Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee apparently asked the White House how much money was spent on the production of the Mission Accomplished banner that hung above Bush during his now infamous appearance aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The administration responded by breaking with tradition and effectively saying that it would no longer answer budget questions posed by Democrats. From now on, they said all questions would have to come from the committee chairpersons, all of whom happen to be Republicans.
I liked Thomas Friedmans op-ed piece in todays New York Times on humiliation and the role it plays today in Iraq and beyond. Its all stuff that Friedman and others have said before, but it bears repeating. People who feel humiliated get pissed off.
And the Guardian has a good piece on the whole Jessica Lynch thing… If you haven’t been keeping up, Lynch has come out in the past few days saying essentially that the US government and the media exaggerated her heroism and her rescue in order to either sell the war or hold viewers. According to this story, not only was she not valiantly fighting until her has bullet was gone, she was kneeling in the back of the truck praying while her fellow soldiers were fighting – not exactly the story we were told at the time.
Cops in North Carolina swarm on a public school with their firearms drawn in order to conduct a surprise inspection for drugs. The good news for us is that its all caught on tape.
