Wedding Pictures

And an essay. In what bodes well for my married life as a whole, Miriam has done the heavy lifting!

Go have a look...

Bush Loves Propaganda

Even though it's illegal, he has no plans to quit:

President Bush said on Wednesday that the U.S. government's practice of sending packaged news stories to local television stations was legal and he had no plans to cease it.

His defense of the packages, which are designed to look like television news segments, came after they were deemed a form of covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office watchdog agency.

GAO, an arm of Congress, said this ran counter to appropriation laws and was a misuse of federal funds.

Arrivederci

They're going:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has confirmed that he intends to
begin withdrawing Italian troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

Mr Berlusconi told the US president of his plans to begin withdrawing
troops this September in a telephone call.

Murderers

That's what we are now, and even if most Americans don't know it, the rest of the world damn sure does:

At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.

The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy, called "closed, substantiated abuse cases" as of last September.

The new figure of 26 was provided by the Army and Navy this week after repeated inquiries. In 18 cases reviewed by the Army and Navy, investigators have now closed their inquiries and have recommended them for prosecution or referred them to other agencies for action, Army and Navy officials said. Eight cases are still under investigation but are listed by the Army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides, the officials said.

Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, officials said, showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison's night shift.

Horowitz Is a Lying SOB

And yet he continues to posture, positioning himself as the One who is here to defend America from evil liberal professors out to brainwash the children and destroy our future.

Quite the pathetic spectacle, really:

Right-wing activist David Horowitz, the president of Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), which purports to fight anti-conservative bias on the nation's college campuses, has admitted that a story highly publicized by his group concerning alleged events at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) "appears to be wrong," and that "our presentation of this case appears now to have had several faults." Horowitz made the concession in an article posted on FrontPageMag.com, his online magazine, on March 15, under the headline, "Correction: Some of Our Facts Were Wrong, But Our Point Was Right."

On March 14, in a post on his FrontPageMag.com blog titled "A new Brock slander goes round the web (and is refuted here)," Horowitz had accused Media Matters for America, which raised questions about whether the Colorado story was true in a March 7 item, of "slander" and insisted the story was true. Despite Horowitz's March 15 concession that the story is not true, the false attack on Media Matters is still posted on his blog.

The Horowitz about-face appears to have been prompted by a report, also posted March 15, on InsideHigherEd.com, which describes itself as "the online source for news, opinion and career advice and services for all of higher education," that refuted nearly all of the claims Horowitz and his SAF group had made regarding a student's purported allegations of political bias against her criminal justice professor at the UNC. Horowitz and SAF had alleged that a student in "[a] criminology class at a Colorado university," when asked on a midterm essay exam to explain "why President Bush was a war criminal," received a failing grade for answering instead why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, and that this constituted anti-conservative bias. However, InsideHigherEd.com quoted a UNC spokeswoman as saying that "the test question was not the one described by Horowitz, the grade was not an F, and there were clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given." All the information the university had "was inconsistent with the story Horowitz has told about this incident," the website reported having been told by the UNC spokeswoman. The article also reported that the professor Horowitz and SAF attacked, Robert Dunkley, is a registered Republican.

From the "You've Gotta Be Kidding" Department

The same department which brought you John Bolton as UN ambassador now brings you this:

President Bush has decided on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main advocates for the Iraq war, as his choice for World Bank president, administration officials said on Wednesday.

Wolfowitz would replace outgoing World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who said earlier this month that Wolfowitz was no longer in the running for the post.

Wolfowitz is a deeply controversial figure in Europe because of his role in designing and promoting the Iraq war, and his selection could spark a backlash.

One Day

You've got me for a day; I have to work, which means I'll likely be blogging to fight the boredom. Tomorrow, however, we're off to New Orleans, to wander the streets, hang out with friends from my French Quarter bartending days, and drink to excess, so blogging will likely be a rarity at best.

Oh, and for all you out there who happen to be Austin residents--if you were walking along Town Lake Saturday night and saw two extraordinarily, almost preternaturally beautiful and happy people laughing naked on the third-floor balcony of the Hyatt Regency hotel with glasses of champagne in hand... It wasn't us, I swear.

Married

Can't blog. Blissed out.

(posted by rorschach from miriam's computer)