Daily Kos: Republicans fail to learn the Vote Vets lesson; still voting to kill troops

VOTE ON TROOP ARMOUR SUBJECT OF BLOG EXPERIMENT
You want proof that we're living in a changing world? The blogs DailyKos and KagroX wrote a post about Republican "Troop-Killers". They are attacking a recent vote by GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee (which includes Alabama's Robert Aderholt) unanimously opposing a requirement that the troops sent to Iraq be properly protected with armor. (Check out the YouTube video on this link.) Here's the twist. As a way to continue to push this story and trying to hold Aderholt and company accountable for this vote they have proposed a coordinated day of action that runs primarily through local blogs like this one.

IN THE NEWS
You might remember that we threw a party for Ernie Laird. It seems the accounts of his death had been overly exaggerated. When we found out he wasn't dead, we threw him a Mark Twain Party and last Friday good friend Gary McElroy wrote a story in the Press-Register about it.

Brother and former partner Peter Madden (now with the Federal Public Defender's office), was featured in a news story about his client, a Flomaton man whose federal trial on bomb charges ended in a hung jury last month and who now faced new charges under an indictment handed down last week by a grand jury in Mobile. (Post-script: his client pled guilty to a misdemeanor. Way to go, Peter.)

Meanwhile, Arthur Madden is in an account in today's paper about his representation of Mobile-based Applied Pharmacy Services. The company has been indicted by an Albany, N.Y., grand jury in connection with a supposedly illicit steroid distribution network involving high-profile customers.

Top News- Man Breaks Into Home Over Porn Screams - AOL News

HIS STEELY DAN?
"'Where is she?' Van Iveren demanded, thrusting the sword at the neighbor, the complaint said. 'Where is she?'"
(AOL NEWS, unearthed by Eric Davis)

CUBA TRAVEL BAN LIFT BILL INTRODUCED
There has been a lot of activity around the nation concerning the effort to end the ban on travel to Cuba. The latest is the "Rangel (D-NY)-Flake (R-AZ) Bill" (H.R. 654 "To allow travel between the United States and Cuba" (introduced 1/24/2007, Latest Major Action: 1/24/2007 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.)
At present, the bill has 60 co-sponsors and the proponents of the act are trying to secure a minimum of 100 cosponsors. Needless to say, Alabama will probably not be in that vanguard. However, there seems to be some momentum for abolishing this ridiculous ban on our right to travel. So, why not start softening these guys up with calls, letters, faxes, etc telling them people here actually do support the lifting of the ban?

DILDO LAW UPHELD
In upholding Alabama's vibrator law on Valentine's Day (someone over there has a sense of irony) the 11th Circuit's decision in (click on the red headline and then follow the link to Williams v. King) reiterated what it thought about the law and the dildos that passed it:

By upholding the statute, we do not endorse the judgment of the Alabama legislature. As we stated in Williams II:

However misguided the legislature of Alabama may have been in enacting the statute challenged in this case, the statute is not constitutionally irrational under rational basis scrutiny because it is rationally related to the State’s legitimate power to protect its view of public morality. “The Constitution presumes that . . . improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted.”
(Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)

PETRAEUS' GUYS
Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq.
(WASHINGTON POST)

COPS TRADE DRUG PROSECUTION FOR CAR
The Milwaukee Police Department is accused of taking possession of a Mercedes-Benz convertible from a drug-addicted local businessman in return for agreeing not to prosecute him for cocaine possession. The businessman, Jordan M. Beck, was president of Mill Valley Recycling, a scrap metal business. Beck died at 42 from a drug overdose five months after his June 2005 arrest. Beck's family is trying to get the car back, arguing that he was pressured into making the deal and that he might be alive today if police had treated him as an ordinary drug offender.
(MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, unearthed by Joel Sogol)

IRAQ WAR BENCHMARK
If U.S. involvement continues on the current scale, the funding for the Iraq war — combined with the conflict in Afghanistan and other foreign fronts in the war on terrorism — is projected to surpass this country's Vietnam spending next year.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES, unearthed by Common Dreams)

SMILE, YOU'RE ON CANDID CAMERA
Well, I get this video from a friend this morning. It is a cop describing this handy-dandy Orwellian gizmo the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have. Since the video looked legit or was, at the very least, a very slick hoax I set out to debunk/authenticate it and came across a whole body of knowledge centered around car thefts.
It seems that British Columbia is using a new technology called Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR), to target both traffic violators and stolen vehicles.

HERE'S THE VIDEO FOR THAT.

As you can see from the website address, it's tied to something called baitcars. Hmmmm. Well, go to their MAIN SITE for an explanation of all manner of things. For example: a "baitcar" is, as the name implies, a car put out by the police who hope that you take it off and they can study your nasty little behavior, find your hidy hole, etc.; a "lo-jack" is an aftermarket vehicle tracking system that allows vehicles to be tracked by police after being stolen; and a "honey trap" is a form of sting operation, in which "wrong doers are lured into revealing themselves to a policing organization. This would include a bait car, where a sting operation targets a known or suspected individual and attempts to trap them committing a specific case of crime, a honey trap establishes a general lure to attract unknown criminals."

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO FOR EXAMPLES OF PERSONS CAUGHT IN THE ACT
(Suggested by DREW WALCH)

RAUL CASTRO IN CONTROL,SENATE TOLD
The Miami Herald, no great friend of the Castros, reports that the sibling has things in that island nation firmly in hand when the inevitable happens, this according to a top U.S. military spook.
(MIAMI HERALD, unearthed by Cuban Weekly News Digest)

MILITARY SPYING ON CIVILIANS
The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
(NEW YORK TIMES)

CUBAN TRANSPORT SYSTEM OPENLY DISCUSSED AS IN PERIL
The deadline for implementing the Cuban Ministry of Labor and Social Security's Resolutions 187 and 188 on work regulations and discipline, measures intended to "curb labor indiscipline, eradicate theft and utilize the work day to best advantage, thus increasing production and productivity" have been postponed because, according to acting President Raúl Castro, the urban transport system was a few "meters away from total collapse." At the recently held workers assemblies both resolutions were "hot" topics of discussion and have been candidly discussed by government officials.
(PROGRESO)

A CHRISTMAS STORY
For our son’s first Christmas, Charles had hoped to take him on a carriage ride through Central Park. Instead, Jordan, now 9 months old, and I snuggled under a blanket in a horse-drawn buggy. The driver seemed puzzled about why I was riding alone with a baby and crying on Christmas Day. I told him. “No charge,” he said at the end of the ride, an act of kindness in a city that can magnify loneliness.
(NEW YORK TIMES)

POST-MORTEM
Sadam Hussein's final hour began about 5 a.m., when American troops handed him over to Iraqi authorities. CLICK HERE FOR AN UPDATE TO THIS STORY
(NEW YORK TIMES)

WPMI-TV 15 PLACES 2nd
Congrats to the folks at channel 15 for placing 2 on VH-1s "VH-1 Webjunk" annual awards show. Their telecast on the Crichton Leprechaun just added another facet to the ever-burgeoning mystique of Alabama.