It's the Seattle Times' most read article.

And four more of its top twenty articles concerned this case too.

Thanks too to Slublog, who apparently was also clicking on that story a suspicious number of times.

He's got a Friday link dump, including a link to an article about strange voting patterns. Parents of daughters, it seems, will typically switch their political allegiances for Princess-- the more daughters in a household, the more likely parents will vote liberal.

That's a study of British voting patterns, but I can't think of an obvious reason why the same pussification-by-Princess wouldn't also have at least some influence here.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (9)
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Dana Priest strikes again:

This time, the Washington Post uses its contacts in the CIA to expose an umbrella program called GST, the code for a loose affiliation of dozens of programs designed to locate and fight terrorists abroad rather than wait for them to show up here. Nothing about the article stands out as a smoking gun, it never alleges anything specifically illegal, but Dana Priest writes the front-pager as a warning that the President has gone out of control in defending the US from attack...

This effort by Priest mirrors the slop served up by the NY Times on the NSA surveillance of international communications, except in one regard -- the activities described by Priest clearly fall under the category of the President's war powers. One cannot even claim the limited ambiguity of the NSA position on that point

More on the full story at Captain Ed, linked above.

To repeat myself: It is not Ms. Priest who is actually breaking the law here. It is her sources, determined to undermine the War Against Terror out of a partisan liberal animus against Bush. Ms. Priest should be subpoenaed and forced to reveal her sources, and locked up if she refuses to comply, not as punishment -- she is, after all, just doing her job, if perhaps insufficiently careful about national security -- but rather in order to get the names of the actual criminals in our national security apparatus.

Hat tip to Heard Here, who makes the case that the New York Times is badly in need of "adult supervision."

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (23)
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A former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan is about to release an "explosive" book on the Clinton-inaugurated practice of "extraodinary renditions."

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (7)
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Finally.

Update: The probe isn't just over the NYT's exposure of the NSA program, but also about the Washington Post's exposure of the secret prisons program:

Turns out the NY Times is not the only paper to have its leakers sources investigated. The Washington Post is reporting their CIA Prison story leaks are being investigated

The Justice Department has also opened a probe into whether classified information was illegally disclosed to The Washington Post, which reported on a network of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Again: Finally.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (43)
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Both fictional and real and hoax and not-really-robots-at-all, like Leanardo Da Vinci's Mechanical Knight's Armor.

Does this count as my obligatory end of year list?

Thanks, to, uhhh, "AssWeasel."

Posted by: Ace at 05:55 PM | Comments (33)
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Republicans have virtually closed October's big favorability gap.

A Polipundit commenter thinks she knows why.

Posted by: Ace at 05:32 PM | Comments (156)
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Kid's got balls. Two of them, right below his penis. (Where?)

But really, I suspect he's one of Dick Cheney's myriad bastards. The conclusion of his high school essay on his dangerous journey?

"There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil.... Those terrorists are not human, but pure evil."

In any decent world, that would be a kick-ass sort of thing to put on your college application, no?

Unfortunately, due to his lack of "nuance" or understanding of "root causes," it's probably going to be held against him.

Posted by: Ace at 04:49 PM | Comments (18)
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This guy puts even Lord Atrios to shame:

If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.

Too late for me. It's not too late for you.

Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.

Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.

...

The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.

...

So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels.

Oh, well, good for him. Musn't be envious. I wish him luck. He'll need it, because I just prayed to Satan that he be raped to death by a puma.

Thanks to Joel.

Posted by: Ace at 04:29 PM | Comments (22)
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Since Jane Hamster is sending traffic to my NSA post, I thought I'd insert one of my favorite old pieces for her readers to enjoy. If you're new to the site, you probably haven't read it.

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (6)
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I've been linked by one of the bigger leftwingnut blogs over my post about the Rasmussen poll on telephone intercepts. She's very angry that I didn't parse the question to her liking and declare it a fraudulent right-wing Rethuglican push-poll. Mickey Kaus' raging liberal brother Steven also linked me from the Huffington Post for the same complaint.

I wouldn't mention this, except to say, "We might experience some turbulence... and then explode," and also because I found this hysterically funny:

He needs [the space for including the full question asked by Rasmussen] for violating Atrios's copyright.

Emphasis kinda mine... she emphasizes the "Atrios copyright" part as part of a link to this post, in which I post Atrios' six thousand open threads and two-word posts.

Can one copyright the words "Open Thread"? Apparently one can, according to the law offices of Jane Hamscher, Esq.

After calling me a wingnut, Ms. Hamsher displays her reasonable, non-winguttish credentials:

I swear, between the slavish, Stalin-esque love for totalitarianism and their contempt for private property, free enterprise and market capitalism these people are all just fucking communists.

She also includes a picture of Uncle Joe, in case you missed the point.

Violating Atrios' copyright. It is. To Laugh.

Ms. Hamsher, Atrios has to frigging write some actual copy before he can copyright it.

PS, Ms. Hamsher: You use the word "fucking" in your post. That's AoSHQ copyrighted material, there. Well, not copyrighted per se, but I can get you on unfair-trade-practices rap for infringing on my "brand identity." Expect a shifty-looking bald-headed man bearing papers in a blue wrap-around in your near future.

Also, given your sad attempts to be funny, I think I'll attempt to emulate your own "comedic stylings" and give you a Jane Hamscher sort of nickname.

How about "Jane Hamster"?

Oooooh, that's gold, baby! That's funny-- Margaret Cho funny.

"Jane Hamster." Man, sometimes I don't know where I come up with these zingers. Zow! Pah-zing! Bam!

Endorsed On "Jane Hamster's" Own Site Update:

Heh. Ace and I have been arch-nemeses at three different fora, starting with Slate's Fray back in 1998. The meltdowns were indeed legendary, and he is without a doubt one of the most dyspeptic people I've ever encountered on the internets. He is the Joker to my Batman, I suppose.

He is also extremely funny, and quite intelligent. He's just made the decision to use his powers for evil.

Thanks! And by the way, I have no idea who you are. To be my arch-nemesis, don't I need to have some awareness you exist?

My Mistake: I do know who Heywood J. is, but I wouldn't consider him a nemesis, arch or otherwise. I wasn't Joker to his Batman. More like, I was Batman to his Space Monkey Gleep.

Posted by: Ace at 01:48 PM | Comments (183)
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