Posts from ‘January, 2005’

An inspector general’s report finds gross inefficiency and incompetence behind the fact that some $9 billion the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was given can’t be found or accounted for.
Example: hugely bloated payrolls for Iraqi “employees” who apparently only ever showed up to get paid.
From a news story:

The U.S. officials relied on [...]

An election was held in Iraq today, with more than a few people voting and without a wholesale bloodbath. Given what a risky — some might say reckless — proposition doing this in a war zone was, that’s saying something.
But beyond that, it’s going to take weeks or months to get a clear picture of [...]

Blaster computer worm author Jeffrey Parson of Minnesota will spend 18 months in a federal prison for the millions he cost Microsoft and others, and the troubles he caused millions of people around the world. His sentence will be followed by probation during which he’ll have to perform 100 hours of community service.
In 2003, Parson, [...]

Harold Ickes, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and closely allied with Sen. Hillary Clinton currently, announced today he’s endorsing Gov. Howard Dean for chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
A news story quotes Ickes as saying that while all those seeking the chairmanship have “strong attributes,” Dean has more than the others. He [...]

No encouragement here for anyone who doesn’t smoke to start, but for the sake of balance after years of unceasingly bad news about the habit, here’s something quite different.
A new study indicates smoking offers protection against Parkinson’s Disease. That’s the word from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, a renowned medical research center.
Tobacco’s protective effect had [...]

“To many progressives who have had the words taken out of their mouths, liberty also means civil liberties. Freedom includes the freedom to marry whomever you choose and to make decisions about reproduction. And, don’t forget, the freedom from want.
“The four freedoms were once the property of liberals. The current crop of conservatives has taken [...]

The Bush administration’s efforts to buy public opinion shouldn’t come as a surprise. First, there’s the need. Bush’s policies have never been especially popular or well supported by the public — not his huge, unaffordable tax cuts; not his so-called Medicare reform/prescription drug bill; not opposition to stem cell research; not his opposition to reimportation of prescription drugs; and certainly not his deadly quagmire in Iraq.

Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and one of the chief movers and shakers in the Bush administration’s ill-informed and/or thoroughly dishonest drive to go to war in Iraq, announced today he will resign this summer.
A news story says Feith is the most senior Pentagon official announcing plans to leave in President [...]

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York law covering deceptive advertising justifies allowing a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s to proceed in the courts (story).
The lawsuit, which another court had thrown out, charges the fast-food chain with responsibility for many thousands of children developing a laundry list of health problems, [...]

“W e are dead set against carving private accounts out of Social Security taxes. We can fix Social Security without dismantling it, which is what private accounts carved out of Social Security do.”
—William Novelli, president, American Association of Retired Persons,
as quoted in a USA Today story, Jan. 25, 2005