On this July Fourth, let us not forget Lisa Rein‘s archive of clips from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

And there was laughter in the land, and the Founders were pleased.

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Joshua Micah Marshall is running the first half of an awesome interview with Joseph Biden.

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From the AP:

Washington — The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department’s database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

“Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating,” wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department’s office for information requests.

So, does this mean that the Justice Department doesn’t have a backup of that database? Talk about the potential for a devastating loss of data!

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I like Ron Reagan (the son) more than ever after reading this.

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A guy on a mailing list sent this around saying that it came from a friend of a friend of an n degree friend. It’s supposedly the clothing label from a small American company that sells its product in France.

Translation:

Wash with warm water.
Use mild soap.
Dry flat.
Do not use bleach.
Do not dry in the dryer.
Do not iron.
We are sorry that
Our President is an idiot.
We did not vote for him.

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Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: politics Date: June 27th, 2004 dw

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Enjoying the Freeway Blogger this morning…

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David Reed is underwhelmed by Kerry’s tech proposals. Excerpt:

If Kerry’s team could understand that the issue should not be about allocating “spectrum” but instead about encouraging open wireless networking for scalable and interoperable systems (a wireless equivalent of the original goals of the Internet), he could really have an impact, and create a worthy challenge whereby America could lead the world.

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John Kerry gave a speech today on the importance of innovation. Here are the main points. And I’ve posted a transcript.

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Ethan Zuckerman highlights a story in Tuesday’s Boston Globe that reports that we’ve hired a notorious British mercenary to coordinate security in Iraq. The $293M contract goes to Tom Spicer, “a retired British commando with a reputation for illicit arms deals in Africa and for commanding a murderous military unit in Northern Ireland…” The Globe goes on:

Spicer is known for his role in the 1998 Sandline Affair in which a company he founded violated a UN-imposed arms embargo by shipping 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone. When the scandal erupted in the British media, Spicer told the press that the British government had encouraged the operation, touching off a storm that for weeks involved the office of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Spicer also figured prominently in a 1997 military coup in Papua New Guinea. When that country’s army learned that he had received a $36 million contract from the government to brutally suppress a rebellion, the army toppled the sitting government and arrested Spicer, later releasing him.

In 1992, , two soldiers in the Scots Guard unit commanded by Spicer were convicted of murdering an 18-year-old Catholic named Peter McBride in North Belfast.

Ethan adds some details and writes:

I gotta ask – what were they thinking? Anyone who’s concerned about dirty dealings in the developing world knows who Spicer and Sandline are, and what they’re done in the past. With accusations that PMC [private military companies] s tortured people at Abu Ghraib, why would the Bush administration hire a PMC with such a questionable track record? Was this an accident, or just incredible arrogance and an assumption the press wouldn’t follow this story?

Or maybe having an appalling lack of judgment is as baked into this Administration as its commitment to tax cuts and its religious conviction that teaching birth control is immoral.

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As Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Republican Small Business Council (damn, I can’t get that name straight), I received a personal taped call just now from Rep. Tom Reynolds. …More here

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