That’s the problem in this country. People are never satisfied with stuff the way it is. Remember that friend in high school wanted to make bongs out of everything. Making bongs out of apples and oranges and shit? Come in one day and find your friend going, “Hey! Look man, I made a bong outta my head! Put the pot in this ear and take it outta this one! Good! Take a hit! *snort*”

3 accused of using corpse head to smoke pot

The Kingwood teenager’s story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.

“He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it,” Adkins said. “So I knew there was some truth to the story.”

Judge threatens to suspend Guantanamo terror trial

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military judge in the trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr threatened Thursday to suspend the terror trial unless the prison camp releases a detailed log of Khadr’s treatment in more than five years of detention as an alleged al Qaeda terrorist.

His attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, wants the log in a pretrial effort to limit the scope of evidence given to a jury of U.S. military officers at his upcoming trial, expected in late summer. He argues the circumstances of some interrogations would exclude some of his statements from the trial.

One practitioner in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name.

But a few months after the man began his work, the allegation that Obama was educated in a madrassa appeared in an anonymous article in Insight Magazine, an online publication of the Unification Church, in January 2007. It also claimed that Clinton operatives had dug up the information. The article was cited by several conservative commentators, including on Fox News, before it was debunked.

To see how this sort of thing has taken root, go to Amazon and read the discussions that are shown on almost every political book, such as:

Are Black Religious Institutions a Fifth Column in the US?

IS OBAMA BLACK?

and on and on.

‘Loud’ rocks guitar documentary
Davis Guggenheim to unveil film at Cannes

Davis Guggenheim has completed filming on a documentary that will look at the story of the electric guitar from the point of view of three significant rock musicians: the Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White.

Led Zeppelin’s Page, U2’s the Edge and White, leader of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs, were chosen for their impact across three different generations — from Page’s 1960s days as a session musician and a member of the Yardbirds into the Edge’s unique sound developed in the ’80s through White’s current work. Each explains and demonstrates how he changed the sound of the electric guitar to suit his own style. Pic includes a jam session featuring the three guitarists.

Dude, this is gonna be totally AWESOME!

Other than the obvious “because we’re f’n idiots” excuse?

U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list

WASHINGTON — Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation “embarrassing,” and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

“This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it’s frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela,” Rice said.

Your “counterpart”, Condi? Let’s just say that one of you is a war criminal, and the other won the Nobel Peace Prize, and leave it at that, how about?

Watchdogs prompt FBI to withdraw ‘unconstitutional’ National Security Letter

The FBI has withdrawn an illegal National Security Letter seeking information from an online library and has lifted a gag order that until Wednesday prevented any discussion of the information request.

After nearly five months of haggling, the FBI eventually withdrew its NSL, which requested personal information about at least one user of the Internet Archive. Founded in 1996, the archive is recognized as a library by the state of California, and its collections include billions of Web records, documents, music and movies.

Kudos to the ACLU and the EFF on behalf of the Internet Archive, which if you’ve never visited, is well worth a look.

David Addington, Cheney’s Chief Of Staff, Subpoenaed To Discuss Interrogation Practices

WASHINGTON — A former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo allowing harsh interrogations of military prisoners has agreed to testify to Congress about those practices, say House Judiciary Committee officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has not yet made the announcement.

John Yoo, now a law professor at University of California-Berkeley, has agreed to testify to the House Judiciary Committee voluntarily about the Bush administration’s interrogation practices after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Hang ‘em. Hang ‘em in front of the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument, so kids can take fields trips to spit on them.

Hundreds of Laptops Missing at State Department, Audit Finds

Hundreds of employee laptops are unaccounted for at the U.S. Department of State, which conducts delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.

As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings.

How’s that GWOT going there guys?

FBI Raids Special Counsel Office, Seizes Records

NPR.org, May 6, 2008 · FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistle-blowers. The agents seized computers and shut down e-mail service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, as first reported by NPR News.One of Bloch’s first official actions was to refuse to investigate any claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. When the news of his refusal was leaked to the press, career employees in his office say, Bloch blamed them for the leak. He retaliated, the employees said, by creating a new field office in Detroit and forcing them either to accept assignments there or resign.

Now the question is- did the FBI go after this guy on the orders of the president…or against them?

While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say that the government’s data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.