In the news today at Raw Story

Alabama going south

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Some state senators want to make sure that every public school has the Ten Commandments displayed and that every school day begins with students and teachers reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Bills that would put both requirements into law won approval in the state Senate Education Committee on Wednesday and now go to the Senate for consideration.
  Raw Story article

Your tax dollars at work on important Congressional business

Today will be a humbling, humiliating day for Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.). He made his bed, and now he must lie in it.

The outrageous Super Bowl bet he made with Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) has come back to haunt him. Since his beloved Eagles lost to the Patriots, Brady will have to wear an official New England helmet all day today, all over Capitol Hill.

“I think he has to wear it everywhere,” Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley White, told us.

The wager was Brady’s idea. If the Eagles won, Meehan would wear Brady’s souvenir helmet, which was once worn by Eagle Jevon Kearse. If the Patriots won, Brady would wear a Patriots helmet. Brady placed the bet with confidence that the Eagles would finally win its first-ever Super Bowl trophy.

But Brady will be the helmet head today, not Meehan. “He’s almost physically ill,” White said of his boss.

The two Members are expected to appear together on CNN’s “Crossfire” today to discuss what Meehan spokesman Matt Vogel called “the Eagles’ terrible clock management in the final minutes of the game.”
  Raw Story article

Yesterday's Gallup Poll Showing Bush Approval At 57% Had 9% More Republicans Than Democrats

The more things change, the more things stay the same. And Gallup is showing us that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.

On the heels of the Iraqi election, and with the White House needing a boost in Bush’s image and approval ratings as he tries to ram through a terrible budget and Social Security privatization plan to a wavering GOP, much was made yesterday about the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll done over the weekend. This poll, bull-horned through the media and rightwing blogosphere, showed an incredible jump in Bush’s approval rating to 57%, a five-point jump from the polls done in early January. Yet even those earlier January polls it turned out were suspect because, you guessed it, they were based on a sample that had more Republicans in it than Democrats (37.2% GOP, 35.6% Democrat, and 27% Independent).

[...]

The poll trumpeted far and wide yesterday by CNN, USAT, and the right wing blogosphere was based on a sample constructed by Gallup that contained 37% Republicans, 35% Independents, and only 28% Democrats.

You read that correctly.

[...]

With this poll, Gallup appears to be firmly a propaganda arm of the White House and RNC.
  The Left Coaster article

But at least it was something whoever reads Bush's newspapers for him could show the boss without fear of a permanent room in the tower.

They just hate it when the shoe is on the other foot - so very uncomfortable

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer covered the unfolding scandal surrounding White House ‘reporter’ J.D. Guckert, who wrote under the pseudoynm Jeff Gannon for the conservative news site Talon News.

On his afternoon program, “Wolf Blitzer Reports,” Blitzer detailed the burgeoning scandal of the White House correspondent who posted a semi-nude picture of himself with a dog tag on America Online and whose business also registered gay military escort sites.

CNN had Howard Kurtz, of The Washington Post, on the program, who took the time to blast liberal bloggers for investigating Guckert’s private life.

[...]

There was no mention of the photograph of Guckert in underwear on his America Online profile, which said, “Still sexy after all these years.”

[...]

The question, he said, was “Did [bloggers] go too far?”
  Raw Story article

I hope, for America's sake, they are just getting started. And, interestingly, Talon News (Guckert's news agency of record) has been scrubbing their archives, according to the information available at that photo link.

Deep Throat about to be revealed?

As so often in the past, the press once again is feeding a Deep Throat frenzy, apparently set off by the opening of the Woodward and Bernstein archives on Watergate at the University of Texas last week.

The mania shows no sign of abating, with the chattering classes still chattering over John Dean's op-ed for Sunday's Los Angeles Times, which suggested that (a) Deep Throat is ailing, perhaps near death, and (b) former Washington Post helmsman Ben Bradlee has written his obituary, neither of which could be confirmed, of course.

[...]

[T]he author of the 1993 biography of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “Deep Truth,” has named George H.W. Bush as the new chief suspect.

[...]

Here at E&P, we thought we'd join in the fun, since Deep Throat, whoever or whatever it is, is the most famous journalistic source in history. Send us your pick for the most likely candidate (to: letters@editorandpublisher.com), and we will tabulate the results. We will also award a free subscription to whoever is first to submit the correct name -- assuming, that is, we ever learn who he/she/it is.

In the early returns, based on dozens of submissions, the clear frontrunner is (ailing) Chief Justice Willam Rehnquist.
  Editor & Publisher article

Democratic senators line up whistleblowers who will talk about how they inflated contracts for their firms in Iraq... Hearings slated to be announced today... Developing...

And lastly...

A star three times bigger than the sun has been seen fleeing our galaxy at over 1.5 million mph, according to astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
  Wired article

Dude, wait for me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.