PWN3D!!!!!!111 again by the oncall pager. I highly doubt there will be any other posting tonight, though I do hope to get the chance to reply to a couple of comments, especially Vash’s latest.
Might I suggest a visit to some of the fine blogs on my blogroll?
Here’s an absolutely despicable tale of betrayal of public trust.
Two federal air marshals scheduled to appear this afternoon on drug conspiracy charges are accused of smuggling 15 kilograms, or 33 pounds, of cocaine for $4,500 per kilogram, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said today.
Air marshals Shawn Ray Nguyen, 38, and Burlie L. Sholar III, 32, both of Houston, were arrested Thursday at Nguyen’s Houston home, where an informant had delivered the cocaine and $15,000 in “up front” money.
Nguyen and Sholar are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison and a maximum fine of $4 million.
The two air marshals had allegedly agreed with the confidential informant to bypass airport security at Bush Intercontinental Airport to smuggle the cocaine on board a flight bound for Las Vegas.
Joanne R. Oxford, special agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service in Houston, said, “The Federal Air Marshal Service takes these allegations seriously and is cooperating fully with the investigation.”
Whatever beliefs one may hold about the U.S. drug policy, one should certainly feel that government agents should not be violating that policy. There comes a point where betrayal of public trust is almost treasonous, and there is arguably nowhere, other than the U.S. military, in the post-9/11 world where the American public has placed so much trust for their own security than the federal air marshall program. If these two marshalls are tried and found guilty, I vote that they be skinned.
Unfortunately, a tribute meant to pay worthy honor to a life lost is also utilized as an arena for political gain and attack. Equally unfortunate is the fact that there is little surprise to be found in the development.
A day of eulogizing Coretta Scott King turned into a rare, in-person rebuke of President Bush, with a succession of civil rights and political leaders assailing White House policies as evidence that the dream of social and racial equality pursued by King and her slain husband is far from reality.
Bush and his wife, Laura, sat on stage as worshippers cheered the suggestions from several speakers that the civil rights movement — led in the 1960s by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fostered since his assassination by the widowed Coretta — remains alive, its goals not fully realized.
Tuesday’s service, lasting six hours, much of it carried live nationally on cable television, marked an unusual combination of political pageantry and civil rights history. The spectacle included humor, interpretive dance, gospel and classical music, shouting and testifying, and a list of dignitaries that made room for three former presidents, poet Maya Angelou and crooner Michael Bolton.
But it also included pointed political commentary, much of it aimed at Bush. The president and his wife watched as the sanctuary at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta filled with raucous cheers for their White House predecessors, Bill and Hillary Clinton — a reminder that five years into his term, Bush and the Republican Party he leads have not found the acceptance across black America that GOP strategists had hoped.
“This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over,” said former President Carter, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, to rising applause. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”
Carter, who has had a strained relationship with Bush, drew cheers when he used the Kings’ struggle as a reminder of the recent debate over whether Bush violated civil liberties protections when he ordered warrantless surveillance of some domestic phone calls and e-mails.
Noting that the Kings’ work was “not appreciated even at the highest level of the government,” Carter said: “It was difficult for them personally — with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI.” Bush has said his own program of warrantless wiretapping is aimed at stopping terrorists.
The most overtly partisan remarks came from the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protege and longtime Bush critic, who noted Coretta King’s opposition to the war in Iraq and criticized Bush’s commitment to boosting the poor.
“She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar,” he said. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.”
Anybody else reminded of the pep rally … err … funeral for Senator Paul Wellstone? Why is it that such affairs cannot be managed with due dignity and that it is one side of the political spectrum that seems to have a problem managing an actual tribute? If I recall correctly, there were no digs in the direction of Jimmy Carter during the ceremonies as Ronald Reagan was laid to rest.
To his credit, President Bush reportedly carried himself well and in the intended spirit of the occasion.
As the barbs flew, Bush seemed to take the heat in stride, smiling at times, giving Lowery a standing ovation and even pulling the civil rights leader in for a bear hug.
The president himself received polite applause before and after his seven-minute eulogy, in which he said he attended the service “to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole.”
“As a great movement of history took shape, her dignity was a daily rebuke to the pettiness and cruelty of segregation,” the president said.
Such is the tone and behaviour memorial services deserve. It would be best for our entire nation to remember and embrace this notion.
Boldly going where no scientist had gone before, an expedition has found a biological treasure trove in a land essentially untouched by the presence of man.
A lost world teeming with previously unknown or presumed extinct wildlife that has remained untouched by humans and is as close to the Garden of Eden as is possible exists in the jungle-covered mountains of Indonesia’s Papua province, scientists say.
An international team of 13 experts, which spent a month surveying more than a million hectares in the Foja mountains in the Indonesian half of New Guinea island, said they had identified 40 new species and expected to record many more once they had completed their research.
Scientists regularly find new species but the team claims it is the unexplored aspect of the area, which rises to 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level, which makes it unique. “It’s an example of what the whole of New Guinea was like 50,000 years ago when there was no hunting, no impact of logging and no environmental desecration,” Stephen Richards, of the South Australian Museum and one of the team, said at the release of the findings in Jakarta. “There’re very few places left on earth where there has been so little human impact.”
“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, one of the team’s leaders.
Highlights include the first bird species discovered on New Guinea since 1939, a honeyeater with an orange face-patch and a golden-mantled tree kangaroo, thought to have been hunted to near extinction. The scientists took the first known photographs of Berlepsch’s six-wired bird of paradise, described by hunters in New Guinea in the 19th century, and the golden-fronted bowerbird conducting its mating ritual of building a metre-high bower.
Evidence of the lack of human presence was how many animals showed no fear of the researchers. Two long-beaked echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal, allowed scientists to pick them up and take them back to their camp to be studied.
National Geographic has some interesting photographs of the discoveries. Sadly, no word of any dinosaurs yet, but they’re probably saving that find for a new theme park.
I’d hoped to get more blogging in tonight but you know what they say about the best-laid plans.
Anyway, I’m out of here in the morning for a weekend retreat with my fiancee and her family. I will not have internet access, so if you must find out my opinion on something, track me down in a cabin at Beavers Bend State Park in Middle-of-Freakin’-Nowhere, Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, I’ll be doing some light hiking, keeping an eye out for bald eagles and probably a large amount of napping and reading. For reading materials, I’m taking Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad, Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation’s Future, and Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (the latter with a small sense of obligation to In the Bullpen‘s Chad Evans). Which one I actually crack will depend on my mood at the time.
Blogging will resume probably Sunday or Monday, depending on the Super Bowl and my energy level. ‘Til then …
Out.
Sorry, but once again I’m being owned by work. Maybe over night I’ll put up something, but perhaps now would be a great chance for y’all to visit some of the fine blogs on my blogroll.
Though it may be nothing, it should be noted that an improvised explosive device has been found here in the homeland.
A San Francisco Starbucks is closed this afternoon after police defused a bomb placed in the bathroom.
Police received a call reporting a suspicious package at the coffee house, located at 1401 Van Ness Ave., at 1:15 p.m. The police explosives ordinance unit diffused an improvised explosive device, or IED, around 2 p.m., Sgt. Neville Gittens said.
Gittens said he could not comment on the size or type of device found or on its potential explosive capacity. A police investigation is ongoing.
A man working at Sushi Bar Wayo next door to Starbucks said police told him there was a pipe bomb in the coffee house and that he needed to evacuate his restaurant.
Ricardo Frias, a sales representative with Ellis Brooks Auto Center, located adjacent to the Starbucks, said a heavy police presence began at around 1 p.m. He said once the bomb squad arrived on scene an hour later, all auto center employees were directed to stand on the other side of the block-long store for about 30 minutes. He said he heard nothing when the IED was defused.
Islamist terror? Doubtful. Radical far-left terror? Slightly increased likelihood, though Starbucks, with their overrated and overpriced concoctions, seems to be the Mecca of the home-grown radical. McDonald’s would seem the likelier target.
Starbucks has issued a generic statement and authorities have made a generic claim of having leads.
Someday soon, Islamist terror will return to our shores. I just don’t think this was it.
Maybe it was the post-World Series celebrations, but Chicago has topped Houston once again. And Houston has no problem with it.
Houston has been downsized from No. 1 to No. 5 on Men’s Fitness magazine’s annual list of the fattest U.S. cities.
Houston traded its dubious 2005 distinction with Chicago, which was No. 5 last year.
Men’s Fitness placed Las Vegas an inch behind Chicago, followed by Los Angeles and Dallas.
“I’m proud of you guys,” said editor Neal Boulton. “You’re down to five … It takes an enormous effort to go down that much from that height.”
[…]
Houston has the most fast-food restaurants per capita, earning the title of Junk Food Capital.
“Houston has 70 percent more fast-food places than the average city in our survey,” Boulton said.
Mayor Bill White said the fitness magazine’s methodology is flawed.
“They count Subway as a fast-food establishment,” he said, “even though, in a city like New York, the neighborhood deli wouldn’t be counted as fast food. We ought to be on the fittest cities list, not the fattest.”
White was named one of the three fittest mayors in America by the magazine’s editors.
“His involvement is something we gave Houston points for,” Boulton said. “Mayor Bill White initiated Get Moving Houston, aimed at getting Houston off the list of the fattest cities. Well, Houston, you’re moving.”
The city acquired its pudgy label in 2001. It stuck like doughnuts until 2004, when Detroit surged to No. 1.
That didn’t last.
Houston took the title back a year later.
That year, White launched his Get Moving Houston campaign, which sponsored nutrition, running, walking and bicycling events.
Good for the city. This was an embarrassing title, and now Houston doesn’t even have to bear the mantle of fattest in Texas.
Nothing tonight really. I spent the weekend with the fiancee trying to make progress on registration, wedding and honeymoon plans. We’d stalled a bit through the holidays and now, I fear, she’s hoping to drive me like a workhorse. Except for a few areas, I still hope to stand by my “yes-dear, I-only-want-veto-power” plan.
Anyway, nothing else tonight but a silly quiz, with hat tip to TexasBestGrok.
Tragic footnotes to a tragic story, left by those trapped in a mine to their loved ones now trapped in dealing with loss and the aftermath.
Some of the 12 coal miners who died following an explosion left notes behind assuring family members that their final hours trapped underground were not spent in agony, a relative said Thursday.
“The notes said they weren’t suffering, they were just going to sleep,” said Peggy Cohen, who had been called to a makeshift morgue at a school to identify the body of her father, 59-year-old mining machine operator Fred Ware Jr.
Cohen said a note was not left with Ware’s body, but that she planned to retrieve his personal belongings later Thursday to see if he left one in his lunch box. But she said the medical examiner told her notes left with several of the bodies all carried a similar message: “Your dad didn’t suffer.”
Ware was among a dozen miners who were found after 41 hours inside the mine. They were found at the deepest point of the Sago Mine, about 2 1/2 miles from the entrance, behind a fibrous plastic cloth stretched across an area about 20 feet wide to keep out deadly carbon monoxide gas.
Cohen said her father had the peaceful look of someone who died from carbon monoxide, and the only mark on his body was a bruise on his chest. “It comforts me to know he didn’t suffer and he wasn’t bruised or crushed. I didn’t need a note. I think I needed to visualize and see him.”
The sole survivor, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, remained in critical condition in a coma in a Morgantown hospital Thursday with a collapsed lung, dehydration and other problems.
My best wishes to all of the involved families.
