The most important television program ever

"The U.S. is no longer the occupying power in Iraq."
"So... what are we then?"
"Invited Guests."
"And our troops are.."
"Tourists, Jon! American tourists spending a semester abroad."

-Jon Stewart and Rob Cordory on the "hand-over" of Iraq.

Ashcroft at it again

He continues his fight against the Freedom of Information Act - this time by refusing to release data that the law demands he release not only under the FOIA, but also under the 1938 U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.

His reason: doing a query on the database might cause it to crash and delete all the data he's supposed to make public.

Many years ago, when Pacific Bell turned off my phone service accidentally (really - it wasn't my fault that time!) after a few hours on the phone with various customer service agents and managers, I finally got them to change the time they'd turn it back on from two weeks to three days. I was told by one agent that there's no way to do it faster than three days because it will take that long "for the coils to warm up."

I didn't believe them any more than I believe the Justice Department when they say that running a query on their database might destroy it.

Oh, but good news. Ashcroft just got an extra $600 million of our money to go through the database and remove compromising records... er, no I mean, to "update the system" - apparently this effort will be finished by December, and, if he feels like it, will remember to release the information then. Convenient that it will be just after the election, no?

Article here, thanks to stonemirror for the link.

Yep, that about describes it...

From the latest Queen of Wands, describing my recent life pretty much exactly:

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