Contractor hired to assess its own failed
program.

post from Think Progress on 01 April 2007 12:38:00 AM. © Think Progress

“The government contractor that set up a billion-dollar-a-year federal reading program for the Education Department and failed to keep it free of conflicts of interest is one of the companies now evaluating the program.”

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Open Thread and Diary Rescue

post from Daily Kos on 01 April 2007 12:28:11 AM. © Daily Kos

Diaries up for rescue tonight:

ryeland's Epistemology and the POTUS, or George W. Bush meets reality looks at the unraveling of the president as facts hit him from all sides.

Mark H's Marine Life Series: Baleen explains how the filtering works in whales.

james richardson's Tribalism and the Republican party examines the "Us and Them" view that dominates politics today, where one is defined more by what one is against than what one is for.

rawls' The Next Republican Meme reviews how the upsurge in violence in Baghdad undermines the line the GOP is pushing about the success of the surge.

OhioNative's In Ohio: GOP Party Kingpin (Guilty Yet Defiant) Battles On serves as a primer for the uninitiated by doing into detail about some of the GOP scandals in Ohio.

dday's Best news I've heard all year - Dean raking in big-donor dollars recalls the fears expressed about Howard Dean's fundraising abilities when he first took over the DNC and looks at what he's bringing in today.

mkfox's Forgotten Founding Fathers: Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben looks at the Prussian who helped train the Continental Army.

WeDemocrats' What Rights Do We Have? opens up a great discussion about the meaning of "rights" under the Constitution and in other founding documents.

artofstarving's Notes From The Ant Farm is a beautiful meditation on road trips, fires, time and much, much more. Highly recommended.

Magnifico's Generation Of Peace analyzes a 1972 Dan Rather report laying out the strategy that the Republicans would use in the ensuing decades to take over the country - and that happens to have a young Karl Rove featured.

WinSmith's Pat Tillman and the Bush Cult explores how the dominant right-wing narrative of the way the world works is drawn directly from Hollywood scripts circa 1950. People, this is one of the best diaries I've read here in a long, long while - it deserves to be on the recommended list, in my opinion, for its excellence in insightful analysis and clear writing.

Vincent Amato's What the plight of an Algerian baker can teach us about Iraq... gives an excellent review of an Algerian movie that outlines the costs on individual lives of disinvestments by major Western powers when colony's strike out on their own and are marginalized by the rest of the world.

kredwyn's RedState Fibbing?: When an Invite isn't Exactly an Invite looks at the process of DoD vetting of bloggers "invited" to go cover the war in Iraq, raising questions about a certain blog's truthiness and exploring the demarcation line between news and domestic propaganda in a digitized world.

cityduck's America Was Founded As A Secular Country debunks the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation by looking at the debates surrounding the constitutional ratification procedure.

Conceptual Guerilla's ACTION ALERT: LTE's Needed On Iraq Supplemental offers great advice on framing a letter to the editor about the Iraq supplemental bill.

noweasels brings Top Comments.

Add your favorites from the past 24 hours and use as an open thread.

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 01 April 2007 12:17:39 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Some things you just can't satirize. I've been trying to come with a parody to this hate mongering post by Malkin. I talked to TRex about it too…In reality t's a parody of itself, but as JC Christian might say: "Be afraid brown people, be very afraid."

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Rove Under the Microscope

post from TalkLeft on 01 April 2007 12:16:00 AM. © TalkLeft

Karl Rove has emerged unscathed in the justice system so far. But the New York Times puts out its claws today and draws blood.

I can't remember a time during PlameGate, the closest Karl Rove came to being indicted, that the New York Times so lambasted Rove.

Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch.

....This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.

The Times says Congress shouldn't let Rove skate on testifying under oath at hearings on the fired U.S. Attorneys.

The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.

I think Karl Rove's bigger problem is that Bush is now a lame duck and the media figures his lieutenants are now fair game.

The whole bunch of them are about to see their power dwindle.

It's up to us in 2008 to ensure we get a regime change, not just a name change.

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My 201st Post

post from Librocrats - Designed Intelligent on 01 April 2007 12:03:00 AM. © Librocrats - Designed Intelligent

The last post was my 200th. The text came up funky, though, but the area that didn't show up correctly was supposed to read:Overall Performance Rating- completed by Manager [] Outstanding - Performance consistently far exceeds job requirements.[][...]

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Another Dip Into The Sea Of Insanity

Last week it came about that there is another episode in the saga of insanity we refer to as immigration policy. Or, to be obtuse and ungracious, the obeyance of the law of the land.El Pueblo, a Raleigh, NC based organization has two main points to its legislative agenda. One: in-state tuition of the [...]

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http://guntotingliberal.com/archives/1040

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1/2 Hour News Hour: 13 More Shots at Funny

(Guest blogged by Logan Murphy) Rush finally gets something right. The first two episodes of FOX's The 1/2 Hour News Hour contained zero funny. Despite being panned by critics of all political stripes, FOX has ordered 13 more episodes. Rewarding failure with promotion. Sound familiar?

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