Here we are again with time on our hands and so much Non-News to report. Let’s not waste any time on where we’ve been or why we’ve been away. There’s just too much dumbness to recount.

The Fodder

Cuban Pirates Disrupt Oscars
Conservatives jumped for joy and Liberals hung their heads when it was announced that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 may be ineligible for this year’s Oscars. A pirated copy of the anti-Bush film made its way to Cuba where government officials promptly broadcast it around the country for all its citizens to see. Under Academy rules, documentaries may not be shown on television or the Internet for a nine-month period after their initial theatrical release and Oscar officials briefly toyed with disqualifying the film. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and a spokesman for the Academy said the unfortunate event would not, in fact, prevent the film from being considered at this year’s Oscar ceremony. “If somebody steals your movie and puts it on TV, we're not going to penalize you for it,” the spokesman told Reuters. All five Cubans with access to a television denounced the film as “filthy American imperialist propaganda aimed at disrupting the Castro regime” and that it was simply another example of “the man” keeping them down.

Christmas in August
Ever wanted to know what “the man” gets for Christmas? Well, thanks to The Smoking Gun, now you can. First Lady Laura Bush must surely love the $95,000 set of diamond and sapphire jewelry given to her by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis also gave First Daughters Jenna and Barbara Bulgari necklaces valued at around $8,000 apiece. Pity the poor president whose only gift from the Saudis was a lowly $8,500 mantle clock. Didn’t the Saudis know a clock is an inappropriate gift for someone who has not yet learned how to tell time? Other gifts to the White House last year included 300 pounds of lamb, $1,500 ornamental daggers for Chief of Staff Andrew Card and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a $12,000 Franck Muller watch and some Christian Dior aftershave—basically the same types of things found under 3N’s tree last year. View the entire list of gifts to the White House here-- http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0804041gifts1.html.

Dream Team Nightmare
If you like to see overpaid, trash-talking, egotistic athletes getting egg on their face, this next story is for you. Seems this year’s U.S. Olympic Basketball team, comprised of professional NBA players such as Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan, isn’t taking the game too seriously. They show up late for practice, spend time working on their half-court shots and pay little regard to the new set of international rules they must now play under. Maybe that’s why a vastly inexperienced Italian team thoroughly trounced them on Tuesday 95-78. It was the worst beating ever suffered by an American Olympic basketball squad and administered by a team that barely even qualified for this year’s Olympics. U.S. Coach Larry Brown said the game was a “wakeup call” and that “the team is going to be in for a lot of lessons over the next two weeks.”

Random Notes
Henry Rollins will “entertain” American troops in Honduras with one of his (in)famous spoken-word performances. Surely this kind of torture is against the Geneva Convention.

In an effort to cope with the tragic disappearance of his wife Laci, authorities say grieving husband Scott Peterson added the Playboy Channel to his satellite TV service just two weeks after he reported her missing. There’s just nothing like soft-core porn to take the sting out of a murdered wife.

Washington residents, hide your children. Mary K. Letourneau is a free woman. The level-two sex offender is on the prowl and said to be busy fielding calls from “The Today Show,” “Oprah,” “Primetime” and “Inside Edition.” Maybe if we just ignore her, she’ll go away.

Washington residents, hide your children part two. A King County judge has ruled that those Godless homosexuals may now be married under Washington state law and denying them that privilege is a violation of their constitutional rights. The state Supreme Court reverses that decision in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Kudos to the New York Post. Just weeks after its “exclusive” story about Kerry picking Gephardt as his running mate, they now delight readers with news that ex-NBC head Brandon Tartikoff was seen dining with his wife in a popular New York restaurant. Friends and relatives were shocked by the news considering Tartikoff died seven years ago.

A North Dakota man has been arrested for running a meth lab out of a local kitchen—the Bethel Moravian Church kitchen. Those wacky meth addicts—what will they think of next?

All for now, enjoy your day--

The Essay

A Message to the Democratic Party from a Member of the Weaker Sex

Is a juvenile game of dick-sizing the best that American politics has to offer?

After California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger referred to California Democrats as “girlie men” the Democratic Party apparently hit the panic button. “The Democratic National Convention appears to be making a concerted effort to project symbols of masculine toughness,” Jarrett Murphy commented in “Dems ‘Fight’ With ‘Strong’ Words,” an article featured on CBS Online.

In the current political environment, it’s simply insulting to be feminine. "When Democratic men emerge, they're portrayed as too feminine," said Richard Goldstein, a writer for the Village Voice. “The Democrats are trying to counter that."

One can’t help to wonder what these feminine attributes might include—aside from the obvious inference of weakness—might they not also include charity, compassion and openness as well as the ability to listen, communicate and problem solve without maiming, bombing and mass-murdering?

But perhaps that’s to take it too far. The new strong men of the Democratic Party instead choose to fight for America by beginning with a defensive campaign. They’re going into battle for Americans while playing to the tune of the Republicans and ignoring the social contributions of those who comprise half the electorate.

Although I am only a member of the weaker sex, I humbly suggest that the Democrats forward this message; the current administration failed to do its job. With the largest defense budget in the world, they failed to defend us. They were party to the greatest communications failure in the history of our country. They lied to us about the Weapons of Mass Destruction. They disgraced our country by presenting forged documents to the United Nations. The Bush administration continues to snub those who, in the name of the American people, demand accountability. They entrenched the nation in an imperialist war, turned nightmare, while handing over no-bid contracts to corporate friends. With the cost of war and the additional cost of those contracts, the budget surplus turned deficit. The Bush administration might well go down as the most criminal and inept administration in American history.

I say that with “strengths” such as these, perhaps both the Republican and the Democratic Party could use a few of these “girlie men” in charge. Girlie men might, in fact, be just the ticket.

So far, though, the Democrats promise progress while giving us more of the same. It’s more important, apparently, for them to have the appearance of strength rather than to actually possess it. Let’s not forget that what angered Schwarzenegger so about those “girlie” California Democrats was their support of two bills: one which would prohibit schools from contracting with private companies and another which would allow employees to sue employers when their labor rights were violated.

So when Kerry and Edwards blaze down the campaign trail with speeches peppered with such “masculine” words as strength and tough, let’s not forget what those California girlie men, along with all their unsung girlie men brethren, stand for.
--Marissa Merker

War on Terror Update

First, Let There Be No Corporate Terrorism

While the U.S. government pumps millions into the “war on terror” and suspends our civil liberties with the Patriot Act, many Americans console themselves with the thought that this all results in a safer America.

Hmm.

These are times that arouse our suspicions—and not without due cause. June 12th, just another day to most of us, was for some the “International Day of Action and Solidarity with Jeff Luers.”

In June of 2001, Luers went on trial for burning three SUVs at a Eugene, Oregon, car dealership as a protest against global warming. Luers, just 23 years old, was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison for causing $40,000 in damages to cars that were later resold. Although Luers’ protest came before the so-called “war on terror,” the severity of his sentence—the harshest ever handed down for eco-terrorism—underlines the policy objectives of this current justice department. The FBI recently stated that they regard ecological and animal rights extremists as the greatest domestic terror threat to the country.

Second, Let All Gunslingers Roam Free

Much of this skewed thinking can, of course, be attributed to the priorities of Attorney General John Ashcroft. After September 11th he ordered that all government records, including voter registration, immigration and driver's license lists, be checked for links to terrorists. All government lists, that is, except one: “[Ashcroft] specifically prohibited the FBI from examining background checks on gun purchasers,” according to Paul Krugman, writing for The New York Times. Krugman also notes that Ashcroft ordered that “records of background checks on gun buyers be destroyed after only one business day.”

Third, Investigate Americans Anonymously

In an attempt to fight the penetrating eye of the Patriot Act, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the unnamed president (known only as John Doe) of an anonymous Internet Service Provider (ISP).

The ACLU is fighting the provision of the Patriot Act that currently allows the FBI to conduct surveillance through the use of National Security Letters. NSLs give the FBI the authority to issue subpoenas compelling businesses—including libraries, credit card companies and ISPs—to turn over information about their clients, including bank transactions, telephone records and e-mail logs. NSLs supersede the authority of the courts—no application to a court is necessary and the individuals targeted never have any knowledge of the investigation unless they are ultimately arrested or detained.

"I believe that the government may be abusing its power by targeting people with unpopular views," said Doe as reported by Elaine Cassel in Counterpunch.org. "I am challenging the constitutionality of the NSL provision in an effort to protect all of my clients' interests."

Last year the Bush administration and several republican senators sought to extend the use of NSLs to the CIA and the Pentagon, but the move was quashed in the Senate.

As the law currently stands, the FBI can now obtain personal information without anyone questioning how arbitrary the request might be.

That’s All, Folks

I don’t want to overtax either you or myself with too much news, so that’s it for today. But I’ll leave you with one final suggestion: Go check out both The Corporation and The Control Room—Michael Moore isn’t the only one out there fighting the good fight via the political documentary. --A.M. McNary

The Essay

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bush Administration

With today’s release of Fahrenheit 9/11, filmmaker Michael Moore is back to firebranding—and his most recent target, the Bush administration, is the worthiest concern going.

Whether Republican or Democrat, voters need to understand that the abysmal series of failures—in both foreign and domestic policy—underscores the grave incompetence of our current leadership. The litany of mistakes and abuses of power by President Bush is too long to recount here but, to illustrate, we need look no further than the information coming from the 9/11 Commission regarding the failures of that day. The portrait that emerges from the findings is eerily reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove. Let’s see if you agree.

Why did Bush stand in the classroom for several minutes after the second tower had been hit?

Okay, we all remember that morning. The first plane hits, everyone is astonished and, understandably, confused. Still, we might expect the leader of the free world to have access to better information than what we’re all seeing on the television. Here’s what Bush knew, according to the Commission’s findings, as reported by The New York Times: “The president had been told minutes earlier about the first crash, but Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who was on the trip, said initially that the plane that crashed was a twin-engine aircraft.”

Some quick facts: The plane that crashed into the north tower was American Airlines Flight 11—which had been loaded with 81 passengers and 24,000 gallons of fuel before beginning its ascent out of Boston around 8 a.m. Fourteen minutes later, air traffic had lost all contact with the plane. At 8:24, Flight 11 changed routes and the FAA heard the hijacker’s voice (probably that of Mohamed Atta) announce, “We have some planes.” Some planes—as in, more than one.

With that knowledge, it’s unclear how anyone could have believed the first plane was a small, twin-engine craft. No one appears to have pondered Atta’s statement and it was more than 10 minutes before Boston contacted NORAD. NORAD decided to send up some fighter jets, but, unfortunately, they were not airborne until six minutes after Flight 11 hit the north tower. According to The New York Times, just as the second plane struck the south tower, “Military air defenders were only just getting word at that time that a second plane had been hijacked.”

Questions, anyone?

Here are three to think about: If the FAA and Boston knew the plane had been hijacked, why didn’t Rice and the president? Why could they not even correctly identify which plane it was? And, perhaps more importantly, if fighter jets were dispatched six minutes too late, then shouldn’t they have been circling the sky when the second plane hit?

Which is worse: Conspiracy theory or stunning incompetence?

You tell me. I’ve been entertaining grave suspicions and exercising more than a little paranoia that our government allowed the events on September 11th to take place because of their plan to gain world domination. This plan is outlined in a chilling 1992 document from the Project for a New American Century, a group (headed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) whose mission is to return America to its imperialistic roots and which seeks nothing short of (further) world domination.

The Project’s RAD Report (Rebuilding America’s Defenses), written in September 2000 by Wolfowitz, among others, laments that winning public sentiment for the plan would be a long, hard fight “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Chilling, yes. Eerie, certainly, but, there’s some comfort to be had in conspiracy theories—namely, minds are at work—plots are being hatched—someone is trying to gain something and, diabolical though this may be, at least there’s an agenda.

But if everyone is just an idiot and shit is just happening, just ‘cause no one has the brains to do their job properly, then, well, maybe that’s even worse than a conspiracy theory. Out and out incompetence in the “greatest land in the world”—what, are they all smoking pot? Are the brains behind the country on par with those of the characters in Dumb and Dumber?

Okay, so we’re back in the classroom where Bush is chilling out with the kids because, as he told the Commission, he wanted to give the appearance of calm. God knows, buildings are on fire, people are dying, so just keep hanging out—please don’t send anyone into a panic by racing forward to do your job.

So that morning, Bush is told about the first plane around 9. He’s informed the second plane has hit at 9:05. This, of course, was the moment when we all knew a pattern had emerged, and yet it took 61 minutes for the FAA to realize that a third plane had been hijacked. This happened at 9:21 and by 9:38 it had hit the Pentagon. And yet, astonishingly enough, “military officials did not even know about the frantic search for Flight 77,” according to The New York Times. Instead, they were looking for “a ghost plane headed to Washington. The F.A.A. had erroneously reported that American Flight 11 - the plane that had crashed into the north tower of the trade center more than half an hour earlier - was still airborne and heading for Washington.”

Is that why Rice told Bush that a twin-engine hit the north tower?

One minute before the plane hit the Pentagon, at 9:37, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others began a conference call. The FAA was not included. “The official who ultimately joined the call at 10:17 had no familiarity with hijackings, no access to senior agency decision makers, and none of the information available to senior F.A.A. officials by that time,” according to The New York Times.

But Cheney, in his bunker, ordered the shooting down of any threatening airliner. Before that order went out, Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten suggested Cheney call Bush to confirm the order. But no one in the bunker, when questioned, could recall any such phone call confirming Bush’s authorization.

Military officials, when given Cheney’s directions, expressed confusion and never passed the directive onto the pilots engaged in the skies above D.C. and New York.

Shouldn’t someone be fired? Wouldn’t normal people, in far less dramatic and tragic circumstances, lose their jobs at such displays of incompetence? I suspect we might just be living through a live re-enactment of the plot to Dr. Strangelove— but instead of discussing such malfeasance—that would be unpatriotic—we are told to stand behind the President. Only blowjobs, apparently, constitute an impeachable offense.

Which brings us back to Michael Moore and the opening of Fahrenheit 9/11. Here’s one man who’s trying to bring all this incompetence to light, to make someone answer for these gross lapses in judgment, and for this he is attacked, ridiculed and labeled a “liberal fascist” by the New York Press. Because in America, the land celebrated for free speech and free press, no one can dare to criticize Dubya. --A.M. McNary

The Essay

Contraception, Etc.

Last week, one man made a decision that could potentially affect millions of American women and, by proxy, men.

It’s been decided that making the morning-after pill available in pharmacies is a bad idea and could result in more promiscuity among young women, particularly those under the age of 14, and put them at an increased risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. That’s according to Dr. Steven Galson, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration, who was speaking out against the pill in a recent article in The New York Times.

It reminds me of the argument that emerged during the height of the AIDS epidemic; that is, making condoms available to teens was paramount to telling them to have sex.

I’ll say it: they’re having sex, regardless of what we tell them.

There’s something quite warped in thinking that denying someone a safe means to prevent unwanted pregnancy will result in fewer unwanted pregnancies and less disease. We may as well argue that we should get rid of all guns because in doing so, we will prevent all bank robberies.

Lest you think that getting a prescription to the morning-after pill isn’t such a big hurdle, think again.

The pill is aptly, even literally, named. It’s most effective when administered within the first 12 hours following conception. Although it’s fairly effective for up to 72 hours, its efficiency drops markedly with each passing hour. Theoretically, then, if a condom breaks during intercourse at 10 p.m. Sunday night (and let’s hope it’s not a Saturday night,) a woman is on a countdown to get to the doctor by 10 a.m. Monday morning. That means getting an appointment and rushing to the clinic. For most American women that means getting to work late, missing a class, a test or a “mandatory” meeting. In other words, it means most women roll the dice and they don’t get to the clinic. Some of these women won’t luck out and instead will have either an abortion or an unwanted pregnancy.

Imagine a less patriarchal and self-righteous America where a woman could just house a few of these pills in her nightstand drawer. Or she could walk, not run, to the drugstore and handily, that is to say, without pain or emotional trauma or social moralizing, avert the problem.

Instead, our enlightened government worries that the remedy will cause the disease. In this highly charged political environment, having over-the-counter access to the morning after pill will result in scads of unprotected sex, which will lead to more sexually transmitted disease. A handy argument, is it not?

“The worse-case scenario is that you've got a young couple and they would normally use a condom when they were having intercourse, but since they know they can run to the CVS to get Plan B [the proposed brand name for the morning-after pill], are they going to worry about that?” Galson told The Times.

Even if this were to occur, the job of the FDA is not to regulate behavior. If it is, then perhaps we should pull all potential inhalants from the shelves since, in a worst-case scenario, they might sometimes be used to gain a high; or, in another worst-case scenario, since some people have overdosed on aspirin, maybe we should pull that from the shelves as well.

The FDA’s decision to refuse approval to the morning-after pill is unprecedented. The Federal Advisory Panel last December voted to approve the pill 23-4. Moreover, selling the pill over the counter had the support of more than 70 medical and health organizations, according to The Times. It also had the support of Dr. Galson’s staff.

Instead of continuing to compromise, and to endure decisions that affect the day-to-day outcome of our lives, we need to imagine the kind of country we’d like to have and actively pursue our vision of it. I’m not convinced that writing the FDA is the best plan to pursue, but while I was thinking about it, I dropped them a quick comment—you might do it too. Write them online here: http://www.fda.gov/cder/comment/commentdrug.htm
—A.M. McNary?

The Essay

Why the Quest for Cuba?

This just in: Did you know that we have more government agents tracking the movements of American tourists going to Cuba than we have tracking Osama bin Laden?

“The Bush Administration has six times as many Treasury agents from OFAC [Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control] tracking people traveling to Cuba as it does tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined.” That’s according to a press release issued by the office of U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

“I think we all agree that Fidel Castro is a dictator,” Dorgan said. “But no one would even attempt to argue that he represents a greater threat to our country or our national interest than Osama bin Laden.”

The Treasury Department, however, issued a statement saying they “fully utilize the resources and tools available to us to protect our nation and the good-willing people around the world from those who seek to harm us, be they terrorist thugs or fascist dictators.”

“Rather than spending precious resources to prevent Americans from exercising their right to travel, OFAC must realign its priorities and instead work harder to keep very real terrorist threats out of our country,” said Max Baucus (D-Mont).

While Americans are free to travel to communist China, North Korea and Vietnam, they will be rigorously fined for spending money in Cuba.

“Since Bush took office in January 2001, more than 1,200 Americans have been threatened with a maximum $55,000 fine for violation of Cuba travel-related sanctions, more than twice the number during former president Bill Clinton's eight-year mandate,” according to Agence France Presse.

Meanwhile, the list of abuses against American travelers, by the American government, is becoming quite alarming. For example, a 75-year-old woman from San Diego, traveled via Canada to Cuba for a bicycle tour and was fined nearly $10,000 for doing so. One question we ought to be asking is why the OFAC is tracking 75-year-old women around Cuba. Another couple, from Michigan, were fined $4,000 dollars for “providing nursing services to a Cuban national.” Apparently, they had given her a band-aid.

“Since Bush took office, some 1,226 Americans have received letters from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) threatening fines of up to the maximum of $55,000 for violating the travel ban by spending money in Cuba without a license (the average fine is $7,500),” according to the Washington Post. “That's more than double the total during Bill Clinton's entire last term.”

Despite vocal Congressional opposition, Bush and the Treasury Department have continued to impose travel restrictions on America. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) for one, has advocated lifting travel restrictions that were imposed in 1961 in an attempt to pressure Castro.

“Since Castro has not changed, we have a couple options: continue sitting idle or bomb Cuba—not with ordnance but with policies of engagement and Sears catalogues,” Craig said at the Conference on Freedom to Travel to Cuba in Washington, D.C., according to the Lewiston Morning Tribune.

I might be paranoid, (though I doubt it) but Craig’s remarks underline a theory I’ve been harboring, namely that the Bush administration is preparing for an eventual coup in Cuba with the goal of making it a U.S. territory. Sound preposterous? Let’s consider some peripheral facts. Everyone has been waiting for Castro to die (he was born in 1927) for some years now; Cuba is a mere 100 miles from Key West; America has a huge constituency of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who have funded Republican administrations and, lastly, Castro has not groomed anyone in Cuba to take over when he dies. He’s governed largely via the cult of his personality and the government will undoubtedly fall into unstable hands when he does die.

Now let’s consider some political realities: In October of last year, Bush announced to a gathering of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans that Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing Secretary Mel Martinez (an anti-Castro Cuban-American) would chair a panel to “plan for the happy days when Castro’s regime is no more. . .The transition to democracy and freedom will present many challenges to the Cuban people and to America, and we will be prepared.” Castro, Bush inveighed, had insulted all with a “new round of brutal oppression that outraged world conscience.”

True, Castro has been a busy man. In 2003, Cuba executed three hijackers and convicted 75 people as U.S. government agents. It would be absurd to deny his abysmal human rights record. The same could be said, however, of dozens of governments around the world—so the question is, why Cuba?

The Bush administration claims Cuba has biological weapons of mass destruction and Powell has asserted that Cuba permits child prostitution (and almost certainly this is a neat piece of propaganda with no basis in truth). Powell has preposterously claimed that Castro's regime is “the only totalitarian dictatorship existing in the hemisphere.” (I guess Haiti and Iraq, among dozens of others, simply slipped his mind). In his New Year’s Day editorial in The New York Times Powell wrote:

“This struggle [for freedom] will not be confined to the Middle East. We are working for the advent of a free Cuba, and toward democratic reform in other countries whose people are denied liberty. And we are resolved to support the young democracies that have risen in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The consolidation of freedom in many new but often fragile democracies will shape the aspirations of people everywhere, assuring that the 21st century will be a century of liberty worldwide.”

My, my, isn’t it lovely to live in such an altruistic country? I wake up mornings reveling with delight that my country is so damned generous. (True, some mornings I do push back nagging suspicions that our interests might be economically motivated.) Nah, not that—we simply want to bring freedom and liberty to all those hapless suckers around the world, ‘cause, heck, we ain’t got anything else to do—our education and prison systems are ideal—we have universal healthcare suffrage, homes for everyone, jobs a plenty—with not much to do here, we got to help the rest of the world. So, yes, I share Powell’s vision, hell, I applaud it.

Or, might it run more like this:

“If one compiles the nourishing of anti-Cuban sentiments within the U.S. before the 2004 elections; the reach into Cuba with radio/television facilitated by the Guantanamo Bay satellite dishes; the continued support for anti-Castro Cuban dissidents; the economic positioning of the U.S. in Latin America; the diplomatic venture at the OAS led by Powell; the military strategy related to allegations of biological weapons manufacture; the recent overt and covert U.S. operations to destabilise Latin American governments (such as those in Venezuela and Colombia) which raise eyebrows at the U.S.; and the punitive actions against those that supports Cuba; the similarities to the pre-Iraq invasion tactics become rather plain,” Shermini Peries, writing in The Hindu (India’s national newspaper).

I’ll cop to having a healthy streak of paranoia running through my veins. Considering that we’ve now seen the appointment of a president by the Supreme Court, despite popular vote, and seeing that we (the media and indeed all Americans) have subsequently dropped all discussion about the purpose of the electoral college (and indeed, voting ballots and boxes), the old mantra “question everything” seems like the only healthy response. Better still: Question everything, but especially question government. —A.M. McNary

The News

Today we’re doing something different. 3N has a sneaking suspicion that many of you are reading only the fluff and the fodder and never getting down to the real news of the day. So today we’ll put that first, because there’s lots going on. But first, a correction. The guy in Oklahoma who was bitten by a rattlesnake was shopping at a Lowe’s Home Improvement store. 3N mistakenly spelled it Loew’s. Twice. Sorry for any confusion.

Cheney Takes Toys, Goes Home

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to waffle over whether or not it will compel Vice President Dick Cheney to release his personal notes from his energy task force meetings in the early days of the Bush administration.

Cheney and his task force were charged with setting this country’s energy policy over the next four years and proceeded to do so, behind closed doors, with energy company lobbyists and captains of industry such as former Enron chief Ken Lay. An old energy man himself, Cheney was accused of bias, collusion and cronyism in awarding contracts and creating a favorable energy policy for his former peers, friends and colleagues. That was three years ago. It stunk then and it’s really starting to stink now.

What’s at issue is the ream of notes Cheney took while in these conferences and the fact that he refuses to let the public have a look-see. The White House is adamant that those records will never be released and has stood behind Cheney all the way. His biggest champion on the bench has so far been none other than old hunting buddy Justice Antonin Scalia. You remember him from a few blogs back, right? Scalia has repeatedly refused to recuse, saying any relationship he may have or have had with the Veep would in no way influence him or sway his decisions. And he is so far the biggest stumbling block to getting these records released, saying the Bush administration has “broad authority to keep matters private.”

So where does this leave us? Predictably, still in limbo. There’s something in those notes the administration desperately wants to keep private and their release could be not only embarrassing, but potentially disastrous to Bush’s reelection campaign. 3N is laying odds that we’ll never, ever see those notes—not in our lifetime at least and certainly not before the November elections.

Rwanda Remembered

3N promised weeks ago to mark the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy in Rwanda and, with the month fast coming to an end, we figured we’d better get to it. Rwanda got scant news coverage in this country when it was in turmoil and its grim anniversary got even less. So buck up and swallow it here.

Ten years ago this month rival tribes Hutus and Tutsis began killing each other in whole-scale fashion in the tiny African nation of Rwanda. Why? Well, the two simply don’t much care for each other and have basically been killing one another since the 1800s. The tribes flirted with peace briefly in the early 90s and brokered a peace accord in 1993. That peace was short lived, however, when on April 6, 1994, Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in a missile attack. Hutus blamed the attack on a Tutsi rebel force, the RPF, and the killing began shortly after. Thirteen weeks later, between 500,000 and 800,000 Rwandans lay dead. It was the swiftest, most brutal instance of genocide in history and was performed mostly with machetes and farm implements. And the rest of the world stood by and watched it happen.

What’s particularly infuriating is the fact that the U.S. and U.N. so readily jumped into the fray in the Balkans where Slobodan Milosevic and his party were accused of ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc. Milosevic was a madman, the Western world cried, and the ethnic cleansing there had to be stopped. What we’re rarely told, however, is the fact that the Balkans is home to the Serbian-controlled Trepca Mining Complex, one the richest mines in all of Europe and something the West dearly wants to lay claim to. Had Rwanda had something to offer the West, perhaps our intervention would have been more swift or immediate. Still, conspiracy theories aside, it’s important to remember what happened in Rwanda and maybe be a little more informed and a little more proactive the next time something like this happens. Which it certainly will.

For those of you inclined to read more, check out Philip Gourevitch’s seminal work We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. It’s grim, awful, fascinating and enlightening. Have it with some warm milk and cookies before bed.

The Fodder

ABC OKs GIs

One last kind of serious item, and this one has to go out today to mean anything. Ted Koppel on tonight’s “Nightline” will devote the entire broadcast to reading the names and showing the photos of all the fallen GIs in Iraq. ABC news is doing the show to “pay tribute to the dead.”

The show is to “remind our viewers—whether they agree with the war or not—that beyond the casualty numbers, these men and women are serving in Iraq in our names, and that those who have been killed have names and faces,” according to “Nightline” Executive Producer Leroy Sievers.

The move has been roundly criticized within media circles as nothing more than a shameless attempt to pull at our heartstrings during the all-important sweeps week. Why else then, media pundits argue, would ABC choose to air the program now rather than, say, Memorial Day? Now 3N is as bitter, jaded and cynical as the rest of them, but can’t we just once take something at face value, sit back and enjoy the ride? This is a nice thing ABC is doing and, whatever their motivations, whatever the airdate, let’s just fucking enjoy it, OK? Watch it if you like.

Brits: Still Dumber Than Us

We’ll wrap it up today with a little jab at our friends in England. Now 3N has no particular gripe with the Brits, but the stories detailing the depths of their collective stupidity just keep coming. And they’re damn funny.

A study by the Wales Post Office found two in five Brits believe “sickles,” the fictional currency used in the Harry Potter books, really exist somewhere overseas. Worse, one in four Brits think they’ll be able to use Galactic “credits,” the official currency of the Star Wars films, the next time they travel abroad. Jesus.

Going further, one in 10 Brits are ready to welcome the country of Luvania into the European Union. Never heard of Luvania? Well, that’s because it doesn’t exist. Researchers threw the fictional country into a list of countries on a survey which asked which nations Brits were most excited about entering the Union. It’s comforting to know that we’re no dumber than our allies, isn’t it?

Have a great weekend—