libby "forgot" being told about plame/wilson

and if you believe that, you must also believe that slick willie "forgot" being sucked by monica. i mean, after all, he was a busy man, a lot on his mind being being president. oh yeah, and maybe ken lay just "forgot" about all those people who had warned him about enron's shaky accounting.

Um, I Forgot 7 People Talked of Spy - Libby
Sat, 2006-05-27 22:43
By James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News

Washington - Borrowing a defense used by tax evaders and schoolkids who don't do their homework, Vice President Cheney's indicted former top adviser told a grand jury he forgot that seven people told him about CIA spy Valerie Plame.

Lewis (Scooter) Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he first learned of Plame's identity. Cheney, his boss, was among those who told Libby that an Iraq war critic's wife worked at the CIA, prosecutors allege.

But Libby said in his now-unsealed 2004 testimony that "it seemed to me" he heard about Plame "for the first time" from NBC broadcaster Tim Russert in July 2003.
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what happened to bush's texas swagger?

"What happened to Bush's Texas Swagger?" asks the new york times." my guess is Laura finally talked him into getting an enema.

link

test blast postponed indefinitely

what's this, another sign of common sense winning out?

'Divine Strake' Blast at Nevada Test Site Delayed Indefinitely
Sat, 2006-05-27 16:36
By Associated Press

The federal government has indefinitely postponed a planned explosion that was expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert.

Officials say the delay will allow more time to answer questions about the blast -- which opponents fear would kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site (about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas).

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan says the test will be scheduled at a later date, depending on legal action.

The Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders" have filed suit in US District Court in Las Vegas to block the non-nuclear blast.
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hs exit exam reinstated

as a followup to the story on the stay of the injunction against the exit exam, i post this excerpt from an article in the chron. the story of this girl who "speaks almost no english" is more proof that the exit exam is badly needed. what makes people think that someone who speaks almost no english is deserving of a high school diploma? if someone who speaks almost no english can get a diploma, then that document is worthless. the last quoted paragraph below is also very telling. the girl is going to undertake extra studies in hopes of passing. that's exactly what is supposed to happen! good for her, she's doing the right thing. she'll learn more, pass the exam, and when she does, she'll have really earned it. her diploma will be a true accomplishment rather than a meaningless piece of paper.

``...
Iris Padilla, a senior at Richmond High School who speaks almost no English and hasn't passed the exit exam, was in class Wednesday when another student received a phone call with news that the exit exam had been reinstated.

"Several girls started to cry," Iris said, acknowledging she was one of them.

Iris has passed all her classes and otherwise would graduate if not for the exam. Her spirits were high earlier this month after an Alameda County Superior Court judge struck down the exit exam, saying it was unfair to penalize students who attended poorly performing schools and hadn't been given an equal opportunity to learn the materials on the test.

Iris was so happy, she even went to the prom with her friends last weekend -- a rite of passage she had planned to skip when she thought she wouldn't receive a diploma.

Now, though, Iris is planning to attend summer school and take another stab at the test this summer.
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lay, skilling convicted

it looks like Skilling and Lay's last con job fell flat. the jury, quite sensibly, didn't buy it. flat-out denial was a bold but stupid strategy. there could hardly have been a better exhibition of how these conmen operated, how they managed to fool investors and regulators for years.

Lay, Skilling convicted in Enron collapse
By KRISTEN HAYS, AP Business Writer 23 minutes ago

HOUSTON - Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.

The verdict put the blame for the 2001 demise of the high-profile energy trader, once the nation's seventh-largest company, squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a federal criminal trial that lasted nearly four months.

Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate, non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to Lay's personal banking.
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Enron founder Lay was convicted Thursday on all six counts against him in the corporate trial. Former Chief Executive Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine.
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mice inherit trait without gene

more evidence that central dogma is not the whole story.

In surprise, mice get trait without gene
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer 1 hour, 41 minutes ago

NEW YORK - In a startling exception to classical genetics, mice in a lab experiment have inherited an effect of an aberrant gene without inheriting the gene itself.

Experts say the result may someday help scientists understand aspects of diabetes, infertility and other problems. They also said that while such an inheritance pattern has been seen before, it's not clear how common or important it is.

DNA is the stuff of genes in mice and men. But the new study indicates DNA's chemical cousin, RNA, produced the odd-sounding result. In this case the result was mice with distinctive white tail tips.

For the study, reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, scientists produced mice that carried one normal copy of a particular gene and one aberrant copy.

When the scientists bred them, each mouse passed along one of its gene copies to each offspring. The offspring, in turn, ended up with two copies, one from each parent.

Under the rules of classical genetics, one would expect that mice that ended up with two normal copies of the gene would show normal coloring. But surprisingly, 24 out of 27 mice with two normal copies still showed the telltale white patches associated with the aberrant copy.

When scientists bred their special mice to others that had only normal copies of the gene, most offspring with only normal gene copies still showed the distinctive coloring. Experiments showed the trait could be inherited through either the mother or father, and it went on for generations in absence of the abnormal gene.

How can this be? Researchers focused on sperm, which is simpler to analyze than an egg, and found evidence that RNA molecules there were carrying the hereditary signal. For example, when RNA from mice bearing the aberrant gene was injected into early embryos, about half the resulting mice showed the distinctive white tail tip.
...

The mouse study is not the first demonstration that a gene's effect can be inherited without the gene itself. That phenomenon, called paramutation, was shown 50 years ago in corn and later in other plants. Similar findings have also been made in animals, but the new work is notable because it presents evidence for how it happens, Soloway said.

court reinstates hs exit exam

thank goodness sanity has prevailed, at least for the moment... people who think the exit exam is unfair because of deficiencies in the school system, should get to work improving our schools instead of dumbing them down.

California Supreme Court Reinstates H.S. Exit Exam

bush administration, in a nutshell

how utterly typical: appear before a friendly audience, ignore the hard questions, ignore his failures, try to pretend critics don't exist.


``...
Most were polite and complimentary, although a heckler [sic] tried to put Bush on the hot seat when he first opened the floor for questions.

"Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" a woman yelled.

Bush ignored the outburst and turned instead to a small business owner who praised Bush's tax cuts and asked if they would be made permanent.
...'' link

viguerie: bush betrayed us

this right-wing jerk backed bush when it counted, so if he's truly repentant he should et down on his knees and beg forgiveness. he needs to accept blame himself instead of just blaming bush for not following their policies. it's too easy to just knock bush now that his policies are demonstrated failures. the policies that viguerie wanted would have been disastrous too. he doesn't name the iraq war itself as one of bush's betrayals --- as a true conservative would have --- but merely the failure to devote enough resources to it.

Bush's base betrayal

bush denies listening to domestic calls

any bets as to how long it'll be before chimpy's latest claim about the spying program is exposed as a cheap lie?


Bush: We Don't Listen To U.S. Calls
But President Declines To Discuss Reports That Goverment Compiles Phone Data

ATLANTA, May 16, 2006
(CBS/AP) President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the government's alleged compiling of phone records — or whether it would amount to an invasion of privacy.
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bush and schwarzenegger stand behind corrupt hud secy

of course. Bush doesn't have an ethical bone in his body. and Schwarzenegger is a serial sex offender. furthermore, alphonso jackass needs to sit down with a good dictionary and look up the meaning of the word "anecdotal". it's not a synonym for "falsehood".

[image of schwarzenegger standing behind jackson]

Bush housing chief investigated over contract flap
By Caren Bohan 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An inspector general is investigating allegations that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson may have improperly considered politics in withholding a federal contract.

But a White House official said on Friday that President George W. Bush was standing by his Cabinet secretary and longtime friend and would withhold judgment on any investigation "at this point."

Jackson was quoted in the Dallas Business Journal as citing a contractor's dislike of Bush in describing an incident in which that person was denied a contract.

The report said that Jackson had told a real estate forum: "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
...

HUD spokeswoman Dustee Tucker has said Jackson was speaking anecdotally and offering an example of "how politics works in D.C." She also said Jackson was not involved in contract decisions at HUD.

boy emperor hits the 20s

despite an unprecedented wall of propaganda erected around Bush by the mainstream media, the truth has dawned on the general public. Bush is the worst president, ever. can we please have an impeachment now?



Bush job approval falls to 29 pct in new poll
Fri May 12, 9:17 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's job approval rating has hit a new low, with 29 percent of the U.S. public saying he is doing an "excellent or pretty good job," down from 35 percent in April, according to a Harris Interactive poll in The Wall Street Journal Online.

The poll of 1,003 U.S. adults said 71 percent of Americans said Bush was doing an "only fair or poor job," up from 63 percent in April. It said the survey was conducted May 5-8 and had a 3 percent margin of error.

chimpy's hud secy admits racketeering

this has got to be illegal. denying a contract because of someone's political views?? and yet the fool doesn't even realize he's broken the law. worse, he doesn't seem to realize what he did was dead WRONG. he's lecturing about it in a public speech, as if to warn people not to speak out against his boss. chimpy should publicly reprimand and fire this turkey, and take steps to make SURE all his appointees know what this fool did was unacceptable. will chimpy do that? of course not.

HUD secretary's blunt warning
Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush
Dallas Business Journal - May 5, 2006
by Christine Perez
Staff Writer

Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That's the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.


Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
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