I love to hear President Clinton speak. It reminds me of what we have been missing for the last 6 or so years. Larry King asked him to comment on Larry Craig. Again, there is no cowboy bravado. He is thoughtful…as usual.
Ain’t she sweet?
See her walking down the street
Now, I ask you very seriously
Would you run into a burning building to save her?
The 3th installment of the first Star Wars trilogy…Well, It really wasn’t the first because the 2nd trilogy was a prequel. So, the movie Return of the Jedi was originally named Revenge of the Jedi. Jedi’s have nothing to do with Larry Craig but I’m running out of titles for these posts. Look for titles like Nightmare in the bathroom with Larry Craig, Jason vs. Larry in Friday the 13th part 69 and finally, Larry Craig - Reloaded. 
Yep, I went there. This whole thing is so ridiculous, you have to go there. For the women out there that haven’t been in a men’s restroom, there is a protocol. It is just like getting in a elevator where no one talks, in the mens room there is very little chitchat. There is very little eye contact. You go. You do your business. You leave. Done. There is no foot touching. That just doesn’t happen. Never. There is no time when your stance is wide enough so that your foot goes under the stall divider. NOT. NEVER.
BTW, have you ever heard of someone pleading guilty then trying to take back him/her guilty plea? I’m not talking about 16 year old kid but instead, a 62 year old veteran of national politics.
It takes something special to make a neocon turn against the president. Bush hung Bremer out to dry by saying in a new book (Dead Certain) “…Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been ‘to keep the army intact’ but that it ‘didn’t happen.’” So, Paul Bremer fought back by releasing 2 letters to the NY Times. (Letter from Bremer to Bush and Letter from Bush to Bremer) It is now clear that Bush was part of the decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army. Books Like Fiasco and Cobra II had laid the blame on Bremer and Rumsfeld. It is now clear that Bush, who is supposed to be a student of history, was the one who personally approved of this huge screw up.
Anne Hutchinson, who lived from 1591 until 1643, was a founder of Rhode Island.
The core of the story is that Mrs. Hutchinson held that neither church nor state was needed to connect a believer to his or her God.
As you might imagine, this assertion was a threat to the rulers of Massachusetts Bay Colony. In Massachusetts, church and state were intertwined and the average colonist was expected to adhere to established orthodoxies.
Mrs. Hutchinson was termed a “leper” and banished to Rhode Island in 1638. There she worked with Roger Williams who had also been exiled from Massachusetts.
Given the difficulty in taking a hard stand that exists to this day, it’s nearly impossible the imagine the type of personality and the extent of courage it took for a woman to risk banishment in a wilderness nearly 400 years ago.
Mrs. Hutchinson gave birth to 14 children. Her husband, a cloth merchant, was said to have been supportive. To what extent he was supportive, I do not know.
The above picture is of Mrs. Hutchinson facing trial for her views in Massachusetts. The painting was done by Edwin Austin Abbey.
What is this Jason from Friday the 13th? Will this guy not just go away? He has disgraced himself and his family.
I, personally, think that he should stay so that everyone can see the hypocrisy of the Republican “Family Values” party.
(video later.)
The Carpetbagger Report has been all over Larry Craig - here, here and here.
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From MSNBC.com:
Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.
“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told The Associated Press.
“We’re still preparing as if Sen. Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate,” Smith said. (more…)
Some come to the light early. Others come to the light later. I knew that Bush had no intention of leaving Iraq. I knew. Bush’s other brain, Condoleezza Rice said, exactly that on the Charlie Rose Show back in May. Dr. Rice said, “We are not looking to leave Iraq. That is not why this president went into Iraq…. We are not going to leave Iraq that is not capable of defending itself.”
Keith finds a quote in a new book about Bush revealing. I find it confirmation of what Dr. Rice had already told us. We aren’t leaving Iraq. It doesn’t matter what the Democrats want or what the American people want. Unless Congress has a super majority and can override a veto the troops are staying. Period. That’s the reality.
Keith Olbermann: And so he is back from his annual surprise gratuitous photo-op in Iraq, and what a sorry spectacle it was. But it was nothing compared to the spectacle of one unfiltered, unguarded, horrifying quotation in the new biography to which Mr. Bush has consented.
As he deceived the troops at Al-Asad Air Base yesterday with the tantalizing prospect that some of them might not have to risk being killed and might get to go home, Mr. Bush probably did not know that, with his own words, he had already proved that he had been lying, is lying and will be lying about Iraq.
My wife just got home from our children’s grade school’s Site-Based Council meeting. I don’t know exactly what a Site-Based Council is, but it seems to be the principal, vice-principal, teachers and other concerned parents discussing and working on school administrative and management issues. But that’s not the important thing.
The important thing is that our grade school just found out that it will not be an “excelling” school this year. Now the average person would hear this and say, “Oh, that school must have a bunch of stoopid people, or lazy teachers, or maybe they just suck. We sure wouldn’t want to have our kids go to that school. Booooo!” But, the devil, as always, is in the details. Well, actually, the devil might be in the White House, but that’s a different story.
Back to the No Child Left Behind Act, as it is playing out in my children’s grade school. The schools that get labelled as non-excelling, or whatever, may get labelled that way because of actual academic shortcomings. Or they may just run afoul of any number of little picky numbers. In our case, one subgroup of fifth graders, who were taking one part of the state exam, ended up having a three of those students, have to have “nonstandard accommodations” for that part of their testing. This might have meant that they had to have part of the test read to them or they might have had to dictate their answers to a scribe. In our case these three students required these “nonstandard accommodations” because it was part of their IEP, or “Individualized Education Plan”. An IEP, for those of you not familiar with current education lingo, is where a school tries to individualize the education plan for a student (complicated, huh), so as to maximize the chances that that student is able to learn to the best of their abilities.
Well, by the rules of the game, these three students having to have “nonstandard accomodations” are automatically counted as having failed, thus putting the subgroup just below the magical, scientifically proven to be important, 95% mark, whereby if you are above that mark, you are the bestest in the world and if you are below that mark, apparently, you suck. A student who has to have “nonstandard accomodations” is counted as having failed the test, whether they actually failed or not. They are also counted as having not taken the test, even though they actually took the test. And if fewer than 95% of your students take the test, you have not met the requirements. Sorry. Thanks for playing. Try again.
Schools make IEPs in order to try to “Leave No Child Behind”. But if they make an IEP, that student will automatically be counted as having failed if that IEP is enacted during the testing process. A school will either violate federal special education laws, by not helping those with learning disabilities, or they will violate the federal “No Child Left Behind” laws.
And that, my friends, is a load of crap.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
