From the Sludge report

DeLay Treated for Heart Condition
WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was treated for a heart condition Thursday at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center, his office said.
The Texas Republican was released and returned home after a series of testsTom Delay has a heart

Tom Delay has a heart? Who knew?

Powell's Last Mile as FCC Chairman
By Roy Mark
WASHINGTON -- Seven years after joining the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Michael Powell bade a teary goodbye today at the conclusion of his 90th FCC open meeting.
"Government service is not lucrative and it takes a painful toll on you personally and your family," the often controversial Powell said. "It saddens me when public officials and bureaucrats are criticized for having alternative motives or when someone personalizes disagreements."

coughswiftboatvetscough, coughfairnessdoctrinecough, coughnipplegatehowardsterncough,

All hail ZOGG!
Resistance is futile

Depends on your definition of "hole"

Apparently the story we were told about Saddam Hussien being found in a so called spider hole underground were
fiction

Hungry?
I might dispute the "world's greatest" part but this looks like a preety damn good grilled cheese sandwich to me

Inukshuk at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo 

Expo 2005 and why Canada is cool

I went to an event at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo last night that illustrated for me once again one of the best things about Canada.

The themes of the World Expo being held in Aichi Prefecture, Japan this summer is "Nature's Wisdom." Canada was the first country to sign up to take part and our pavillion is built on the theme of the "Wisdom of Diversity" - you can read all about it here .

Visitors to the pavillion enter to a show simulation the northern lights, then enter the outer ring that tells the story of Canada's "geo-sphere" and "bio-sphere" -- in plain English, the geography and wildlife of the great white north from Baffin Island to Windsor, from Vancouver to St. John.

The inner ring, and this is where it gets good, is Canada's "ethno-sphere" which celebrates the diversity of cultures and ethnicities in Canada. In his speech last night, deputy head of mission at the embassy MacKenzie Clugston, who for the record spoke only in French and Japanese and had a Japanese interpreter give the English version (how cool is that?), pointed out that, according to the 2001 census

47% of Canadians are of an ethic background that is not British, French or First Nations and 85% think multiculturalism is a good thing.

That really struck me. Living in monocultural conformist Japan, where there is a lot of xenophobia even today about "foreign devils" and reading some of the crap from the cultural conservatives in North American about the evils of immigrants and nasty foreigners and illegal aliens ruining the good ole US of A, it was nice to see the Canadian government get it right and showcase the cultural, intellectual and even financial prosperity that comes from having a diversity of experiences, backgrounds and opinions represented in the population. Three cheers for the cultural mosiac!

"It's the tolerance, stupid!"

Oh, and despite having recently become a U.S. citizen, Alanis Morrisette will be coming to do a concert there. Click the link to write songs like her.

We have met the enemy and he is us

From the NY Times
Many Missteps Tied to Delay in Armor for Troops in Iraq
By MICHAEL MOSS

Published: March 7, 2005


he war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.

The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board's meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.