Proving that Iranians can be every bit as petty and simplistic as American politicians, an Iranian "confectioner's union" has decreed that there shall be no more "Danish pastries" in Iran.  No, in order to punish the Danes for the publication of the cartoons depicting Muhammad, the country's pastry lovers will instead have to request "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."

More Abu Ghraib torture pictures have been published, in Australia, then republished in several places.

I've looked at the pictures. They make me wonder exactly why Senator Dick Durbin apologized a while back for saying that acts against prisoners at Guantanamo were the kind we associate with Nazis and other tyrannical regimes.

As the White House struggles to explain the mysterious delay in going public with the Dick Cheney shooting of Mr. Whittington, and to explain how an experienced hunter could mistake a large lawyer for a small quail, it's only natural that the press seek information from long time colleague Donald Rumsfeld.

As dishonorable as this administration is, it has been opposed by a steady stream of men and women--civilian and military--whose own sense of right and wrong put the members of the Bush administration to shame.  As in any environment where corruption and deception rule the day, most of these honorable people have paid a price for their ethics, ranging from loss of their job to smears of their reputation, to harassing litigation.

The Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com has a three part "memorial" to 200+ bureaucrats and government officials who have resigned, transferred, been forced out, or otherwise changed positions because of their opposition to the administration's policies.  

If you'd like to take a stroll through the mirror to find out what life is like in Republand, check out PUPPET POLITICS: VALUES EDITION on the Texas Republican Party web site.

The subtitle is "Democrats Shun History Lesson In Values And  Let Liberal Fringe Groups Pull Their Strings." The gist is that Democrats are mere puppets to the extreme wing of their party.  The implication is that the Republicans do not dance and sing at the behest of the far right.  Which would be funny if it wasn't so sick.

Last Sunday, 2-12-06, Howard Dean was one of two guests on Face the Nation.  For a man who gets a lot of smear from the right, and grief from Independents and some Democrats, he was making a lot of sense.

Among other things, he laid out a very reasonable five-point agenda for the Democrats, and put Ken Mehlman's recent attempt to portray Hillary Clinton as "too angry" in proper perspective.

Some stories in the news say more about the times we live in than others.  And a story doesn't have to be large in scope to be large in significance in revealing priorities, character, problems, and outlook.

Here are seven recent news stories, and one letter to the editor, from relatively small papers that struck me as symbolic of life in America, in 2006.

On the 2-12-06 Meet the Press devoted to the NSA domestic spying controversy, Senator Pat Roberts stammered, spoke in sentence snippets, and changed directions more often than a dog chasing a butterfly.  He was especially unintelligible in attempting to answer Russert's question of why the President shouldn't simply go to congress to get any needed amendments to FISA that would allow the NSA domestic spying program to be conducted under the terms of that statute.

Check out these Roberts responses from the transcript, below.

I don't like this one bit. Raw Story has a killer piece on yet another angle over the outing of Valerie Plame.

What would you say of a man who goes public in the NY Times with an opinion that those more concerned with free speech than the content of speech--such as the Danish editors who published the cartoons that have set the Muslim world afire--exhibit:

"the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form.  It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil.  And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters, and to the discredit of the liberal editors."

Yup, he likes the Muslim protesters who are burning and threatening better than he likes the Danish editors who are....publishing.

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