The real scoop on Ashcroft

Ashcroft's greatest -- uh, let's go with "highest profile" -- accomplishment to date was the rolling back of individual rights by several decades, under the guise of fighting terrorism.
The provisions of the PATRIOT Act taken as a whole are enough to make civil libertarians scream; the average citizen can usually find at least one provision worthy of alarm. Sponsored by the Bush administration, the PATRIOT act gave sweeping new powers to Ashcroft and his department, including:

• The right to freely monitor the activities political and religious groups without a criminal pretext.
• New restrictions on open hearings and the public's right to receive information through the Freedom of Information Act.
• The ability to stamp down on the dangerous menace of librarians who tip off the media to federal subpoenas of borrowing records.
• Permission to monitor conversations between lawyers and suspects, on those increasingly rare occasions that suspects are allowed to have lawyers.
• The ability to detain Americans in prison indefinitely without trial or criminal charge.

The real scoop on Dubya

... George W. Bush is fully aware of how his enemies perceive him, and this is precisely how he wants them to react. His personality and mannerisms are actually the result of deliberate effort. This is not to say that it's all an act, but he does emphasize these elements of his personality for the benefit of the press and general public. And yet these affectations continue to be astonishingly effective; his act still manages to fool even his political opponents, who really ought to know better. After all, the basis of Bush's phenomenal political career has been people's underestimating him.

Pentagon lied about Iraq WMD?

Senior Pentagon officials made a rare appearance in front of the media Wednesday to deny they lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Blair welcomes probe into Iraq dossier

The prime minister has been criticized since media reports emerged that the government might have punched up the dossier to exaggerate claims that Saddam Hussein would be able to launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes.
No one has found any weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq, increasing pressure on the British government to explain the dossier that formed the underpinnings of Blair's decision to go to war.
Last week, BBC Radio quoted a source within the British intelligence community as saying intelligence officers had cast doubt on the validity of the 45-minute reference in the dossier.