You may see me on TV with an illegal smile. . . .

Betty McManus, 53, was gracious enough to take a moment to speak with assembled TV reporters after a single-engine plane crashed in her Baton Rouge, La., back yard.

Her granddaughter, 15-year-old Betty McManus, also was gracious enough to speak with reporters showing up to cover the crash, which miraculously injured no one. The pilot walked away after being helped from the wrecked Cessna by a neighbor.

Southern hospitality truly is a blessing. And a curse.

See, while everybody was being helpful and gracious to pilot and press, no one remembered to get rid of the 14 potted marijuana plants in the back yard.

And after the more pressing matters were attended to, Baton Rouge police took the elder Betty McManus away to jail on felony marijuana-cultivation charges. She reportedly will plead "Won't you please tell The Man I didn't kill anyone, no I'm just trying to have me some fun."

The Advocate has the details:

Police found the plants Wednesday afternoon while they were working at the crash site at 3229 Canonicus St.

Betty McManus, 53, who lives in an apartment behind the house, was accused of growing the marijuana, police spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely said. Darryl Jenkins, 51, who also lives in the apartment, was issued a misdemeanor summons on a possession of marijuana count.

The Cessna 206 crashed in the yard just after 10 a.m. after pilot Robin Tendolkar said the plane lost power, a Metro Airport official said Wednesday.

Tendolkar, an aerial photographer for Gulf Coast Aerial Mapping, had finished a 35-mile flight and had received clearance from the airport to land, said Bill Profita, an airport spokesman.

Soon after Tendolkar checked his landing gear, the plane lost power, Profita said. Why it lost power is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Tendolkar, who was not injured, declined comment. Although he wasn’t injured, he had to be pulled from the cockpit by a neighbor who saw the plane go down and ran to help.
Donald Ray Henry said he was standing in his backyard on Canonicus Street talking to a friend when he heard the sputtering engine of a plane overhead.

Henry’s friend, Clarence McGarner, a Baton Rouge police detective, glanced up and said out loud to himself: “That plane is kind of low.”

Seconds later, the southbound Cessna flew right over Henry’s roof, grazed the top of a towering pine tree and crashed into a live oak tree three houses down the street.

The oak spun the plane around and it came to rest at 10:19 a.m. atop a downed tree branch.

“It was an almost perfect crash,” McGarner said.

After he saw the plane hit the tree, McGarner jumped into his car to call police headquarters and report a plane had gone down, while Henry ran toward the plane to check on anyone inside.

He found an alert pilot who was able to talk and help push out a broken window.

Numerous agencies, including the Baton Rouge fire and police departments, EMS and State Police, arrived at the crash site.

(snip)

Later that afternoon, police found the marijuana plants 10 to 15 yards from the plane.

“You never know when you’re going to have a plane crash in your backyard,” McKneely said.

I'M FROM BATON ROUGE, and I miss home. Nothing like this happens in respectably Midwestern and sedate Omaha (By God!) Nebraska.

The closest thing we've had here recently was last year's "Bare-Bottom Bandit," whose pants fell down as he drunkenly burglarized a liquor store, only to be caught red-handed and bare-assed by security cameras.

But a plane crashing in the 'hood, leading the cops to discover Ganja Acres? That, podna, only could happen in my hometown.

So if there's any lesson to be learned here, it has to be what the Baton Rouge police spokeswoman said: Don't grow pot because “You never know when you’re going to have a plane crash in your backyard.”

Georges of a feather. . . .

George Armstrong Custer.

George Walker Bush.

Both share a "whatever it takes" mentality in battling a rival civilization, even if the "whatever" part cuts at the heart of one's own. Both acted boldly to the point of recklessness in attacking their enemies. Both got themselves in deep, deep trouble when their boldness linked up with a fundamental misjudgment about the nature of their adversaries.

In Custer's case, all that little blunder at Little Big Horn cost was his batallion -- down to the last man . . . including Custer.

In Bush's case, all his fundamental misunderstanding of the Muslim world, coupled with his rush to rash action, cost was . . . we don't know yet. If we're lucky, the United States will slink, humiliated, out of a ruined and genocidal Iraq.

IF WE'RE NOT, it's gonna be a lot worse than that.

For example, George Bush thinks democracy is a talisman that will, of its own accord, purge the Islamic world of its violent and hegemonistic demons. But didn't fair and free elections hand the Palestinian Authority's parliament to Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic movement sworn to obliterating Israel?

How's that working out for all concerned, George?

In his Creators Syndicate column, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley points to a book Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed has written. Everywhere and in every way, things are not working out very well at all.

Dr. Ahmed is a worldly man of letters who profoundly believes that collective good can be accomplished by individual acts of good conscience -- that each of us (Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu) must connect with others and live out our convictions for our common humanity in the face of tribalism, religion and other dividing forces. Thus, his reach out to me, a fiery American nationalist TV commentator and editor to find if not complete common ground, at least common friendship.

His new book, "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization," is thus particularly heartbreaking for me. As a trained anthropologist, he took three of his students on a six-month journey around the Muslim world to investigate what Muslims are thinking.

His conclusion: Due to both misjudgments by the United States and regrettable developments in Muslim attitudes, "The poisons are spreading so rapidly that without immediate remedial action, no antidote may ever be found." And Dr. Ahmed has always been an optimist.

He divides Muslim attitudes into three categories named after Indian Muslim cities that have historically championed them: Ajmer, Aligarh and Deoband.

Ajmer represents peaceful Sufi mysticism, Aligarth represents the instinct to modernize without corrupting Islam, Deoband represents non-fatalistic, practical, action-oriented orthodox Islam. It traces to Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-Century thinker who lived when Islam was reeling from the Mongol invasions. He rejected Islam's prior easy, open acceptance of non-Muslims.

In short, Dr. Ahmed is an Aligarth. As a young man he was one of new Pakistan's best and brightest, led by Pakistan's founding father and first president, Dr. Jinnah. They hoped to build a modern democracy, overcome tribalism and the more obscurantist aspects of Islam while still being "good Muslims." The Deobands are the Bin Ladens and all the other Muslims we fear today.

Even one or two years ago, I think Dr. Ahmed was reasonably hopeful that his views had a fighting chance around the Islamic world. So, my jaw dropped when I got to page 192 of his new book and he described his thoughts while in Pakistan last year on his investigative journey: "The progressive and active Aligarth model had become enfeebled and in danger of being overtaken by the Deoband model ... I felt like a warrior in the midst of the fray who knew the odds were against him but never quite realized that his side had already lost the war."

He likewise reported from Indonesia -- invariably characterized as practicing a more moderate form of Islam. There, too, his report was crushingly negative. Meeting with people from presidents to cab drivers, from elite professors to students from modest schools (Dr. Ahmed holds a respected place in the Muslim firmament around the globe), reports that 50 percent want Shariah law, support the Bali terrorist bombing, oppose women in politics, support stoning adulterers to death. Indonesia's secular legal system and tolerant pluralist society is being "infiltrated by Deoband thinking ... Dwindling moderates and growing extremists are a dangerous challenging development."

Although I dissent from several of Dr. Ahmed's characterizations of the Bush Administration, Washington policymakers and journalists should read this book because it delivers a terrible message of warning both to those who say things aren't as bad as Bush says, and we can rely on the moderate voices of Islam -- with a little assist from the West -- winning; and for those who argue for aggressive American action to show our strength to the Muslims (because, in Bin Laden's words, they follow the strong horse).

To the first group he says that the "moderate" voice is in near hopeless retreat across the Muslim world. Don't count on them. To the second group he says, whatever Bush's intentions, our aggression only strengthens our enemies.

SO, OUR POLICY to date is to pursue a disastrous and pointless war in Iraq that, according to Dr. Ahmed, only strengthens our enemies -- kind of like the Enterprise firing its phaser banks into an energy-eating alien monolith. Unlike George Bush, Captains Kirk and Picard always had sense enough to Quit Doing That when they saw what the deal was.

No, our policy is to strengthen the Radical Islamic Monolith by firing our phasers at it over in the Alpha Quadrant . . . er, Iraq. And then, to make sure our cause is good and hopeless, we want to make sure the strengthened (and popular) energy-chomping monolith achieves real power all across the Islamic world via Exporting Democracy(TM).

Good God. George Custer isn't dead, he's president.

And if I hadn't been conscripted into the cavalry, I'd be putting my money on Crazy Horse.

HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

The 'Appalachian Emergency Room' of politics

New Orleans' fine alternative paper, Gambit Weekly, offers up a cheery (NOT!) cover story this week.

For folks like your Mighty Favog, born and raised in Louisiana -- where characters, crooks and eccentrics are mainstream fare -- this is more a matter of 300th verse, same as the first. Depressing, but what the hell else is new?

Jeremy Alford and Clancy DuBos report:

It's been said that when the rest of the nation zigs, Louisiana zags. Democrats took over Congress last fall right after Louisiana elected two Republicans to statewide offices. A major issue for the Democrats nationally was alleged corruption and cronyism in the Bush Administration. Less than six months later, Congressman Bill Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat with his own section in the Winnfield hall, faces a 16-count indictment for racketeering, money laundering, bribery and conspiracy to bribe foreign officials. Jefferson is being stiff-armed by Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress -- at a time when his district and the rest of south Louisiana need all the help they can get from Washington.

Meanwhile, a handful of other state and federal investigations, along with scandalized mismanagement of post-hurricane resources, continue to paint Louisiana as a political backwater, if not a cesspool of corruption, cronyism and incompetence. It's not a pretty picture when taken in whole. Consider the following:

• The brother of state Rep. Francis Thompson, a Democrat from Delhi (and a hall-of-famer), was indicted last week for allegedly misusing funds as executive director of Poverty Point Reservoir District in Richland Parish -- a pet project of Rep. Thompson. Michael Thompson, who formerly served as mayor of Delhi, faces up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or both.

• The FBI launched a series of raids this month in connection with the state's much-ballyhooed movie tax credits. According to a whistleblower lawsuit filed by the former head of the Louisiana Music Commission, an economic development official no longer with the state allegedly accepted kickbacks in exchange for favorable treatment on some tax credits. In addition, Republican state Rep. Gary Beard of Baton Rouge was taken to task by The Times-Picayune for seeking film tax credits for work his engineering firm did for a proposed film studio that he controls. The film studio never paid the $798,250 engineering bill, but instead gave Beard's engineering firm a promissory note and then sought tax credits of approximately $320,000 for the engineering work -- or 40 percent of the fee. The state denied the tax credits, citing the fact that no money actually changed hands, among other reasons.

• The state's Road Home program, which is responsible for disbursing federal housing money, is now short between $2.9 billion and $5 billion of what is needed to complete its mission. ICF International, the company administering the program, has been criticized by Congress for alleged mismanagement, and last week attorneys filed a class action lawsuit against the company in state court in Baton Rouge.

• Subpoenas indicate that Louisiana's fabled Angola State Penitentiary is under investigation, particularly its popular rodeo, as well as the prison's potato chip contracts and massive farm, which was the subject of an award-winning documentary. The details are still sketchy, but former Prison Enterprises director Jim Leslie pleaded guilty last year to witness tampering in a case involving a man who accused long-time Angola warden (and political hall-of-famer) Burl Cain of shaking him down for a $1,000 donation to the prison chapel fund, based on reports.

• The state Ethics Board is considering a request by state Sen. Robert Adley, a Benton Democrat, to investigate Republican Rep. Mike Powell of Shreveport regarding a $12,334 contract for a political mailer. Powell suggests he never worked on the mailer, but Shreveport demographer and political consultant Elliott Stonecipher says he has paperwork proving Powell completed the work and manipulated the paper trail to keep his name out of campaign finance reports.

• A series of audits and reviews revealed earlier this year that the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state's insurer of last resort, is unable to produce accurate financial data because of software problems -- and hasn't reconciled its bank statements since 2006. The Legislative Auditor also concluded that state officials charged with overseeing Citizens may have broken the law by taking hunting and fishing trips on the agency's dime.

At a time when Louisiana sorely needs an image makeover, the Jefferson scandal, which has gained international media attention, and these developing stories seriously undercut the best efforts of our state's best citizens. Because the scandalous headlines aren't going away anytime soon, Louisiana faces an ongoing, uphill fight to change its widely-held and iconic association with corruption.

DO YA' THINK? As I said in an earlier post, the problem may not ultimately center on Congress' not wanting to give integrity-challenged pols in a dysfunctional state another flippin' dime, but instead the national government's will and ability to ignore popular calls for Louisiana's quarantine . . . or worse.

I jest, but only by half.

So, will Louisiana ever be able to shed its image as a bastion of corruption? Opinions vary, but crusaders like Brandt, Moret and Erwin contend lawmakers and others merely need to step up, close a few loopholes, increase transparency and generally avoid conflicts of interest. If that happens, they say, word will spread that a new days has dawned in Louisiana -- and that can be used in marketing and economic development initiatives.

"You just do it," Erwin says. "That's how you do it. That is how you move up on the lists."

Meanwhile, as Louisiana continues to beg the federal government for more money to support recovery efforts, the Beltway is paying close attention to the state's circus-like political atmosphere, says Brent Littlefield, a D.C.-based Republican strategist with Political Solutions. Littlefield, who is often interviewed on Fox News, cites a longstanding concern in Washington about corruption in Louisiana -- and he notes that the Jefferson indictment has only made matters worse.

Jefferson's case alone may doom Louisiana's fiscal prospects in Congress, but the other pending matters won't help, either. "That is why there has been great concern, although expressed quietly, over monies sent to Louisiana for the recovery," Littlefield says. "Similar concerns do not seem to exist for other states, like Mississippi, that have received recovery monies for disasters."

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, there's not a bloody thing wrong with Louisiana, and Louisiana politics, that a coterie of military firing squads couldn't ameliorate pretty quickly. But that's Not How We Do Things in this country.

OH . . . this should explain the headline.

War crimes aren't just for Serbians . . . or Saddam . . . or Nazi Germany anymore

Oh, Lord. Seymour Hersh has another blockbuster about American war crimes in the "War on Terror."

The general who first investigated Abu Ghraib, now retired, is pointing fingers. So are some other military and congressional insiders. And all those fingers are pointing to the top.

HERE ARE LENGTHY EXCERPTS from Hersh's piece in The New Yorker (which I strongly urge you to go and read), but they're only a fraction of the whole long, horrifying article.

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse. Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of the abuses depicted on the CD. It said that approximately ten soldiers were shown, involved in acts that included:

Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.

Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything -- just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

On January 20th, the chief of staff at Central Command sent another e-mail to Admiral Keating, copied to General Craddock and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq. The chief of staff wrote, “Sir: update on alleged detainee abuse per our discussion. DID IT REALLY HAPPEN? Yes, currently have 4 confessions implicating perhaps 10 soldiers. DO PHOTOS EXIST? Yes. A CD with approx 100 photos and a video—CID has these in their possession.”

In subsequent testimony, General Myers, the J.C.S. chairman, acknowledged, without mentioning the e-mails, that in January information about the photographs had been given “to me and the Secretary up through the chain of command. . . . And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described.”

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’ ” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don’t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and I didn’t know.

“And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,” Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S. -- Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

(snip)

Richard Armitage, a former Navy counter-insurgency officer who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the first Bush term, recalled meeting Taguba, then a lieutenant colonel, in South Korea in the early nineteen-nineties. “I was told to keep an eye on this young guy—‘He’s going to be a general,’ ” Armitage said. “Taguba was discreet and low key—not a sprinter but a marathoner.”

At the time, Taguba was working for Major General Mike Myatt, a marine who was the officer in charge of strategic talks with the South Koreans, on behalf of the American military. “I needed an executive assistant with brains and integrity,” Myatt, who is now retired and living in San Francisco, told me. After interviewing a number of young officers, he chose Taguba. “He was ethical and he knew his stuff,” Myatt said. “We really became close, and I’d trust him with my life. We talked about military strategy and policy, and the moral aspect of war—the importance of not losing the moral high ground.” Myatt followed Taguba’s involvement in the Abu Ghraib inquiry, and said, “I was so proud of him. I told him, ‘Tony, you’ve maintained yourself, and your integrity.’ ”

Taguba got a different message, however, from other officers, among them General John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command. A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

(snip)

Taguba eventually concluded that there was a reason for the evasions and stonewalling by Rumsfeld and his aides. At the time he filed his report, in March of 2004, Taguba said, “I knew there was C.I.A. involvement, but I was oblivious of what else was happening” in terms of covert military-intelligence operations. Later that summer, however, he learned that the C.I.A. had serious concerns about the abusive interrogation techniques that military-intelligence operatives were using on high-value detainees. In one secret memorandum, dated June 2, 2003, General George Casey, Jr., then the director of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, issued a warning to General Michael DeLong, at the Central Command:

CIA has advised that the techniques the military forces are using to interrogate high value detainees (HVDs) . . . are more aggressive than the techniques used by CIA who is [sic] interviewing the same HVDs.

DeLong replied to Casey that the techniques in use were “doctrinally appropriate techniques,” in accordance with Army regulations and Rumsfeld’s direction.

Abu Ghraib had opened the door on the issue of the treatment of detainees, and from the beginning the Administration feared that the publicity would expose more secret operations and practices. Shortly after September 11th, Rumsfeld, with the support of President Bush, had set up military task forces whose main target was the senior leadership of Al Qaeda. Their essential tactic was seizing and interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists; they also had authority from the President to kill certain high-value targets on sight. The most secret task-force operations were categorized as Special Access Programs, or S.A.P.s.

The military task forces were under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command, the branch of the Special Operations Command that is responsible for counterterrorism. One of Miller’s unacknowledged missions had been to bring the J.S.O.C.’s “strategic interrogation” techniques to Abu Ghraib. In special cases, the task forces could bypass the chain of command and deal directly with Rumsfeld’s office. A former senior intelligence official told me that the White House was also briefed on task-force operations.

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”—in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’ ” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’”
(snip)

An aggressive congressional inquiry into Abu Ghraib could have provoked unwanted questions about what the Pentagon was doing, in Iraq and elsewhere, and under what authority. By law, the President must make a formal finding authorizing a C.I.A. covert operation, and inform the senior leadership of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees. However, the Bush Administration unilaterally determined after 9/11 that intelligence operations conducted by the military—including the Pentagon’s covert task forces—for the purposes of “preparing the battlefield” could be authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, without telling Congress.

There was coördination between the C.I.A. and the task forces, but also tension. The C.I.A. officers, who were under pressure to produce better intelligence in the field, wanted explicit legal authority before aggressively interrogating high-value targets. A finding would give operatives some legal protection for questionable actions, but the White House was reluctant to put what it wanted in writing.

A recently retired high-level C.I.A. official, who served during this period and was involved in the drafting of findings, described to me the bitter disagreements between the White House and the agency over the issue. “The problem is what constituted approval,” the retired C.I.A. official said. “My people fought about this all the time. Why should we put our people on the firing line somewhere down the road? If you want me to kill Joe Smith, just tell me to kill Joe Smith. If I was the Vice-President or the President, I’d say, ‘This guy Smith is a bad guy and it’s in the interest of the United States for this guy to be killed.’ They don’t say that. Instead, George”—George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A. until mid-2004—“goes to the White House and is told, ‘You guys are professionals. You know how important it is. We know you’ll get the intelligence.’ George would come back and say to us, ‘Do what you gotta do.’ ”

(snip)

Rumsfeld was vague, in his appearances before Congress, about when he had informed the President about Abu Ghraib, saying that it could have been late January or early February. He explained that he routinely met with the President “once or twice a week . . . and I don’t keep notes about what I do.” He did remember that in mid-March he and General Myers were “meeting with the President and discussed the reports that we had obviously heard” about Abu Ghraib.

Whether the President was told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners before the scandal became public, or to reëvaluate the training of military police and interrogators, or the practices of the task forces that he had authorized. Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-level soldiers. The President’s failure to act decisively resonated through the military chain of command: aggressive prosecution of crimes against detainees was not conducive to a successful career.

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff” -- the explicit images -- “was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

READ THOSE WORDS AGAIN. Read them, and weep for your nation, for your military and for all of us. Read them, and weep for Iraq. For what we have done to Iraq. Read them for, as Longfellow wrote, "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. . . ."

Here is the "money graf" again:

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.

THE WAR ON TERROR is over. The United States has defected to the terrorist camp.

We invaded Iraq to -- allegedly -- bring that country freedom and security. It has neither.

Saddam Hussein is dead. Long live Saddam Hussein. He lives on in the disorder we have exacerbated in the Middle East. He lives on in every IED. He lives on in every American interrogator who stoops to torture "for the greater good."

Saddam lives. Saddam is victorious. A part of him lives on at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Allahu akbar, y'all.

More unnecessary medical testing

The Associated Press reports on another outbreak of ridiculous arse-covering testing in the medical arena:

Eddie Murphy has taken a DNA test to determine if he's the father of Melanie Brown's 2-month-old daughter, Brown's spokeswoman said Friday. The 46-year-old actor "did indeed take a paternity test," Natalie Whorms said.

Brown, who was known as "Scary Spice" when she performed with the '90s pop group Spice Girls, dated Murphy last year and has maintained that the child is his. The 32-year-old singer gave birth to Angel Iris Murphy Brown on April 3. She listed Murphy as the father on the birth certificate.

OH, PUH-LEEZE! Look at the picture of Scary Spice's baby above.

Who the baby daddy, do you think?

Whiskey! Sexy! Democracy! XXX! Girls!!! Drugs! Rock 'n' Roll! Stuff! MTV! Booty!!!

Now that I've gotten you in from the search engine with an inspiring litany of How America Intends to Save the World from Radical Islam, welcome to the Revolution 21 podcast.

I'm the Mighty Favog.

KIND OF LIKE the three remaining supporters of President Bush, I'm in an echo chamber this week, spinning the hits and tripping out. In a good way.

I think you might like our trippy show this week, too. We'll be hearing from Joe Jackson, Don Covay, The Bees (And the Byrds!), along with some classic Joplin, Otis and all manner of tasty stuff.

Musically, that is.

Now, ah reckon you're faced with a choice. You can listen to to good music played by a guy who's trying to reimagine how we do "Catholic" media in this country, or you can go back to looking for smut.

Or researching U.S. foreign policy . . . I forget.

The flip side

Of course, there's always a reason for the existence of moonbats like those in New Orleans decrying some Grand Honky Conspiracy for the legal travails of their U.S. kleptosentative, "Dollar Bill" Jefferson.

Here's one of those reasons, as reported by The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune:

On a Friday night last June, a week after the massacre of five young men stunned New Orleans residents, police burst through the doors of the Sportsman's Corner bar in Central City, looking for two men in white t-shirts who they believed had just run in.

In the wake of the brutal killings just blocks away, police promised a strong presence in the city's most violent neighborhoods. At about 8:30 p.m., members of NOPD's Special Operations Division charged into the club at the corner of Second and Dryades streets. Two split off to search the bathrooms while others kept watch on the patrons, guns drawn. Where were the two men in white t-shirts who had just run into the bar? the officers asked.

You've got the wrong place, said the patrons, many of them regulars in a bar known as a hangout for oldtimers from the neighborhood.

"Not a man in here had a white shirt on," said Mary Jane Spears, 56, who had yet to taste the bourbon and tonic she'd ordered. "I'm scared of guns to begin with, and the way they came in with those big guns, with their hands ready to pull the triggers, that terrified me."

Spears, seated in a chair facing the door, knew the only patrons who'd come in after her: Myra Boudreaux and her companion, 64-year-old Joseph Hall, wearing a red shirt and a blue cap, Spears said.

Police did not find the men in the white t-shirts. But amid the typically older clientele, the youngest person there may have been the man running the Sportsman, 26-year-old Steven Elloie, a solid, broad-shouldered man who stands 5-feet-11 and weighs 265 pounds.

What happened next shocked the 17 people who were there that night. In separate interviews with nine of them, witnesses consistently offered the same version of events. Police have declined to discuss what happened during the search of the bar, but here is what the nine witnesses say unfolded.

Elloie was in the storage room, making a shopping list for the next day -- potato chips, cold drinks, napkins, paper towels, toilet paper, he said -- when through the wall he heard yelling.

He grabbed his keys and headed into the main room, through one of a pair of wooden doors. The two doors are set up like those in a restaurant kitchen -- cut about 10 feet apart and connecting the same two rooms -- the one-room bar and the back room, where supplies are kept.

As Elloie came out one door, an officer was yanking on the other door knob. Elloie said the trouble seemed to start when he turned and said, "I'm the owner. Please don't break it. I can open it."

Witnesses at nearby tables said Elloie introduced himself and that he was wearing a black shirt that bore the name "Sportsman's Corner" across the lapel. Elloie asked what was going on and the officers asked if he'd seen two guys run in wearing white t-shirts. Elloie said he had not, then looked at his barmaids. They shook their heads no.

When the officer resumed yanking on the door, Elloie turned to him and said, "If you need the door open, I can open it." According to Elloie, the officer said, "I don't care who you are. You're going to jail."

Elloie said, "For what?" The officer said, "Because you hit me." Indeed, a citation filed later in municipal court offered a scant description of the allegation, saying only that Elloie "struck officer in the chest." Witnesses said Elloie had not touched an officer.

Several officers then slammed Elloie against the wall, in a powerful blow that sent his glasses flying and flipped a table over, sending drinks flying. They cuffed him and threw him to the floor. He hit with full force. "Everybody in here could hear that lick, as Steven hit the floor," said Boudreaux, who winced as she recalled it.

Once Elloie was on the ground, a group of officers kicked and hit him, then fired twice into his back with a Taser, an electric stun gun, witnesses said.

"That was the most pain I've ever encountered," said Elloie, who as he twitched and hollered was heard asking the officers why they were doing this to him.

Charles Walker, a truck driver who stops in regularly after work, heard the cries. "Steven was asking them why they were beating him, but they didn't respond in words, they responded with violence -- they told him to shut up and beat him more."

One officer told Elloie that he was taking the beating like a woman. With a little kick, he ordered Elloie to get up and walk. Elloie said he couldn't, his legs were numb. The officer looked at his colleagues, then at Elloie and said, "Then drag the motherf-----."

''It was like when you take a trash bag that's too heavy and drag it to the curb. They grabbed onto his hands, which were cuffed behind his back, and that's how they dragged him,'' said Calvin Edwards, a 44-year-old bellman-valet at a St. Charles Avenue hotel.

(snip)

As Elloie was dragged out, a barmaid called his mother, Teresa Elloie. Police were prohibiting all cell phone use. The barmaid spoke softly. She had to be brief.

With police yelling in the background, Teresa Elloie thought she heard that police had shot her son Steven.

She grabbed her wheelchair-bound father, Louis Elloie, 75, and left the house doors open as she rushed to the Sportsman's Corner. She knew the route well. Louis Elloie ran the bar for more than three decades until he suffered two strokes in the fall of 2005 -- one the day Hurricane Katrina, the second when Rita hit. Steven re-opened the bar in the spring of 2006. He added wireless Internet access, but kept the Sportsman largely the way his grandfather left it.

Teresa Elloie arrived to find the bar surrounded by police, about six cars she believes, and maybe 10 or 12 officers.

''I didn't know whether Steven was alive or dead,'' she said, adding that officers told her to ''to get the f--- back'' as she walked toward the bar to find out. She called 911 and asked the dispatcher to send a ranking officer. None came. Nothing was making sense, she said. She has another son who she said can be a little mouthy, but not Steven, who she describes as easygoing to a fault and whose normal speaking voice is so quiet it can be difficult to hear.

Teresa Elloie, who's describes herself as less easygoing, found herself getting angry on her son's behalf.

As the officer in the passenger seat wrote the report, he asked, ''What's the name of the bar?'' Elloie, slumped in the back seat, saw the officer look back at his shirt and say, ''There's the name,'' and write down ''Sportsman's Corner.''

The other officers walked back into the bar and asked to speak with the owner. ''You just dragged him out,'' the customers said.

Thirty minutes after their arrival, the police left, witnesses said.

Arresting officers took Elloie to Orleans Parish Prison's Central Lockup, where sheriff's personnel refused him until he received medical attention, he said. After a trip to a makeshift post-Katrina emergency room set up at the closed Lord & Taylor's store, where Elloie was treated for a black eye, bruises, abrasions, and numbness in his limbs, the officers took him back to jail, where at 1:12 a.m. he was booked with battery of a police officer and resisting arrest.

With the police gone, Teresa Elloie walked into the bar and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. Every patron in the bar -- 16 in all -- wrote down his or her name and phone number, promising to be a witness for any investigation. ''Everybody signed because what happened was not right and we knew it,'' Calvin Edwards said.

Teresa Elloie gave a copy of her handwritten list to the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau. In March, Steven Elloie received a letter from the bureau, which said the allegations of excessive force were ''not sustained.''

''They basically said that they'd found nothing and that the case was closed,'' Teresa Elloie said.

(snip)

The charges against Elloie also never went anywhere. The patrons at the bar that night showed up religiously for every hearing date in municipal court, eager to testify on his behalf. At one point, a sheriff's deputy stationed at the court recognized the group and said, ''You guys again?''

When the officers failed to show up after multiple trial dates, the city attorney dropped the charges.

In a federal lawsuit filed this week against the city on behalf of Steven Elloie by the American Civil Liberties Union, Elloie alleges the Public Integrity Bureau's investigation of the incident ''was a sham, or that it was performed and concluded in an inefficient and biased manner.''

Katie Schwartzmann, ACLU staff attorney, said that she hopes to see changes in how the NOPD treats suspects, uses Tasers and oversees police officers.

''Basically, we're asking that cops treat people humanely and with respect,'' she said.

THERE WAS ONE THING, growing up in South Louisiana, that even white boys like me learned fast about venturing down to the Crescent City: Don't mess with them New Orleans cops.

New Orleans cops had a reputation for being extraordinarily brutal, as well as extraordinarily crooked, long, long, long before Hurricane Katrina hit. It was common knowledge that New Orleans cops liked to beat the crap out of people.

And the white ones liked beating the crap out of black folks best.

So while there are a lot of bitter, surly and paranoid black folks down in the Big Uneasy -- just like the pro-Jefferson, pro-corruption kooks -- it's really no secret how that has come to be.

When the cops are out to get you for no good reason some of the time, it's not surprising when a certain element believes that The Man is out to get them all the time. And it's not surprising there are unscrupulous "leaders" who play on that to amass power . . . and profit.

When laws are enforced -- or not enforced -- for the benefit of the moneyed, the powerful and the (officially) well-armed, and when that arbitrary enforcement has little or no relationship to the spirit of the law, the idea of democratic governance itself becomes the object of derision. And you get abominations like what we see from New Orleans on a depressingly regular basis.

It's depressing and infuriating when the moonbats come out to play Press Conference.

About the only thing more depressing and infuriating is the realization that, in many cases, once-normal and decent folk were driven to their moonbattery.

Martin Luther King died for this?

I would like to think some prankster pizza guy has been spiking the extra-mushroom pies with psychedelic fungi when he delivers to the New Orleans bureau of The Associated Press.

I would like to think that, but I'd be fooling myself big time.

Anyway, here's a depressing non-hallucinogenic AP dispatch from the City Sanity Forgot:

Supporters of a Democratic congressman charged with bribery and money laundering harkened to their civil rights days on Wednesday as they denounced the allegations against U.S. Rep. William Jefferson.

The group, including ministers and the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, alleged the 16-count corruption indictment was the work of a Republican White House and Justice Department scheming to target black Democratic leaders and shift attention from legal troubles of Republican congressmen.

"When it's all over, Bill Jefferson will stand up like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. He will stand up in the South and he will be victorious," said the Rev. Samson "Skip" Alexander.

The news conference attended by about 50 people was a sign Jefferson hasn't lost friends in New Orleans, which re-elected him to a ninth term from Louisiana's 2nd Congressional District in December 2006 despite an FBI probe of his African business dealings.

Prosecutors say Jefferson used his influence as co-chairman of the congressional Africa Investment and Trade Caucus to broker deals in numerous African nations, and that he demanded kickbacks for himself and for family members. He is also charged with bribing a Nigerian official.

He allegedly received more than $500,000 in bribes and demanded millions more between 2000 and 2005. He has pleaded not guilty.

The group said they would raise money for his legal defense and offer public relations help through the Justice for Jefferson Committee.

Washington asked the audience to give Jefferson the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Danatus King, president of the local chapter of the NAACP, said, "it's important that all of us keep our eyes on the prize and that prize is one word, and that one word is justice."

Asked to comment on allegations aired at the news conference, Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, said "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." White House spokesman Blair Jones also declined to comment.

PART OF ME wants an answer to the question "How @#$*!^$ CRAZY can one bunch of people be?"

The other part just doesn't want to know.

That's because the other part knows that, particularly in New Orleans, racism cuts both ways. That's because the other part of me knows there are plenty of folks like this who hate Whitey so damned much they don't give a rat's ass how absolutely bat-s*** crazy that hatred makes them.

All that matters is feeding the grudge, nourishing the hate. No matter how many damn times you cut off your nose to spite your face.

And Sweet Jesus knows that New Orleans' African-American kleptocrats are in more dire straits than Michael Jackson in that department.

I suppose Bill Jefferson really is as pure as the wind-driven -- never mind . . . that would be a WHITE analogy -- and a grand conspiracy of the GOP, the CIA and the KKK digitally faked the videotape and planted the $90,000 of cold cash in "Dollar Bill's" freezer.

IT'S TIME to say goodbye to the Crescent City, God rest her soul. With idiots like these -- and let us not forget C. (for Crazy) Ray Nagin of "Chocolate City" infamy -- increasingly as the public face of New Orleans, that benighted city's problem will not be Congress' unwillingness to give it another dime but instead Washington's ability to fight off fed-up Americans' demands that the Strategic Command drop a nuke on the place and put it (and us) out of its misery.

Listen well, New Orleans. This is not the jeremiad of someone who hates you, but instead the jeremiad of someone who loves you dearly.

***

UPDATE: Before any of you write to denounce me as a racist who hates New Orleans, I suggest you read this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this (particularly this). And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this.

There.

Tell old Pharaoh to let My people go

Some people think George Bush believes he's the king of all he surveys. Some people say America is acting like the Roman Empire.

After seeing this story on the NBC Nightly News tonight, I'm wondering whether ancient Egypt might be a more apt comparison:

A Kuwaiti contractor accused of abusing workers at the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has also worked on a host of other U.S. projects since the Iraq war began in 2003, according to Defense Department records.

Whistleblowers who worked on the embassy have told officials at the State and Justice departments, as well as NBC News, that the contractor, First Kuwaiti International Trading, had brought workers, mostly South Asians and Filipinos, to Baghdad under false pretenses, then abused and threatened them while there.

The State Department and First Kuwaiti deny the allegations, but State admits it is continuing to monitor human trafficking and abuse allegations and the Justice Department has begun a preliminary inquiry out of its Civil Rights Division.

First Kuwaiti is one of the biggest contractors in the Middle East and the main contractor on the troubled 21-building embassy project, which will cost $600 million to build, making it the most expensive diplomatic quarters in U.S. history. The company has already received nearly $400 million for the embassy project, according to contracting records reviewed by NBC News. It has also been awarded more than a billion dollars in other contracts from the U.S. Army, the Army Corps of Engineers and Halliburton, which hired it as a subcontractor on other projects.

“It is probably the second most influential company in Kuwait,” says a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with First Kuwaiti.

Its chief accuser, Rory Mayberry, signed a contract with First Kuwaiti in March 2006 to work as a medic on the embassy construction site.

Mayberry alleges that when he showed up at the Kuwait airport for his flight into Baghdad, there were 51 Filipino employees of First Kuwaiti also waiting for the same flight — except the Filipinos believed they were going to Dubai. He says the Filipinos were told to proceed to "GATE 26" at the Kuwait airport — but no Gate 26 existed. There was only a door to a staircase that led to a white plane on the tarmac, Mayberry told NBC.

Mayberry says even he was given a boarding pass that was marked for Dubai, though he knew he was going to Baghdad.

“The steward was having problems keeping guys in their seats because they were so upset, wanted to get off the airplane,” says Mayberry. “They were upset they weren’t headed to Dubai where they were promised they were working.”

He says when he arrived in Baghdad he notified the State Department official in charge of the embassy project about what had happened on his flight and she replied "that’s the way they do it."

BUT, HEY, Y'ALL! We're over there in I-raq spreadin' democracy! We're a' teachin' them furriners all about truth, justice and The American Way.

And we're a' doin' it with your tax dollars. Billions of your tax dollars.

Now, take this Revolution 21 quiz about how you feel right now. Check off the statement closest to your take on American involvement in world affairs:

A) I am proud about how we're doing things in Iraq.

B) I think we need to extend the "Axis of Evil" a few
thousand miles west to Washington, D.C.

Oh, Les . . .

Is a radio bit featuring CBS Radio employees cackling as an unfunny comic describes a TV reporter's panties in unflattering terms . . . is that sexist? Because we all know how dead-set against sexism you and your company, CBS Corp., are.

Just wonderin' out loud is all.

NBC 1, CBS 0

Do yourself a favor. Click on the photo.

A Philadelphia "comedian" thought it would be funny to rummage through the underwear drawer of a local TV reporter . . . and then go on the radio to snigger about it, while the idiot host cackled like a hyena in gastric distress.

Of course, this involved a CBS Radio property -- Philadelphia's 94.1 Free FM. Here's the long and shorts of it from the Philadelphia Daily News:

NBC-10's Lu Ann Cahn returned from a Florida vacation to learn that not only had a stranger rifled through her underwear drawer, but he'd made fun of her lingerie on the radio.

Danny Ozark, a regular guest on 94.1 FREE FM's Kidd Chris Show, was on the radio show Wednesday and while sharing stories about sex and drugs, he revealed that at the June 2 Phillies game he met a girl who was house-sitting for Cahn, a longtime NBC-10 investigative reporter. She invited Ozark and another comic to join her at Cahn's Montgomery County home.

Once there, Ozark and his pal rummaged through Cahn's underwear and, Ozark, who admitted, "I'm just a freak," said he hoped to try some on, but he could tell it wouldn't fit him.

"She had government-issued really bad underwear . . . I wish she felt more sexier, because she's beautiful. I feel like I should get her red thong panties," he said."

"I am really upset about this," Cahn told us by phone yesterday.

"We're still trying to figure out exactly what went on," she said.

Asked whether the female house-sitter was someone her family had used before, Cahn said: "It's a personal matter and I can't really talk about her. We don't know what the facts are."

"DANNY OZARK" and the idiot crew of the Kidd Chris show aren't funny. At all. Actually, they're really pathetic and annoying. I know; I listened to the podcast.

This, however, is funny. Behold the Revenge of LuAnn Cahn, as broadcast on Philadelphia's WCAU television.

Going after the double-wide vote

Fading country star Sammy Kershaw announced today he's running for Louisiana lieutenant governor as a Republican. (OK, you can do this. You can get through this post without debilitating laughing jags.)

The thrice-married singer of hits like "Cadillac Style," "She Don't Know She's Beautiful," and "Queen of My Double Wide Trailer" . . . I'm sorry, I can't do this . . . I'm gonna start. . . .

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHA HAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAAAA!!! HEE HEE HEE HEE!!! WHOOOOOOOOO BOY!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HA! HA! HA! HAHAHA!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

(gasp)

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Do . . . . HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You . . . HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Have . . . HOO! HOO! HOO! Any . . . HAAAAAAAAAAAAA! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAWD AMIGHTY!!! Idea . . . HAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWEE!!!!!

(SLAP!) Thanks. I needed that.

As I was trying to say, do you have any idea what Letterman and Leno and Kimmel and Conan are going to do with Mister Queen of My Double Wide Trailer running for lieutenant governor of the Gret Stet of Louisiana?

Oh, Lordy! And God help Kershaw when Dennis Miller gets a hold of it.

It's like pitching underhand to Barry Bonds.

And then there's the matter of what Sammy Kershaw's opponents are going to do to him if he shows any sign of garnering more than 10 votes. For one, incumbent Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu probably will do to pore Sammy what he oughta have done to C. (for Crazy) Ray Nagin but didn't in the New Orleans mayoral race last year.

Really, if you wanted to win a statewide election in the Bible Belt, what would you do with an opponent who:

* Has been married three times,

* Had quite the history of substance-abuse issues before kicking the bad stuff cold turkey in 1988,

* Just filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy this past February in Nashville,

* Oh, and there's that whole has-lived-mostly-in-Nashville-for-most-of-the-past-17-years thang. And had lived in Oklahoma for years before that.

As someone born and raised in the Gret Stet -- and who's familiar with Louisiana politics -- I'm feeling more than a little sorry for pore Sammy. They gonna kiyul hiyum.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Louisianians always have been suckers for a politician who can carry a tune -- I was born during the second administration of Gov. Jimmie Davis. And if Sammy were to win, Lorrie Morgan would be the Gret Stet's second lady.

Fascinating, in an 'Oh, crap!' kind of way

Over at Crunchy Con, Rod Dreher has been doing some reading and has some thoughts on the whole question of "are we Rome?"

The conclusion -- of Dreher and the book, which happens to be Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? -- seems to be probably. Definitely probably.

The Romans were supremely arrogant, and thought that the world was as they thought it was -- and when it wasn't, they could create reality. Murphy says that attitude clearly informs the US now: "Across the board it fosters the conviction that assertions of will can trump assessments of reality: the world is the way we say it is."

Similarly, the Romans were so impressed by themselves that they not only didn't care what other peoples thought, they didn't think they had much to learn from other peoples. This attitude led the Romans to discount important information. And, when wedded to Rome's sense of having a divinely appointed mission to conquer and civilize the world, Rome tended to see information contrary to its wishes and desires as not only wrong (if it saw the information at all), but as somehow malign.

Yet like us, Rome saw it as possible for all people to become Roman, because it is entirely natural for people, if they understood that their best interests and their own perfected nature, led toward Roman-ness.

This has all kinds of parallels to contemporary America. Murphy: "Human nature, in other words, is basically American. This may be a comforting sentiment, but it can end up enabling just as much ignorance as arrogance or disdain does." This is especially true if your understanding of the American character is warped by sentimentality and idealism -- that is, if you discount the struggles we've had with the better angels of our nature.

(snip)

The Roman government became besotted with patronage, bribery and featherbedding -- a practice that Murphy sees replicated in our political system being awash in campaign contributions buying access and favors. Indeed, here in Istanbul I was talking to a US scholar who has been involved with policymaking circles in Washington. He gave me a couple of examples of cases in which the taxpayer has been fleeced, and US national interests undermined, by the interaction of government with private business, for the sake of enriching business and political friends. If this gets out of hand, says Murphy, you have the fall of Rome.

In the end, Murphy says that we can avoid the fate of Rome through a conscious and determined program of reform, and the reclamation of Republican virtue. We are not fated to end up like Rome. The power to determine our fate rests largely with us Americans. But the signs don't look good.

INTERESTINGLY, Murphy has a Q&A about his book on its promotional website:

Is there a smart way ahead? Can we avoid decline?

We can’t control every variable, shouldn’t even try. The future is a mysterious place. Instead, it makes sense to focus on a handful of big factors that are within our control—and that will contribute to social strength no matter what the future brings. What are some of those things?

For starters, instill an appreciation of the wider world. To drive home the idea that “we are not alone” there is no substitute for fluency in another language. Every educated person in the Roman Empire spoke two languages. So did the strivers among the immigrants. In a globalizing world, Americans need to be like the Romans—and, frankly, like the barbarians.

Second, stop treating government as a necessary evil, and stop selling it off to private interests. Government can be held accountable in ways that the private sector can’t, and government programs—Social Security, student loans, safe food and drugs—promote a sense of common alliance and mutual obligation. Lose these things, and you’ll never get them back.

Third, fortify the institutions that promote assimilation: free schools, free clinics, and a program of national service. We can’t change the way the world works, can’t stop people from wanting to come to America. Our powerfully absorptive domestic culture will turn them into Americans soon enough, if we let it. But we have to bolster the engines of assimilation, not undermine them.

Finally, take some weight off the military. Like Rome, America is caught in a vise: the military is too big to sustain and too small to do everything we ask. Adopting a long-range energy policy—something we ought to do anyway—would at least let America pull away from military oversight of the Middle East. This may be a hundred year project, but a society with pretensions to staying power thinks in those terms. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But you’re saying this won’t prevent “decline”?

One person’s “decline” is another’s “rise.” America as we know it will melt into history no matter what we do. The important question is: will the world that ensues be better? Whatever comes to pass, the sheer fact of America will weigh on the world for millennia. Like Rome, America is in some ways indistinguishable. The whole planet may someday speak Chinese, but people will probably still be saying “OK.” What we can’t know is which characteristics will be extinguished and which ones won’t. I hope it will be our egalitarianism, our entrepreneurship, and our exuberant impulse to associate in civic groups—and not our hyper-individualism and our moralizing messianic streak.

Here’s the point: the outcome is partly in our own hands. The outcome depends on how we act today.