Random News & Views Roundup

- Karl Rove hasn't been indicted yet. Whoever tipped off Jason Leopold of t r u t h o u t that Rove had "24 business hours" to turn himself in earlier this week was obviously mistaken. t r u t h o u t has issued an update with a 'partial apology'.

- why is the RCMP keeping an officer on staff who has been convicted of sexual assualt? That's an insult to victims everywhere.

- a Saturday Washington Post editorial calls out General Michael Hayden, Bush's nominee for CIA Director, for refusing to speak openly about US torture policies. He would not comment publicly about the practice of waterboarding and, even though the Army has said it has been banned, the CIA's stance remains unclear:

Stimson said the Army was about to release a revised manual on interrogation procedures that bans the practice of waterboarding, in which prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until the point of nearly drowning.

The waterboarding accusations have been levied against the CIA, but the 25-member U.S. delegation headed by Bellinger refused to discuss intelligence practices.

That's not an "intelligence" practice. It's a torture practice.

- The Pentagon is sending more troops into Iraq. How's that war going for you, Rumsfeld?

- The new Iraqi cabinet will be announced on Saturday. The Defence and Interior Ministries will only have temporary ministers until the Sunnis and Shias can figure out who gets what. The Interior Ministry has been the source of a huge amount of controversy over allegations of death squads being run from within its ranks.

- What's the point of searching ships when some members of the US Coast Guard are warning the captains of those raids beforehand?

- Harper's been stood up by Bush. What will the poor sock-puppet do??

- The New York Times pulls no punches in its Saturday editorial, Press One For English, about the senate vote to proclaim English as the US's national language:

The immigration debate in Congress has hit several low points of mean-spirited dimness, and could go lower still, but on Thursday it came pretty close to rock bottom. By a vote of 63 to 34, the Senate tacked onto its immigration bill an amendment from Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma that declares English to be "the national language of the United States." If you thought otherwise, or weren't sure, well, now you know: We speak English here. None of that "Oprima número dos."[...]
They made another point — one that is exclusionary, potentially discriminatory and embarrassingly hostile to the rest of the world.

"Unless otherwise authorized or provided by law," the Inhofe amendment says, "no person has a right, entitlement or claim to have the government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English." It goes on to insist that new citizens be tested for knowledge of English and of certain pillars of American civics, like the Federalist Papers and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The White House press secretary totally dodged this question at Friday's White House press gaggle:

Q Within the context of what you've just said, and the President's support of English as a language, why is it that the President's address to the nation on Monday is featured in Spanish on the White House website? And why is it that no other languages -- Arabic, Polish, Italian -- are used as languages to put things on the President's website?

MR. SNOW: John, that goes on the bupkis list. I don't know. Oh, by the way, b-u-p-k-I-s. We have to correct that, too. (Laughter.)

Apparently, there's quite a lot that Snow believes belongs on that "bupkis" list. He seems to be quite clueless.