Karen Hughes don’t know much about the Constitution

From The Guardian, via Kos:

“Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans’ lives,” she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why Mr Bush mentions God in his speeches, Hughes asked him whether he was aware that “previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our constitution cites ‘one nation under God’.”

As better informed citizens doubtless know, the phrase “one nation under God” never appears in the Constitution.

In fact, God isn’t mentioned at all.

As I said some months ago while discussing George Bush’s crony-filled appointments:

Whenever I hear “Karen Hughes,” I think “public diplomacy.”

Oh, yeah.

Technorati Tags: Karen Hughes, Politics, Diplomacy, U.S. Constitution

New story, please

I am really tired of looking at Judith Miller’s mug on the CNN site. The photos they’re using are from October 04, fer fuck’s sake.

Maybe they’ll put up pics of Lil’ Kim this afternoon. She’s still in jail, as best I know.

UPDATE!: They just put up a fresh picture of Miller.

Presumably taken today. She must be done singing before the grand jury.

This is like Kremlin-watching, only less dynamic.

Booty, called

I always thought this honor would go to J-Lo or Beyoncé.

It’s all about the flavor of the week, I guess.
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Satire, folks.

What you didn’t read about Roy Blunt in the Post-Dispatch this morning

News of Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt’s ascension to the role of House majority leader can’t be found on the front page of today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is largely given over to the new owner of the Blues hockey club and the burning question of former Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire’s place in history. Such is the P-D’s new emphasis on “local news.” Newly-indicted Tom DeLay, the former majority leader, is at least mentioned on the front page, and a piece on Blunt can be found inside the paper. The breathless article by the P-D’s Washington bureau is full of accolades for the “rising GOP star,” but fails to mention the considerable ethical baggage Blunt brings to the new position.

Fortunately, other news sources are doing a more complete job of profiling Blunt. As noted here by commenter Holley, and also by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog, Roy Blunt himself has ties to a political consultant who has been indicted:

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DeLay and Blunt: Joined at the wallet

When one of them sneezes, the other catches a cold

The indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on criminal conspiracy charges should surprise precisely no one. DeLay’s history of flouting finance laws in order to enrich Republican campaign efforts has been well-documented, and awaited only a prosecutor with the stones to charge him. What’s interesting here is that only one charge was levied against him by Ronnie Earle’s office (indictment here). TRMPAC, Blunt’s money-making machine, raised a lot of cash. You’d expect that Earle would choose to go with the case he felt was strongest, but it is possible that he has further action - other charges - waiting in the wings?

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Some are born to greatness, others achieve it, and others have greatness thrust upon them

And then there’s Michael Brown.

We get the government we deserve.

Technorati Tags: Hurricane Katrina

The horror! The horror!

Scritch, scratch

One of my coworkers just alerted me that all flags are flying in iPod Nation. Here’s the same bandied-about article you probably saw last Friday:

“I found that my black 4GB Nano scratched within minutes after peeling off the protective wrapper and wiping it with a cotton T-shirt. I put it in a pocket just once and it was inside the soft case that came with my third-gen iPod,” comments poster number 188 in that monster Apple thread.

He’s hardly alone: Register reader Matt Baker says “the plastic on the front panel scratches insanely easily”, and comments that that hardly makes sense, “especially for a device that’s sold in a large amount based on its appearance, and that launched at least a month before any cases for it will be available. Mine has lived either on a work surface, in a shirt pocket on its own, or (as demonstrated by Steve Jobs to be a suitable place when he launched it) in the change pocket of my jeans, again on its own.” [...]

So what’s gone wrong? Although Apple’s award-winning designer Jonathan Ive has improved various things about the iPod Nano over its predecessor - for example, the scroll wheel has texture, making it easier to use - he seems to have overlooked how people really use them. Consumer gear has to live in pockets with change and keys. Only the polycarbonate survive, or something like that.

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Safe at home, but busy

It is odd to me, and always has been, how ordinary lives can just stay fairly ordinary in the middle of momentous times. War abroad, devastation and displacement here at home, and my biggest concern this weekend was the roofing over the kitchen. Intelligently designed or not, life is fundamentally a crap shoot. It’s still weird.

So, anyway, there’s this house, see?

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A death by drowning, pared to its essentials

The word is out that the emotional story of an elderly woman’s death during Hurricane Katrina, told by Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard to Tim Russert of Meet the Press, is inaccurate in several details. Let’s review:

New details and interviews with the son whose mother died in the flood show that the tragedy unfolded from Saturday through Monday, Aug. 29 — not Monday through Friday, Sept. 2 as recounted by Broussard. The owners of the nursing home were indicted Tuesday for the deaths of more than 30 residents, which officials say occurred on Aug. 29.

The son of the deceased woman, parish emergency services director Thomas Rodrigue, has said that the sequence of phone calls described by Broussard doesn’t match up with what actually happened:

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Back to the bottle?

With this in mind…

I Believe the National Enquirer

Why don’t you?

by Jack Shafer

Almost three decades ago, the National Enquirer abandoned the traditional supermarket tabloid formula of UFOs, bizarre sex, séances, gross-outs, Loch Ness-ish monsters, cooked-up stories, and celebrity gossip for a new formula mostly devoted to celebrities. Striving for the kind of journalistic accuracy that repels libel suits, the tabloid paid many of its sources and scrupulously reported and fact-checked its pieces about Cher, Liz and Dick, Jackie O., Liza, Henry Kissinger, Burt and Loni, and the original Charlie’s Angels. [...]

The Enquirer may overplay stories, as it does in the most recent issue (June 14, 2004) by describing Jessica “Washingtonienne” Cutler in a headline as the center of a “Bush Sex Scandal” when all she’s confessed to is having slept with an unnamed Bush appointee for money. But the particulars of the Enquirer story appear to be true. The Enquirer may focus excessively on the exploits of show-biz figures such as Billy Bob Thornton, Lindsay Lohan’s father, and Larry Hagman, but if past issues are a guide, the tabloid isn’t making this stuff up. And say whatever ugly things you will about the modern National Enquirer, it hasn’t staged the filming of an exploding pickup truck like NBC News; it hasn’t been taken by a serial liar, as was the New York Times; and it’s avoided running preposterous stories about the U.S. government using nerve gas in Vietnam, as CNN did.

…what do you think about this?

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