Gerbil's Giant Gumball Gumbo

In Weighing Death Penalty, A Flaw in Fact

A military law blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law and then, last September, carried the changes forward by issuing Executive Order 13447, which put the provisions into the 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial.

Anyone in the federal government — or anywhere else, for that matter — who knew about these developments did not tell the court. Not one of the 10 briefs filed in the case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, mentioned it. The Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, did not even file a brief, evidently having concluded that the federal government had no stake in whether Louisiana’s death penalty for child rape was constitutional.

RHAPSODY PLAYLIST FOR JUNE 30, 2008
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Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
Memphis - Benevento/Russo Duo
Puttin' People on the Moon - Drive-By Truckers
Driving Backwards With You - The Slip
Nellie Jean - The Slip
Ronnie and Neil - Drive-By Truckers
The First Single - The Format
Feelin' Alright - Traffic
It Takes Time - The Stills
The Needle and The Damage Done - Neil Young
Doin' The Cockroach - Modest Mouse
Stella Was A Drive and She Was Always Down - Interpol
Deck Shoes - Greyboy Allstars
The Day John Henry Died - Drive By Truckers
One Big Holiday - My Morning Jacket
Put Your Records On - Corinne Bailey Rae
Susanne - Weezer
Car Carrier Blues - Leo Kottke/Mike Gordon
Step Right Up - Tom Waits
City Calm Down - Architecture in Helsinki
505 - Arctic Monkeys
Seven Story Mountain - Railroad Earth
Operator - Grateful Dead
Summer of My Fall - Surprise Me Mr Davis
Caring is Creepy - The Shins
It's About Twilight Now - My Morning Jacket
Well You Needn't - Thelonious Monk
Pacific Theme - Broken Social Scene
The House We Live In - The Stills
Waiting for Jaden - Animal Liberation Orchestra
The Last Song - Foo Fighters
Patato's Mission - New Monsoon
Tonight's The Night - Neil Young
Cinnamon Girl - Neil Young
Golden - My Morning Jacket
Louisiana 1927 - Marcia Ball
Magician - Golden Smog

Pig Brains Causing Neuro Disorder

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Eighteen pork plant workers in Minnesota, at least five in Indiana and one in Nebraska have come down with a mysterious neurological condition they appear to have contracted while removing brains from slaughtered pigs, U.S. researchers and health officials said on Wednesday.

State Farm Sponsors Hispanic Voting Drive
http://www.truthout.org/article/state-farm-sponsors-hispanic-voting-drive
Miriam Jordan reports for The Wall Street Journal, "With an eye on the fast-growing Hispanic market, State Farm Insurance Companies will announce Thursday that it will be the lead sponsor of the largest national campaign thus far to encourage Latinos to become US citizens and register to vote. That will make it the first mainstream US corporation to put money behind the massive mobilization effort ahead of the November presidential vote."

Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam"

i kind of lost interest in this when my formatting got all screwed up. i'm going to post more as the days come and go.

Israel, Gaza and Our Relationship With Israel

RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war

illegal?

t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich | Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished:

"Mrs. Bush's act was a harmless piece of burlesque, but it paid political dividends, upstaging the ho-hum presidential news conference of two days earlier in which few of the same reporters successfully challenged administration spin on Social Security and other matters. (One notable exception: David Gregory of NBC News, whose sharply focused follow-ups pushed Mr. Bush off script and got him to disown some of the faith-based demagoguery of the Family Research Council.) Watching the Washington press not only swoon en masse for Mrs. Bush's show but also sponsor and promote it inevitably recalls its unwitting collaboration in other, far more consequential Bush pageants. From the White House's faux 'town hall meetings' to the hiring of Armstrong Williams to shill for its policies in journalistic forums, this administration has been a master of erecting propagandistic virtual realities that the news media have often been either tardy or ineffectual at unmasking."

t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt: The Millstone:

"September 11 justifies a lot of things previously considered abominable. That is what a lot of Republicans tell themselves these days. No Republican in his right mind would have supported something like the Patriot Act before the attacks. Indeed, a variety of anti-terrorism actions offered by the Clinton administration were shot to pieces by the Republicans in Congress because they were considered too invasive. Then, of course, everything changed."

What Rough Beasts?:

"The idea is to avoid animals with human sex cells or brain cells, Mr. Wade wrote. 'There is a remote possibility that an animal with eggs made of human cells could mate with an animal bearing human sperm. To avoid human conception in such circumstances, the academy says chimeric animals should not be allowed to mate,' he explained. Human cells in an animal brain could also be a problem. As Janet Rowley, a University of Chicago biologist, told a White House ethics panel: 'All of us are aware of the concern that we're going to have a human brain in a mouse with a person saying, 'Let me out.' '"

US To Open Forest To Logging

The Bush administration, in one of its biggest environmental decisions, moved yesterday to open nearly one-third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures.

The 58.5 million acres involved, mainly in Alaska and in western states, had been put off limits to development by President Bill Clinton eight days before he left office in January 2001.