Harper's Weekly News Review

Harper's, the oldest continuing publication in the US, puts out a news round-up every Tuesday. I'm on their e-list, and sometimes (depending on the week and who does the compilation) it can be very good:

The United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision
that the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is
legal. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before
the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing of
federal prosecutors; Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) told
Gonzales his ability to lead was in question, and Senator
Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) asked Gonzales to resign. One
prominent Republican said the hearing was like "clubbing a
baby seal." A series of attacks in Shiite districts of
Baghdad killed at least 158 people, the largest number of
people killed in a single day since President Bush
increased the number of troops in Iraq three months
ago. "I wish the war was over," said Karl Rove. "I wish
the war never existed." Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
upset that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not support
a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, convinced six
cabinet members to quit. "We are free because we are not
in the government," said Bahar al-Araji, a Sadr
legislator. "If the prime minister doesn't do what we
want, we can do something to the prime minister. We can
make him leave the government." Defense Secretary Robert
Gates said that if the vacancies were filled with members
who could broaden representation in the cabinet, it
"probably would be a positive thing." Britain banned the
phrase "war on terror," and Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid declared that the United States has lost the war in
Iraq.

Boris Yeltsin died. In Rio police clashed with drug gangs
in a shootout that left at least 19 people dead. Brazilian
Justice Minister Tarso Genro announced that the federal
government would send hundreds more police officers to the
city. "For young people," said a spokeswoman for nonprofit
Observatory of the Favelas, "this is a genocide. And I
don't mean that as a metaphor. It really is a genocide."
President George W. Bush, who had planned to unveil
sanctions against Sudan during a speech at the
U.S. Holocaust Museum, agreed to U.N. Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon's request for more time to pursue diplomacy,
and Sudan agreed to allow more than 3,000 armed U.N. and
African peacekeepers into Darfur, where
government-supported militia are accused of killing as
many as 400,000 civilians. Presidential candidate Dennis
Kucinich shut down his campaign website for 24 hours in
order to create a virtual "moment of silence" to honor the
dead at Virginia Tech. Representative Louie Gohmert (R.,
Tex.) argued against a hate crime bill from the floor of
the House. "If you are going to hurt someone," he
characterized the bill as saying, "if you are going to
shoot them, brutalize them, please make it a random,
senseless act of violence like Virginia. Don't hate them
while you hurt them." A senior U.N. inspector revealed
that in the past two months Iran has doubled its capacity
to enrich uranium, and Senator John McCain entertained a
crowd at a campaign rally in South Carolina by singing
"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara
Ann" by the Beach Boys.

A Stanford study concluded that pollution from ethanol
could be a worse health hazard than that from gasoline,
and a report detailing the effects of global warming in
North America predicted the end of "a reliable snowmobile
season" by mid-century. One centimeter of snow accumulated
on the drought-stricken Qinghai-Tibetan plateau in what
China claimed to be the first artificial snowfall. A
12-foot-long minke whale spent two days frolicking near
the polluted waters of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New
York, then died. "These are days for tears," said an
onlooker. In Hungary, a truck on its way to a
slaughterhouse overturned, releasing 5,000 bunnies; 500
were killed and 4,400 recaptured, but 100 hopped to
freedom. Restaurant owners in Hong Kong were fining
customers who did not eat all their food, and Toto,
Japan's leading toilet maker, was offering free repairs
for 180,000 bidet toilets after several burst into
flames. Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson
gave a speech at the Religious Action Center of Reform
Judaism. "I'm earning money," he said, referring to his
life in the private sector. "You know that's sort of part
of the Jewish tradition, and I do not find anything wrong
with that." Angry crowds in India were burning Richard
Gere in effigy, and doctors in New York City removed a
woman's gallbladder through her vagina.

-- Claire Gutierrez

Harper's Weekly Review

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a timetable for
ending the Iraq war by a six-vote margin. The bill
mandates American withdrawal in September 2008 if the Bush
Administration meets certain benchmarks, earlier if it
does not. Several Democrats voted against the timetable
because it was not sufficiently antiwar, and Republicans
derided the inclusion of domestic provisions benefiting
spinach growers, citrus farmers, salmon fishermen, and
peanut storers. "What does throwing money at Bubba Gump,
Popeye the sailor man, and Mr. Peanut have to do with
winning a war?" asked Representative Sam Johnson of
Texas. "I will veto it," said President George W. Bush,
"if it comes to my desk." British troops pulled out of
Basra; two days later, rival Shiite factions began
battling over a government building that had been been
evacuated by the military. In the Green Zone, a press
conference held by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was interrupted by a
nearby rocket attack. Ban, frightened, ducked behind a
podium, and the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to
impose new sanctions on Iran. Iranian officials claimed
that American authorities had prevented President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad from attending the Council meeting by delaying
his visa, and in the Iraqi territory of the Shatt al-Arab
waterway, Iranian forces captured and detained 15 members
of the British Royal Navy. Oil reached $62 per
barrel. John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, discussing last summer's conflict in Lebanon,
said that he was "damned proud" of U.S. efforts to delay a
cease-fire, and White House press secretary Tony Snow
announced that he would soon undergo surgery to remove a
growth from his lower abdomen.

Al Gore returned to Capitol Hill to testify that global
warming is a planetary emergency. Rep. Ed Markey of
Massachusetts called Gore a prophet, and Rep. John Dingell
of Michigan addressed him as "Mr. President." Joe Barton
of Texas, the leading Republican on the House Energy and
Commerce Committee, told Gore he was "totally wrong" and
that, if need be, Republican lawmakers would stay late for
an "all-out cat fight" with Democrats. Ralph Hall, also of
Texas, speculated that Gore's attack on the energy
industry could result in war "when and if OPEC nations
abandon the U.S.A.," and Roscoe Bartlett (R., Md.) said
that he thought it was "probably possible to be a
conservative without appearing to be an idiot.

The Lame Report

Here's a nice snippet to make sense of the motive and means behind the US Attorney Firings Scandal:

Congress continued its inquiry into the role of the Bush
Administration in last year's firing of eight U.S
attorneys. D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff for
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, resigned after
claiming, in an apparent attempt to save Gonzalez from the
charge of lying to Congress, that he did not tell his
superiors at the Justice Department that the White House
wanted to fire the prosecutors. The Justice Department
released a March 2005 email from Sampson to then-White
House counsel Harriet Miers, in which he ranked all 93
U.S. attorneys on their loyalty to the Administration and
made a "target list." In other emails, he cited a
little-known provision of the Patriot Act that authorizes
the Attorney General to replace U.S. attorneys without
Senate confirmation, and consulted with Miers about the
possibility of replacing between 15 and 20 percent of
U.S. attorneys, "the underperforming ones," and leaving
the "loyal Bushies."

(Excerpted from Harper's Weekly Review)

The White House is offering Congress interviews with Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, accompanied by two deputy White House counsels. No testimony, no transcripts, no transparency. Lame!

Harper's Weekly News Round-Up

I get this e-mailed to me every Tuesday, and it can be pretty good, depending on last week's news and the writer assigned to distill the witch's brew:

An appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the writ
of habeas corpus does not apply to prisoners in the
American concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. Americans celebrated the 275th birthday of George
Washington, and President George W. Bush compared the War
on Terror to the American Revolution: "General Washington
understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills,
and his will was unbreakable." British Prime Minister Tony
Blair announced that he would bring home more than 1,600
of the 7,100 British troops in Iraq. Vice President Dick
Cheney said that the withdrawal was "an affirmation that
there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty
well"; he also said that breaking "the will of the
American people" was Al Qaeda's strategy. "They win
because we quit." "Dick was always very realistic," said
Kenneth Adelman, an arms-control official in the Reagan
Administration and friend to Cheney. "I don't really
understand how month after month he gets briefings showing
Iraq's getting worse and worse, and he engages in all this
happy talk." The day after a Sunni imam in Fallujah issued
a condemnation against Sunni militants, a truck bomb
exploded beside his mosque, killing 36 worshippers and
wounding at least 62 more. A suicide bomber at a Baghdad
university blew herself up, killing more than 40 people
and scattering purses, pens, textbooks, and fingers. For
its temporary embassy in Washington, D.C., the Iraqi
government purchased a $5.8-million Tudor-style mansion
across the street from the home of Dick Cheney on
Massachusetts Avenue. The mansion features a built-in
espresso machine, heated floors, soft pistachio carpeting,
and a Jacuzzi. Ted Wells, Scooter Libby's defense lawyer,
gave his closing argument. "He's been under my protection
for the last month," Wells told the jurors, "now I'm
entrusting him to you." Then, he sobbed, "Give him back!
Give him back to me!" Wells then went back to his chair
and sniffled.

It was discovered that Abdul Tawala Ibn Alishtari, an
indicted terrorist financier, gave more than $15,000 to
the National Republican Congressional Committee. "We need
to be careful," said the NRCC in a statement, "not to rush
to judgment." An audit of the Justice Department's
statistics on terrorism released by the Inspector General
revealed that successful efforts in counterterrorism had
been inflated, and the statistics in general were
wrong. Satellite radio companies XM and Sirius announced
plans to merge but faced opposition from the National
Association of Broadcasters. "In coming weeks," said
Dennis Wharton, a NAB spokesperson, "policymakers will
have to weigh whether an industry that makes Howard Stern
its poster child should be rewarded with a monopoly
platform for offensive programming." Residents of New
Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras with brass bands, parades of
Zulu warriors and Day-Glo feathered Indians, vats of
gumbo, and pounds of turkey necks and pigs' feet. "It's
back, y'all," Mayor Ray Nagin exclaimed. "It's back!" At
an ethanol-enzyme production plant in North Carolina,
President Bush slipped into a white lab coat and safety
glasses, hoisted a beaker of clear ethanol, and said that
he "quit drinking in '86." Scientists said
"quasicrystalline" designs in medieval Iranian
architecture indicated that Islamic scholars had made a
mathematical breakthrough that Western scholars achieved
only decades ago and concluded that ancient Iranian
culture was very, very smart.

Congress approved the Defense Department's request to
spend $18 million to convert, in preparation for a
post-Castro Cuba, a U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo into a
shelter that could house 500,000 fleeing Cubans. Children
at a circus performance in Colombia watched as an attacker
shot and killed two clowns, and in Guatemala a dozen homes
and two teenagers were swallowed up by a 330-foot-deep
sinkhole. Twelve senior citizens on a beach excursion in
Costa Rica during their Carnival Cruise Line vacations
drove off two muggers, while a 70-year-old American put a
third in a headlock, broke his clavicle, and strangled him
to death. With its new slogan "The Light is On for You,"
The Archdiocese of Washington launched a marketing blitz
that included ads on buses and subway cars, 100,000
brochures, and a highway billboard in an effort to get
Catholics to confess. Kentucky Fried Chicken president
Gregg Dedrick wrote a personal letter to Pope Benedict XVI
asking him to bless the company's 99-cent Fish
Snacker. Catholic leaders criticized New York City for
distributing 26 million subway-themed condoms, and José,
the first native beaver seen in the city in 200 years, was
spotted swimming up the Bronx River. After widespread
opposition from residents of Utah and Nevada, the Pentagon
canceled its plan to test a large non-nuclear bomb as part
of Operation Divine Strake. It was revealed that the
British Ministry of Defense once hired psychics to find
Osama bin Laden, and Defense Minister Des Browne announced
that Prince Harry, the 22-year-old son of Prince Charles
and Princess Diana, who is third in line to the throne,
would be deployed to Iraq. Phoenix International Airport
security officials using Smart-Check, the airport's new
X-ray vision scanner, could see travelers' weapons,
collarbones, and bellybuttons. Researchers at Johns
Hopkins University confirmed that mothers suffering from
heartburn are likely to give birth to hairy newborns, and
scientists in Senegal watched chimpanzees fashion spears
from sticks and use their weapons to stab sleeping bush
babies. Thousands of spectators at the Rose Monday parade
in Mainz, Germany, watched a float of President Bush being
spanked by the Statue of Liberty.

-- Claire Gutierrez

Harper's Weekly Review

We subscribe to Harper's. It is the magazine I'm most likely to read, and they have a weekly news roundup they send by e-mail. There are always a bunch of fun and leading-indicator items I've missed, such as Al Gore being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize and diners at a restaurant in Illinois who were not interested in talking to Preznit Bush:

The U.S. director of national intelligence released a
declassified version of a new National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq; the report found that "the term 'civil
war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi
conflict" and that "widespread fighting could produce de
facto partition." Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and
Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of
those countries' total populations, and a massive bombing
in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people,
making the attack the second deadliest in the country
since the March 2003 invasion. In Hillah, where a further
45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to
smother the blast from a suicide bomber. "He hugged him"
said a witness, "and the explosives tore apart both
bodies." The U.S. military announced that insurgents had
shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,
former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to
attack Iran, and President George W. Bush asked for an
additional $100 billion to fund the United States's wars
through the end of the current fiscal year. Detainees at
Guantánamo Bay complained of "infinite tedium and
loneliness," and a German court issued an arrest warrant
for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and
torture of a German citizen. Former U.S. Vice President Al
Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Al Gore,"
said a Norwegian lawmaker, "has made a difference."
President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling
Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the
diners wanted to talk to him. "Sorry to interrupt you,"
said Bush. "How's the service?"

Taliban forces were on the rise in Afghanistan, Maoist
rebels were taking over coffee plantations near Ooty,
India, and Moro rebels in Jolo captured a number of senior
Philippine military officers including General Dolorfino,
Colonel Ramon, and Colonel Baboon. Delaware Senator Joseph
Biden praised Illinois Senator Barack Obama. "I mean, you
got the first mainstream African American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
said Biden. "I mean, that's a storybook, man." The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that
global warming was expected to heat up the atmosphere by 4
to 7 degrees within the next century, and the Bush
Administration suggested that scientists find ways to
counteract greenhouse-gas emissions by blocking out the
sun. "Possible techniques include putting a giant screen
into orbit," suggested the White House. "[Or] thousands of
tiny, shiny balloons." "Hot" patients who had recently
received medical treatment using radioisotopes were
setting off Homeland Security radiation detectors, and the
U.S. market for female-arousal liquids continued to
grow. A mob of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem overpowered
policemen and stole a woman's corpse to prevent an autopsy
but later gave it back. Japanese Health Minister Hakuo
Yanagisawa apologized for calling women "birth-giving
machines," hospital staff in Yekaterinburg, Russia, were
gagging crying babies, and in Cambodia a Briton named
Bowel Anpaul was arrested on charges of pedophilia. Rubber
genitals were stolen from the set of the new "Hannibal"
movie, an Argentine soccer fan who asked for a tattoo of
his team's logo received instead a tattoo of a large
penis, and a Chinese man whose genitals were eaten by a
dog when he was a child was said to be happy with a new
penis built from his chest muscles and hip bones. Wang
You-theng, a fugitive Taiwanese tycoon, was seized by
U.S. immigration officials. HIV, said scientists, can
avoid destruction by hiding out in the testicles.

Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was awarded France's
highest civilian honor, the Legion d'Honneur, and was
kicked in the head by a camel. Terri Irwin, the widow of
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, urged her late husband's
fans to respect stingrays, which she described as "cute
little pancakes in the ocean." Britain's top female
paraglider was mauled by eagles. "Eagles," said a
colleague, "are the sharks of the air." The Indian Army
was preparing to hunt down man-eating leopards in Kashmir,
and elephants in Thailand were head-butting and robbing
trucks. New Jersey warned its residents against eating
heavy metal-contaminated squirrels, roboticists announced
the creation of a teddy-bear robot that will help men meet
women, and an Australian man sold his life on eBay. New
York Governor Eliot Spitzer told Republican Assemblyman
James Tedisco, "I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll
over you or anybody else," and James Taylor was about to
go on tour. After it ransacked House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's Washington, D.C., residence, a small black bird
was captured in a brown bag and released. "She kept
thinking to herself," said a spokesman, "'Quoth the Raven,
"Nevermore."'"

-- News Round-up by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi