gone sk8in'

2007 Women's Flat Track Derby Association Championship Tournament

Lead Jammer will be live blogging the tournament and first round bout previews can be found over at the Derby News Network.

friday reads

Naomi Wolf - Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet?

In little noticed news, Blackwater, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc were recently awarded a collective $15 billion — yes, billion — from the Pentagon to conduct global counter-narcotics operations. This means that Blackwater can be deployed to engage with citizens on a whole new level of intimacy anywhere around the world — including here at home. What is scarier than scary is that Blackwater’s overall plans are to do more and more of its armed and dangerous ‘security’ operations on U.S. soil.

Glenn Greenwald: The U.S. military's role in preventing the bombing of Iran


Burmese troops today broke up street gatherings, sealed off Buddhist monasteries and shut down internet connections, in an attempt to snuff out the most serious protests against the country's military dictatorship in two decades.


Jena 6 defendant released on bail.


Digby wonders if The Village has run out of smelling salts.


Paul Krugman

Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

William Rivers Pitt: Dan Rather's Magnum Opus

thursday reads

Burmese authorities again opened fire on anti-government protesters today after raiding monasteries and rounding up hundreds of monks overnight in an attempt to crush the demonstrations.


Ohio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting

Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.

Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as ``vote caging,'' which the GOP attempted in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility challenges

Juan Cole: Transcript Reveals Impeachable Offenses by Bush Re: Iraq War


Iraq War: Love and Personal Loss [Photo Slideshow]


David Swanson: Observing Our Government Through Blackwater


It's no surprise that politicians are rarely conversant with the limits on their legislating found in the U.S. Constitution. But it is worth noting when federal judges have actually read the First Amendment and strike down a law accordingly.


The Chicago Tribune spotlights the Windy City Rollers as they prepare to take on the Texas Rollergirls this weekend at the 2007 Women's Flat Track Derby Association Championship Tournament.