HERE COMES CHICKEN JOHN!
"If all goes as planned, and that is no sure bet, an unlikely crew on an improbable craft will amble the Mississippi for the next month, spreading culture and chaos downriver."
(NEW YORK TIMES ARTS SECTION, unearthed by John Furman)

MOLLY THOMAS PLAYS WITH TODD SNIDER BAND ON LENO THIS WEDNESDAY!
Good friend and accomplished violinist (she "got trained" as we like to say around here) will be appearing Wednesday, August 9 on the Jay Leno Show as one of Todd Snider's musicians. Originally from Mississippi, we here in Mobile consider her a homie.

She played and sang for a group called Slow Moses and was a bartender at The Bike Shop, a local watering hole. In addition to being a wonderful musician,
she is a good friend and lovely person. She left us a few years ago for the bright lights and potential of Nashville.

I don't know who Todd Snider is but he must have great taste as he utilizes, not only Molly, but Mobile's Will Kimbrough
another wonderfully talented local guy who has also migrated to Nashville and is making waves in that orbit
.
(THANKS TO MICHAEL SMITH FOR HELP WITH THE WILL KIMBROUGH LINK)

COMUNISMO A LO CUBANO!
Everyone comes looking for their own version of Cuba. Revolutionaries find revolutions. Capitalists find dictatorship. Tourists find the perfect beach. Yet, nobody wants to see Cuba through Cuban eyes. It is a dynamic country that was not frozen in time since the Revolution of 1959, but is evolving and continually changing. There were debates on every street corner, both strong affirmations and deep criticisms of the president, Fidel Castro. And yet there is one consensus: like all citizens, Cubans passionately love their country."
(TORONTO STAR)

POT DEALERS SELL WEED ON CRAIGSLIST
The classified-advertising Web site craigslist has become popular in recent years with young, tech-savvy city dwellers seeking apartments, jobs and for-sale items. But it's also being used as an Information Age black market for some Seattle-area marijuana dealers.
(SEATTLE TIMES)

FAITH-BASED VOLUNTEERS INDICTED
Prosecutors have charged two volunteers who say they tried to save the lives of three sick migrants stranded in the desert. Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz are facing up to 15 years in federal prison and a half-million-dollar fine. The Border Patrol maintains that the work of the faith-based group No More Deaths was encouraging migrants to cross illegally into the United States. Part of the gravamen, the government maintains, is that the group's leaders were warned that volunteers could be arrested but that the warnings were dismissed by the group as absurd.
(NEWSDAY, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

PATDOWNS ALLOWED ONLY BETWEEN CONSENTING PLAYERS
Florida's courts - and now a federal district court - have sided with Valrico civics teacher Gordon Johnston, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder who challenged the practice of pre-game security patdowns outside the Bucs' stadium.
(ST PETERSBURG TIMES, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

WORLD IS GOING TO END - YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!
"Continuing the yellow journalism trend of marketing scary ideas, Paula Zahn Now featured a segment on whether the crisis in the Middle East is actually a prelude to the end of the world, marking the third time in nine days that CNN has devoted airtime to those claiming that the ongoing Mideast violence signals the coming of the Apocalypse.
(MEDIA MATTERS)

MERCHANDISING THE "NEW ARMAGEDDON"
Continuing the recent right wing media trend of packaging the problems in the middle east as some sort of "new apocalypse", Michael Savage irresponsibly predicted Israel is 'going to lose in Lebanon' unless it wins a 'devastating, catastrophic, overwhelming victory' in which 'nothing is left living in southern Lebanon, south of the Litani River.' Later in the program, Savage chastised the Israeli government for displaying a 'Holocaust mentality' by shying away from his proposed course for victory, adding that Israel cannot continue to 'live' unless it 'frees itself of the men who are acting as though they are still hiding in the sewers of Warsaw' and 'act[ing] like Holocaust Jews hiding in the sewer.'"
(MEDIA MATTERS)

DON'T BLOW THEIR COVER?!?
"In what has to be the biggest Barney Fife operation every conducted by the federal government, a Hartselle minister and a former Alabama State Bar President were among many people cited for alleged acts of public indecency and lewdness at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Limestone and Morgan counties. The offense? Peeing in the woods."
(DECATUR DAILY NEWS)

RABBIS CONFRONT BUSH ON TORTURE
Invoking centuries of Jewish law, hundreds of American rabbis confront Bush."Many Muslims have left countries where dictators used torture, and for that reason came to America. We don't want America to torture as well.

SIDEBAR:

Muhammad also warns against inhumane behavior. Captives were very important to him. 'Don't torture the creation of God' - Muhammad said this three times. No event or situation should warrant torture."
(VILLAGE VOICE)

BUSH BLOCKED PROBE
"Bush refused to grant security clearances for investigators who were looking into the role lawyers representing the Justice Department played in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency listens to telephone calls and reads e-mail without court approval, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee."
(DETROIT FREE PRESS)

FINGER'S OWNER IDENTIFIED
"Police have released the identity of the man who mailed a severed finger to his girlfriend here in Corpus Christi. Authorities said Robert Hanna is the man who is believed to have cut off one his own fingers and then mailed to it to his former girlfriend.The finger was sent in a small, gift box with a love letter that read: "I want to let you know, this is how much pain I'm going through because of the pain I've caused you. I want you to know this is my last attempt to reach out and touch you." "
(MSNBC, unearthed by M Prince)

FEDS FUND ABORTION MISINFORMATION
"A new study released by Rep. Henry A. Waxman finds that federally funded pregnancy resource centers often mislead pregnant teens about the medical risks of abortion, telling investigators who posed as pregnant 17-year-olds that abortion leads to breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness."
(HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, unearthed by Common Dreams)

THE ISRAELI/ARAB DOUBLE-BIND
"The extremists on both sides of the Arab/Israeli conflict have always formed a kind of tacit alliance, with the supporters of 'greater Israel' and 'no Israel' understanding their joint interest in preventing any moves towards a peace compromise. That is the main reason why Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas as it emerged in the 1980s. Unwilling to negotiate with the secular nationalists of Fatah, even as they were moving towards support for a two-state solution, the Israeli authorities thought it would be a clever idea to promote their Islamist rivals."
(GUARDIAN, unearthed by Common Dreams)

IMMIGRATION LOVES A VACUUM
The mass migration of Latinos to northwest Georgia to Dalton, which is known as the carpet capital of the world, has changed the character of everything from factory floors to schools to superstores. On this night, Wal-Mart's ubiquitous TV monitors alternately promoted arroz and rice, aparatos and electronics.
(WASHINGTON POST)