show their true colors. Twenty-eight of them voted to eliminate the federal minimum wage completely. Those twenty-eight include Mr. Straight Talk himself, as well as others who have been making a show of being moderates, like Lindsay Graham.

Here’s what he said on Fox the other day:

I’m also an Independent-Democrat now, and I’m going to do what most Independents and a lot of Democrats and Republicans in America do, which is to take a look at all the candidates and then in the end, regardless of party, decide who I think will be best for the future of our country.

So I’m open to supporting a Democrat, Republican or even an Independent, if there’s a strong one. Stay tuned.

Have a look at a nice skewering of the ersatz straight talk guy:

http://youtube.com/w…

I was very sad to learn of the death of Robert Drinan today. Drinan was a liberal Jesuit priest and law professor who was elected to Congress in 1970 on an antiwar platform, sat on the House Judiciary Committee when they voted to impeach Richard Nixon, and left Congress in 1981 on orders from the pope. JPII’s decision was ostensibly on religious grounds, but I believed then, and continue to believe, that it was an attack on Drinan’s liberal politics and on the liberation theology that had become a powerful voice for the people’s struggle in Central America.

Here’s the link to the Times obit.

Drinan was a great man, and an inspiration to me as an exemplar of the power of the law as a force for social change.

“When I arrived in Congress, Father Drinan was already serving as the conscience of the House of Representatives with every vote he cast,” US Representative Edward Markey of Malden said. ” He was a man of faith who never stopped searching for truth, and he was a committed educator who stayed true to his faith.”

Cross posted from Rational Resistance

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

I’ve written about this before. If government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, the paramount crime that a government can commit is lying to the people, because it undermines the very legitimacy of the government and invalidating whatever consent it received from the people. This is especially true in matters of war, because the lives of thousands or millions, and the welfare of our country and other countries are put at risk.

This is what I keep thinking about when I read the two stories this week about the kidnapping and killing of American soldiers in Iraq this week.

The first story the government put out was that the Americans were killed trying to repel an attack.

As that story started falling apart, we have learned a new, and apparently true, version of what happened.

“The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, bypassing the Iraqi police in the compound,” he said. “We are looking at all the evidence to determine who or what was responsible for the breakdown in security at the compound and the perpetration of the assault.”

As the AP puts it, “The confirmation came after nearly a week of inquiries. The U.S. military in Baghdad initially did not respond to repeated requests for comment on reports that began emerging from Iraqi government and military officials on the abduction and a major breakdown in security at the Karbala site.”

This attack happened on January 20, last Saturday.

Now let’s see, what was happening this week?

Oh yeah, the State of the Union message. You don’t think that lying about the attack to keep the focus on Bush’s message on Tuesday had anything to do with it, do you?

I hate to see this, but there is bad news out of Fletcher Allen Health Care. According to a press release I got this afternoon, earlier this week a patient at the psych unit at FAHC committed suicide.  They haven’t released many of the details, but apparently, accoding to the release:

  “Through our review, we learned that Fletcher Allen made a mistake, and we apologize for that mistake.

We learned that we did not check on the patient at the prescribed 15-minute intervals that were required under the care plan.  We learned
that there was a gap of approximately one hour when the patient was not checked on, and it was during that gap, that the suicide occurred.”

The average patient stay in the psychiatric facility is nine days. While some patients are being held involuntarily, either before or after commitment, FAHC also treats voluntary patients.

WCAX has more.

Late update: on the 11:00 news WPTZ is reporting that the patient was a man, although no further details have been released.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance:

I refused to watch Bush on TV, as I do pretty much every year. The Democratic response, however, is another story. I was very happy when Jim Webb defeated George Allen for the U.S. Senate seat from Virginia, although I think it’s pretty clear that he’s not really my kind of Democrat (too conservative). Still, you can’t discount his eloquence here:

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable – and predicted – disarray that has followed….

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq’s cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

Here’s the link to the video of his whole speech.

Is Bush pulling another Niger yellowcake on us? Check out this post from Democrats.com and see what you think.

Submitted by Bob Fertik on January 22, 2007 – 11:24pm.Bush’s Lies

The incomparable Joseph Cannon has once again scooped the media by discovering the Big Lie that will be the centerpiece of Bush’s SOTU: the fictional tale of an Al-Zarqawi plot (under direct written orders from Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri) to send 19 terrorists into the U.S using student visas.

After reviewing the three published versions of this story (below), it’s perfectly clear there are no credible facts – no independently verified documents, no identified witnesses, and no suspects. The whole story hinges on a single document, which was not seen by any of the reporters and probably does not exist.

Josh mentions these “plot” stories at 00:52 of his video response.