A U.S. House Resolution that experts say amounts to an act of war against Iran is quickly gaining speed. H.CON.RES 362 calls on the president to stop shipments of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran and to impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran.”

The resolution has attracted more than 205 cosponsors despite the fact that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reports: “We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.”

Should we be at all surprised that this administration and Congress are once again ignoring key elements of an intelligence report?

The Chinese government has fired twelve officials for dereliction of duty and misuse of supplies following the May Sichuan earthquake. How many United States government officials were sacked after their disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina, a much smaller natural phenomenon?

While mainstream television media largely ignores them, the Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush continue to be pushed by Ohio Representative Dennis J. Kucinich. This maverick politician has even set up a petition for those who want to show their “full and unqualified support of the one and only original sponsor of the impeachment resolution”.

The House of Representatives today voted 293-129 to give telecommunications companies immunity for warrantless wiretapping. Called a ‘compromise‘, House Resolution 6304 seems to compromise only the souls of those who voted for it and the Constitutional rights of the American people.

Former US anti-terror czar Richard Clarke, who resigned in the first term of President George W. Bush’s administration, today said “the best thing that we could do to hit Al-Qaeda’s attractiveness to the Muslim world” is to “get out of Iraq“.

As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself—not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch.

Pres. George W. Bush, after visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006

Does this picture illustrate the effect of global warming, or just demonstrate that we now have more room to drill for oil?

The FBI is considering whether to relax its hiring rules over how often applicants could have used marijuana or other illegal drugs earlier in life. I guess it only makes sense that a person who can be president despite rocking the ganj can also be in the FBI.

Talk about irony. Rapper Ludacris might perform a homecoming concert at East Tennessee State University despite the city’s refusal to let him perform at Freedom Hall.

Looks like the focus is now on James Dobson. Senator Arlen Specter is planning to look into a statement by Dobson that he had “conversations”‘ with Karl Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and knows things about Miers “that I probably shouldn’t know.”

A powerful earthquake centered in the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan on Saturday morning sent tremors across South Asia, killing more than 18,000 people, including at least 1,600 in remote northern Pakistan. Was this even on the network news stations?

In his weekly radio address, Bush today claimed the war in Iraq will keep Americans safe for generations to come. If an article published by Mother Jones today is true, however, the president may be wrong yet again.

According to the Mother Jones article, Saddam’s nuclear program during the late 1980s was one of the most efficient covert nuclear efforts the world has ever seen. Yet despite the Bush administration’s claims of wanting to keep Americans safe for generations to come, only three of the 200-some scientists at the top of Saddam’s 1980s WMD program can be accounted for.

“Nobody knows how many Iraqi scientists may have been lured over the borders into Iran, Syria, or beyond. Nobody knows because no one is keeping tabs. But several observers agree that so little attention is being paid to Iraq’s scientists, the war may actually have increased the chances of nuclear capabilities proliferating beyond the country’s borders. Between its unemployed scientists and the disappearance of large amounts of WMD-related materials from former weapons sites, Iraq now poses a nightmare scenario.”

If you missed Live 8 like I did, you’ll love this page of Quicktime movies. It’s practically every performance from every Live 8 concert, which some believe had a great deal to do with the G8 agreement to cancel the debt of 18 of the world’s poorest countries, 14 of them in Africa, and deliver a $50 billion aid package. Let’s hope part of this aid goes to channelling the money effectively to countries that lack the systems to properly distribute said aid.