THAT is what is also in the Pentagon's just-released assessment showing Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs or a real connection with al-Qaeda.

Te biggie, though? The alleged George H.W. Bush assassination plot by Iraqi intelligence in 1993. Alleged -- the Pentagon says no evidence to back this up either.

Rather, let's go back to the working assumption some of us have had for more than a decade... the al-Sabah ruling sheikhs of Kuwait set the whole thing up.

MOre on my personal blog.

Political activists, under the banner name of  Re-create 68, want to bring at least part of the activist, idealist, political flavor of 40 years ago to this year’s Democratic National Convention inDenver.

Barbara Rivera wants to “stand for peace” on behalf of the U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

 

Duke Austin hopes to hold a five-day “this is what democracy looks like” rally with the Students for Peace and Justice.

 

Adam Jungk proposes to set up a Tent State University. Barbara Cohen applied for a “festival of democracy”; her husband, Mark Cohen, for a “celebration of democracy.”

 

They’re just five of the people who submitted more than 200 applications to occupy 14 centrally located Denver parks during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The catch is, they are all associated with the same group: Re-create 68.

 

City officials will draw names in a park-permit lottery today, and say the multiple applications look like ballot stuffing.

So? They’re playing the system and winning. If official Democratic Party orgs, or food vendors, lose out, tough.

 R-68’s Glenn Spagnuolo, who also filed for a permit for “The Free Speech Zone” as an individual, and who freely admits knowing Duke, Adam, Mark and the two Barbaras — and, in all, as many as 40 other applicants friendly to his group — says it's the city that’s not playing fair.

Agreed. It sounds like Denver is trying to bland out the convention.

For more skeptical left-liberal blogging on a variety of issues, visit my blog.

Short answer, for those of you familiar with the developing story, appears to be No, we apparently can’t put Rush’s pilonidal cyst behind bars for recreational fun for some some Ohio criminals named “Bubba.”

Whether you are familiar or not with the story, read on:

Truthout reports Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) is investigating GOP crossovers voting in the Ohio Democratic primary. In Ohio, doing a temporary party change for that reason (Ohio primaries are semi-closed or semi-open, depending on which way you look at it) is a criminal offense, and Rush Limbaugh (and Laura Ingraham) encouraged exactly such behavior.

However, the law applies only to actual voters. And, Ohio's statute on conspiracy does not extend as low as a fifth-degree felony.

Read my blog for citations on the relevant Ohio laws.

So do the voters who thought they were getting straight talk about Iraq and other issues in 2006 from Congressional Democrats, not  weak whining about President Bush that would be swatted out of the lane by anybody taller than 5-2.

“The American people are still waiting to hear the straight talk we deserve,” Sen. Robert Menendez said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. “Instead of making more sweeping claims of victory, as he did this week, it's time for the president to face the reality of the situation we're in.”

Why don’t YOU tell the American public the truth, Sen. Menendez?

 

Why don’t you bluntly tell them:

• That we cannot establish a democracy in Iraq, even if we had more troops than we do there now?

• That you are still afraid of being labeled “defeatist”?

• That Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, is probably “lost”?

• That al-Qaeda doesn’t hate us because we drink, let women vote, etc., but because we write blank checks to Israel and have troops occupying Arabia?

 

I could list more, but that’s enough for starters.