Day: December 21, 2005

The USA Patriot Act stays alive for at least six months.

U.S. Senate leaders reached a bipartisan agreement on Wednesday to extend for six months key provisions of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act set to expire in 10 days.

The accord, to be voted on later on Wednesday, would provide time for Congress to try to resolve differences over safeguards for civil liberties before making most of the provisions the Bush administration deems necessary for its war on terror permanent.

Democrats and Republicans who helped negotiate the deal voiced confidence that the White House and House of Representatives would give needed approvals.

This is good news. Now, what to do about those turncoat* Republicans? 

(*Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Larry Craig of Idaho, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska)

Pope Benedict XVI as Santa?

Someone ring the Vatican and advise them not to do this ever again. I showed these pictures to each one of my kids and it terrified them. They wanted to know why this man was pretending to be a mean Santa.

If you think about it, he does look slightly off.

Jeanine Pirro gives up.

After weeks of pressure from her own party to drop out, Republican Jeanine Pirro abandoned her struggling campaign to unseat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and announced Wednesday that she will run for New York attorney general instead.

“I have decided that my law enforcement background better qualifies me for a race for New York State attorney general than a race for the United States Senate,” Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, said in a statement.

With her campaign against Clinton in trouble, Pirro had been under strong pressure from top state GOP leaders to make the switch.

The move leaves Republicans with two active candidates for the Senate nomination: former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, who is not well known statewide, and an even less well known tax attorney from the Catskills region, William Brenner.

Her campaign was doomed to failure anyway, so it’s better that she gets out now than later, when she’s whupped upside the head by the Clintonistas. Time now to find the right candidate who will ask the tough questions that the press can latch onto. If Hillary wants to run for president in 2008, it’s important that Republicans push her into a corner now and treat the mid-terms like a presidential primary.

Saddam whines and complains about being beaten and tortured by his captors.

Boo-frickin-hoo.

Saddam Hussein launched into an extended outburst at his trial Wednesday, alleging he had been beaten and tortured by his American captors while in detention after a witness testified that his agents had tortured people by ripping off their skin.

Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi said he would investigate and that if American-led multinational forces were abusing the former Iraqi leader, he would be transferred to the custody of Iraqi troops.

“I want to say here, yes, we have been beaten by the Americans and we have been tortured,” Saddam said, before gesturing to his seven co-defendants around him, “one by one.”

After sitting quietly through several hours of testimony, Saddam said he’d been beaten “everywhere on my body. The marks are still there.”

I say strip him and let’s confirm it.