My personal thanks to Frank Rich for a wonderful column in Sunday's NY Times, titled The Ides of March 2003, reviewing who said what, and what happened when, in the days just before and after our invasion of Iraq.

Remember the President's somber face when first discussing the leak of Valerie Plame's status with the CIA? Remember his somber assurance to the nation that the leak would be investigated and wrongdoers punished?

Hell, remember WMD?

And on it goes...real earnings down
If life feels like it's getting harder, it is...for most of us. From the current BLS release on real earnings:

The man who gave you the contract with America, two divorces, a fear of women's urinary infections, and a recent admission that he was having an extramarital affair at the same time he was leading the effort to impeach Clinton for having sex with Monica Lewinsky is...back.

Lots of little wingnuts have taken to trying to defuse the scandal over the recent firings of US Attorneys by citing a 1993 NY Times article, but only its abstract, which happens to read as follows:

Anyone can say they support the troops and we should take them at their word, but the proof will come when it's time to provide the money

[Still waiting for Cheney or any of his ilk to apply that same reasoning to training & equipping the troops, providing care for soldiers returning from combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and providing care for all vets during the remainder of their lives (rather than viewing the VA budget as a "drag on the economy" as one VA official said a while back).]

I've resisted writing about the recent DOJ audit of the FBI's use of National Security Letters (NSLs), partly because it's so complicated and partly because I just had the feeling that the problem was bigger than the impression you got from the mainstream media.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the agency that issues the monthly reports on jobs, employment & unemployment, wages, and a host of other information on our collective economic health.

In keeping with the cheerleader mentality that views public confidence as more important than the reality on which the confidence is based, the BLS issued its report on February employment, and mainstream publications like the NY Times published stories based on various pieces of that report.

And just when you thought the inept and incredibly corrupt GOP and Herr Chimp couldn't pull off anything even more, well, let's just say it don't look good....

I read a lot stuff that simply makes no sense, and a lot more that calls into question whether some authors realize that the natural implications of what they say contradict other opinions and beliefs they seem to have.

So today's two questions on this subject are:

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