Nasa engineers are today investigating what appear to be two instances of debris falling from the first space shuttle to launch since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
Digby wonders why the bush assministration is pressuring credit card companies to double minnimum payments.
For the first time, a study has found an increase in brain-cancer deaths among Gulf War veterans who might have been exposed to the nerve agent Sarin by the destruction of Iraqi weapons in 1991.
More cowbell.
Light posting for the next week as I will be out of the country attending a conference here.
On the fifth day of the second special legislative session ordered by Gov. Rick Perry, neither the House nor the Senate took up the issues that prompted both extra sessions: tax and education changes.
The Goddess on An Evil Fraud.
Bob Herbert on what bush doesn't know.
Paul Krugamn on Toyota choosing Ontario over Alabama.
The Heretik announces that the White House Press Conference Room remodeling job is nearly complete.
Say hello to the upstart Boston Derby Dames.
Ugly Shayla has her "sleeping beauty" doll up for auction on eBay.
via Information Clearing House:
An English Plea For Peace With The American Colonies
My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say, you CANNOT conquer America.
What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and impotent-doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms! -Never! Never! Never!:
William Pitt - - November 18th 1777
