HOT HOT HAVANA CANCELLED
The revue scheduled for the Saenger and part of the city's "Cuba Week" has been cancelled. It seems that the Cuban performers have not been allowed visas (click here for afrocubaweb's report on that) by the U.S. That's a real shame. Aside from the whole issue of our government's silly policies, it really serves to deprive Mobile of a truly spectacular cultural event. If you are ever fortunate enough to see the Tropicana in Havana you will never forget it. I didn't see the show until my fifth trip there, being resistent to paying $80 for a show in a country where that is a not insignificant amount of money. But I gave in the last time and it it was just splendid. Talk about full employment. Here is an open-air cabaret with hundreds of performers all set in the sultry atmospshere that is Cuban sensuality.

Ad Spoofing White House Drug Ads to Run
A 30 second tv ad will begin airing Thursday spoofing the Nick and Norm ads of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy that push the theme that marijuana funds terrorists. Visit this link to look at the ad, better yet, give them a few bucks. Hmmm, maybe some progressives here could run the ads locally.
(TalkLeft from Washington Post, Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)

Racketeering Conviction of Anti-Abortion Groups Voided(NYT)
The New York Times reports today that a federal racketeering judgment against a coalition of anti-abortion groups that conducted a widespread campaign of disrupting and blockading abortion clinics during the 1980's had been overturned, saying that the protesters' actions, although in some instances criminal, did not fit the federal definition of extortion. Good. While I completely support a woman's right to abortion, the seemingly endless extension of federal laws to meet all sorts of boutique prosecutions has got to stop.

CUBAN CARDINAL ASKS LEADERS TO EASE UP (NYT)
Cardinal Jaime Ortega called on the government to soften what it considers to be the heavy hand of the leaders and be more compassionate with its citizens.
"The hour has come to pass from being a legalistic state that demands sacrifices and settles accounts to a merciful state willing to offer a compassionate hand before imposing controls and punishing infractions."

SOUTH ALABAMA POLL: GIVE INSPECTORS MORE TIME
President Bush easily carried Alabama in the 2000 presidential election. He's having a harder time convincing Alabamians of an urgent need to attack Iraq, the results of a new Mobile Register-University of South Alabama survey suggest.

NORML RESPONDS TO DC REEFER MADNESS
"It is time for the Justice Department to reassess its priorities and stop wasting federal law enforcement resources on such trivial endeavors. [Operation Pipedreams, see below.] Federal efforts would undoubtedly be better served keeping a bomb out of the hands of Al Queda than keeping a bong out of the hands of a marijuana smoker."
(Suggested by Steve Glassroth)

VIRTUAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON
On February 26th, hundreds of thousands of people from across the country will send the collective message: Don't Attack Iraq.
(Suggested by Chris Marston and Marcus Widenor)

Why Pollack is Wrong: We Have Contained Saddam
Ken Pollack is a gifted analyst. But in his lengthy February 21 New York Times op-ed, he assembles a house of cards to prove that (1) Saddam Hussein may soon get a nuclear bomb, and (2) if he does, we cannot deter him from using it. For Pollack to be correct, all of Saddam's efforts to build a bomb must work perfectly and all of our efforts to thwart him short of war must fail miserably. Here are six of his key errors.
(Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, from Brief Intelligence Weblog)

OPERATION PIPE DREAMS INDICTS 55 PARAPHERNALIA SELLERS
National Sweep Shuts Down Retailers, Distributors And Internet Sites.
The pipe dream is that these bozos think this is good -or even efficient - law enforcement. The nightmare is that they are running the show.
(Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)

Search Systems
Here's an Interesting site featured in the most recent GnomeReport. It's a database list of resources that is searchable by state. AG Opinions, licenses, civil war soldiers, you name it.

An Incomplete

Saturday was a day of coincidences for me. I ran across a file that I had been looking for. It was a Clarence Darrow quote that I had done for an ACDLA conference. About three years ago I had promised Judge Palughi that I would make him a copy. He had liked it and I thought it really captured the essence of what he was all about. "Great," I thought, "I'll finish this incomplete and give it to him.

I puttered with the thing for about an hour and went to the Garage only to find out that our friend had passed away that morning. Judge Butler's comment that "He represented the poor, the indigent, the downtrodden, and he brought the same approach to the bench," isn't merely the puffery we come to expect when an important person dies. Judge Palughi is going to be really missed.
(Mobile Register)

The French Lesson
Eight out of 10 Europeans on the street agree with the French-German position.... In confronting that awkwardness, the United States has chosen France as its scapegoat. Not having any training as a satellite state... France has assumed the right to judge for itself.

The United States, of course, is free to decide that a cadaverous satrap, kept under close surveillance, affects its national (and familial) interests. If the American administration is intent on precipitating the war that is Osama bin Laden's fondest wish, if it wants to give fundamentalism, which is currently ebbing, a second chance, we can say only, so much the worse for you — while regretting that history's most constant law, the perverse effect, is not better known to the Pentagon. Provoking chaos in the name of order, and resentment instead of gratitude, is something to which all empires are accustomed. And thus it is that they coast, from military victory to victory, to their final decline.

"Old Europe," the Europe of Crusades and expeditionary forces, which long sought by sword and gun to subjugate Jerusalem, Algiers, Timbuktu and Beijing, has learned to distinguish between politics and religion. In 1965, one of its old champions, de Gaulle, loyally warned his American friends that their B-52's would not be able to do anything against Vietnamese nationalism — and that to devastate a country is not the same as winning hearts and minds. Europe no longer takes its civilization for civilization itself, no doubt because it is better acquainted with foreign cultures, notably Islam. Our suburbs, after all, pray to Allah.
(Regis DeBray, NYT OpEd)