Watch the skies… At FDL, of course (though, as Eschaton says, no direct links so their servers don’t crash).

UPDATE Man, I’m watching FDL and imagining what the server usage graphs are looking like. The admin is shutting down feature after feature just to bring us the one or two words of the verdict… The JPGs just went… Now it’s down… Now up… Atrios is live-blogging….

UPDATE (Cf. Amos 5:24).

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Ford pardoning Nixon was worse than a deal; it was a favor for a friend. Another emmbargoed scoop from court biographer “staff writer” Bob Woodward:

Months before Richard M. Nixon set a relatively unknown Michigan congressman named Gerald R. Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called himself the embattled president’s “only real friend,” to get him out of trouble.

“Anytime you want me to do anything, under any circumstances, you give me a call, Mr. President,” [Ford] told Nixon during that May 1, 1973, conversation.

World-class teabagging! So, why did Ford pardon Nixon?  Read more 

GQ:

So if you decide to run, do you think we would see the Al Gore from the movie? Or the Al Gore from 2000?
[GORE] Well, I don’t plan to run. I don’t plan to run. And I don’t expect to run. … I’m not making plans to run again.

But you’re not ruling it out?
Uh… no. [smiles]

Excellent! And here’s the man elected President in 2000 on that word we want to keep hearing and using:  Read more 

Those Republicans. All class.  Read more 

Republican little children. Leading us straight into an Iraqi qWagmire, at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, with nothing to show for it but tons of Republican methane.

These are the consequences of unchecked Republican rule in Iraq:

Many of those chosen by [Pentagon personnel screener and political appointee Jim] O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience.

[O’Bierne] and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.

To recruit the people he wanted, O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

I guess this must be what Bush means by “civilization.” Or maybe “vision.” Who knows, with these people?  Read more