@Uncle – I am confident they will come back – though not sure. I will have to republish the blog which may take a while and I will start that only tomorrow morning (in U.S. nighttime).
This wasn´t a MoA issue. The WaPo blogs, runnig on typepad, were also effected as were various others I checked.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 0:18 utc | 4

Good to see that Typepad was able to get things back.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 17 2005 0:32 utc | 6

Big deal today: The “Bush ordered NSA to spy on U.S. folks disregarding law and the constitution”.
I guess everyone has seen that story by now, but don´t miss Larry Johnsons take. This is much bigger than it looks at a first glance. It is a.) an attempt to set the office and power of the President above ANY constitutional limits and b.) the use of such gained information for partisan politics.
As a BIG sideshow, the NYT says:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.
…
Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

The publishing of the piece last night is obviously a political act. Today the renewal of the Patriot Act did get filibustered, with credit to that report.

So the NYT does react political in the timing of their reporting. Wasn’t there something going on about a year ago between Kerry and Bush? How would the report -at that time- have effected the outcome of the election?

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 0:40 utc | 8

drunk as a rule
not so strange
after all
i am your conscience
(just joshing)

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 17 2005 1:28 utc | 10

bush on NewsHour tonight was strange. One bizarre negation of reality after another: …we have a different war, not like the uss missouri where we surrendered…we have a different approach to airline security…everything we can do within the law (smirk)…I’m w/ Mccain on torture, but you know jim these people want to hurt us (smirk)…
I mean, you couldn’t rehearse such absurdity for theater.
And my favorite: “victory means a democratic Iraq…”
It’d also be funny in a theater. That’s the most regrettable part of this horror.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 17 2005 1:44 utc | 12

washington monthly
/kevin drum weighs in on bush breaking the law

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don’t care. It’s bad for the country, and that matters most.
But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it’s not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.
And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

Posted by: annie | Dec 17 2005 2:21 utc | 14

Rememberinggiap….I’m sorry, but my browser won’t let me cut and paste(maybe someone else could post the links) but for good articles on Abramoff go to Daniel Hopsicker at Mad cow News(I know they are funny names but he is a hell of a reporter) and Joesph Cannon at Cannongate.Hopsicker has had more in-depth stuff than I have seen anywhere!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:27 utc | 16

ABRAMOFF
scroll dwn just a little…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 6:39 utc | 18

Thank you Uncle $cam….As you see, my browser makes me run late and not in real time! Maybe you could post cannongate too!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:48 utc | 20

Imad Khadduri’s always valuable Free Iraq
blog signals this interesting bit of analysis-cum-conjecture.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 17 2005 8:15 utc | 22

@allo – comments in older threads are available again now. Pictures will follow sometime this weekend. Anna_missed sent me some new art, but I will have to wait posting it until the image problems are resolved.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 8:33 utc | 24

Fast and thick, the news of late…

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 17 2005 9:17 utc | 26

I have to admoit it crossed my mind that the server crash wasn’t unconnected to the publicity on the prez’s illegal spying.
I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking the last couple of days trying to make a couple bucks to get thru the consumerist splurge with which is why I didn’t finish a post on the silly season and the danger it poses to freedom and democracy each year. Now I’m too late.
This year in NZ the biggest silly season releases have been 1/The politicians increasing their pay way ahead of anyone else. That’s a perennial and has been executed seamlessly for so many years now that only professional cynics notice it.
2/ The biggest city in NZ had their last council meeting of the year. Most turned up thinking they’d pass a couple of dodgy things for mates, then settle down with a couple of beers and unwind. The mayor turned up with a multi-billion dollar bypass proposal that had to be approved that night to take advantage of the central government funding round. (yeah right a project 10 years in the making suddenly and without a hint of trouble a complex submission/proposal must be given the go-ahead.
This was real bolt outta the blue stuff. The proposal has been on the backburner for years because whatever route is decided about 300 residences are going to be demolished to make way for it. That is 300 NZ families’ quarter acre castles. It may be mortgaged up to the hilt but it’s theirs.
No credible explanation was given about why it had to be approved that night. But it just had to be. Because there wasn’t sufficient time for consultation the council will consult with the people effectted next year. A rather pointless act because of course it will already be a done deal. The eleohant in the room was a thing called The resource Consent Act passed by politicians before they lost all idealism the damn thing basically says if enough people in an area oppose something being built in that area then consent to build it must not be given.
Anyway that was just business as usual for most politicians but this is the time of year when for example if someone has died in police custody during the year the report of the commission of inquiry into the death is released. Everyone in the public is too busy spending and consuming to take much notice until the end of January and the same goes for the official ‘watchdogs’ meant to watch out for this sort of stuff. No one wants to take on something big and controversial right before they go on holiday.
The revelation that b highlighted above, that is NYT has sat on the story of BushCo’s illegal espionage for more than a year tells us this is a silly season release. NYT covering it’s ass. I’m no expert on criminal law particularly not US style protect the infrastructure kill the people type laws. It would seem to me though that anyone who was spyed upon by BushCo since the NYT heard about this but chose to suppress it should be seeing a prosecutor to take a look at having the NYT and the staff who made this call prosecuted for aiding and abetting the commission of a felony, and probably obstruction of justice. If they could show material disadvantage the civil courts should be asked to provide financial redress from NYT.
But I noticed something even more murky that McCain and his repug mates the demopublicans are using silly season to hide it behind.
That is this little number; while everyone is patting themselves on the back for the successful filibuster of the Patriot Act and the torture ban the hidden barbs go thu un-noticed:
“Congressional negotiators worked out the final details on Friday of a bill that bans torture of detainees in U.S. custody, but also allows evidence obtained by coercion to be used against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay”
Those poor fuckers are NEVER gonna get outta gitmo alive. Hell they could end up having just about every legislator in Washington in some war crimes dock!
For those that are expecting/hoping for an impeachment, don’t hold ya breath.
These low lifes are not going to kick a comrade in the guts for doing what they would do given the chance.
Although any number of politicians aren’t averse to a quick game of hide the sausage they are far too passionless to shit in their own nest the way that Clinton did. That was an easy impeachment but Georgie 2 well he’s another kettle of fish altogether, cause most of these disordered little men would give anything to strut their stuff same as Georgie.
p.s. I hope the spelling and punctuation are OK cause eyes are givin out tonight and I can’t sub or proof this one.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 17 2005 10:24 utc | 28

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran
ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible
strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources
have revealed.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 17 2005 11:26 utc | 30

I thought it was just Christmas. Then I thought I was banned. For a change! Then I saw that wasn’t so. Anyway, Happy Holidays to all.
1) ‘We’ have been discussing the proposal to include ‘extreme bias’ as a psychiatric classification in the DSM.
one article: WaPo
2) The WHO has announced it will no longer hire smokers. (Offices and grounds of the WHO have been strictly non-smoking for ages.) No snooping will be done, but those who lied on applications will be ‘punished.’ Smokers who are working there at present will not be fired (it would create too much of an outcry and there probably are very many) although legal opinion has it there is no obstacle to such an action, as International Organisations are not subject to ANY National laws, only their own (many grey areas here natch.)
3) There has been some discussion in the US about preventing ‘mental defectives’ getting on planes. Veterans are a target. The two links below give an apercu – I could not find the article I read, which was more complete.
NPR
Sam Smith /dec15-05
Bullet point: The PTB and the local authoritarian security types are not terribly interested in banning or thrashing communication, but people.
After all, the KGB didn’t destroy postcards did they?
Second bullet point: If large numbers of people don’t protest, condemn, attempt to reverse such implemented or projected measures there is no point hoping for more facing the ‘big stuff.’

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 17 2005 17:00 utc | 32

The Patriot Act and NSA spying:
Agents’ visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 20:34 utc | 34

It’s been a hobby of mine to always look at whats happening in other places when the shit is hitting the fan here, I always find interesting news for instance:

Iran President’s Bodyguard Dies in Ambush
Tehran, Iran — One of the bodyguards of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed and another wounded when an attempt to ambush the presidential motorcade was thwarted in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, according to a semi-official newspaper and local residents.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 18 2005 2:55 utc | 36

memories & futures 1

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2005 4:40 utc | 38

Today’s Frank Rich column liberated here

Though “Brokeback Mountain” is not a western, it’s been directed by Ang Lee with the austerity and languorous gait of a John Ford epic. These aesthetics couldn’t be more country miles removed from “The Birdcage” or “Will & Grace.” The audience is forced to recognize that gay people were fixtures in the red state of Wyoming (and every other corner of the country, too) long before Matthew Shepard and Mary Cheney were born. Without a single polemical speech, this laconic film dramatizes homosexuality as an inherent and immutable identity, rather than some aberrant and elective “agenda” concocted by conspiratorial “elites” in Chelsea, the Castro and South Beach, as anti-gay proselytizers would have it. Ennis and Jack long for a life together, not for what gay baiters pejoratively label a “lifestyle.”
But in truth the audience doesn’t have to be coerced to get it. This is where the country has been steadily moving of late. “Brokeback Mountain,” a Hollywood product after all, is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out – quite literally – what most Americans now believe. It’s not for nothing that the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vanished as soon as the election was over. Polls show that a large American majority support equal rights for gay couples as long as the unions aren’t labeled “marriage” – and given the current swift pace of change, that reservation, too, will probably fade in the next 5 to 10 years.

Would love to see that movie. Unfortunatly it will not run here for a while.

Posted by: b | Dec 18 2005 9:30 utc | 40

Things as prosaic as ‘known IRA code phrases’ always make one pretty sure that the brits had a channel to the top of the IRA and I strongly suspect the IRA a channel from the Brits. The fact that this guy doesn’t appear to have gone into protective custody and even more obvious is Adams claim that Denis Donaldson’s confession was the first he heard of it lead me to believe that the chap was a triple if not a quadruple agent.
The IRA pulled off some pretty amazing actions in the last 20 years so it is difficult to belive that their strategies weren’t cpmpletely compartmentalised and that combined with an efficient internal security means that Adams’ claim “The Sinn Fein president said he had suspected that an informant was at work but that Donaldson had never occurred to him as a likely candidate.” is unlikely to be factual.
Of course it hardly matters at this distance but it is another example of intelligence and counter-intelligence forces becoming perpetual motion machines. These organisations which are dedicated to the overthrow of each other cannot afford to endanger their balliwick by doing their job too well.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 18 2005 11:21 utc | 42