Bad Deeds for 2-16-07

Senator Ted Stevens wants to ban Wikipedia – Remember US Senator Ted Stevens, the guy who infamously called the Internet a series of tubes? Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among other things, would require that any school or library that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block access to interactive Web sites, including social networking sites, and possibly blogs as well. It appears that the definition of those sites is so vague that it could include sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators. There are so many things wrong with this bill, it’s hard to count them all. But its greatest irony would be banning Wikipedia — perhaps the most widely used reference resource in the world — from libraries and schools.

White House Is Reported to Be Linked to Dismissal of U.S. Attorney – A United States attorney in Arkansas who was dismissed from his job last year by the Justice Department was ousted after Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, intervened on behalf of the man who replaced him, according to Congressional aides briefed on the matter.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a bill aimed at curbing the administration’s power to avoid the confirmation process for replacement prosecutors.

Cheney’s son-in-law used revolving door to stop chemical security regulations – The son-in-law of Vice President Dick Cheney, Philip Perry, has entered and exited the Bush administration twice, and as a consequence helped free the chemical industry from upgraded security measures in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, according to an article in the March edition of the Washington Monthly. “A flippant critic might say the father-in-law has been prosecuting a war that creates more terrorists abroad, while the son-in-law has been working to ensure they’ll have easy targets at home.”

Billions Squandered in Iraq – About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

Republican Congressman misquotes Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime – During House floor debate on the Iraq War resolution Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) misquoted Abraham Lincoln as saying, “Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” The only problem: Lincoln never said such a thing. It was actually J. Michael Waller in a piece he wrote for Insight magazine in December of 2003. FactCheck.org has counted 18,000 references to the Lincoln “quote” by people who typically support Bush’s war policy and, moreover, oppose critics of the president’s war policy. Now that’s “Truthiness” at work.

Justice Official Bought Vacation Home With Oil Lobbyist – A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.

Memo in Texas House of Representatives says evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs – Texas House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges. The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools” and claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs. It states, “Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” The memo supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as “Kabbalists” and laments “Hollywood’s unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism.”

Regards,

Jim