[…]

While nothing should shock us about the Bush administration anymore, this is shocking.

No wonder the Bush people can’t run the country and can’t come up with a plan for the war. They can’t even figure out their own e-mail system (of course, they knew darn well what they were doing, they were destroying the evidence). They even knew it was a problem, but didn’t bother to fix it. You know that a lot of those missing e-mails are things they don’t want us to ever see. What a coincidence that they started losing those e-mails in March of 2003, right when the Iraq war was starting.

And surprise surprise, some emails were mysteriously deleted.

They learned about questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption. Most disturbing, according to people close to the process, was Kerik’s friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime. The businessman had told federal authorities that Kerik received gifts, including $165,000 in apartment renovations, from a New Jersey family with alleged Mafia ties.

Alarmed about the raft of allegations, several White House aides tried to raise red flags. But the normal investigation process was short-circuited, the sources said. Bush’s top lawyer, Alberto R. Gonzales, took charge of the vetting, repeatedly grilling Kerik about the issues that had been raised. In the end, despite the concerns, the White House moved forward with his nomination — only to have it collapse a week later.

The Ford (Charts) pay package for Mulally comes on top of the $7.4 million that aerospace company Boeing (Charts) had previously reported paying him for his eight months running that company’s commercial aircraft unit before he made the move to Ford at the beginning of September.

Mulally’s pay package at Ford included a $7.5 million hiring bonus, as well as $11 million that Ford described as an offset for forfeited performance and stock option awards at Boeing. In addition he received $55,469 for relocation costs and temporary housing.

Amnesty International said the often harsh and inhumane conditions at the camp were “pushing people to the edge”.

It called for the facility to be closed and for plans for “unfair” military commission trials to be abandoned.

Many of the 385 inmates have been held for five years or more, unable to mount a legal challenge to their detention.

“While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens… that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to comply with human rights,” the report said.

Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, chairman of the House Science Committee, was joined by Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina, chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee, and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who oversees the space program in the Senate, in a letter to the president calling for the resignation. The senior Democrats say information gleaned from the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency revealed a host of abuses by Cobb, including a cozy relationship with the very NASA officials he was charged with reviewing. Cobb is also accused of creating a hostile work environment.

You’d be wrong.

ABC reports that Iran could HaVE TEH NUKULAR BOM in 2009!!!11!!1! Who says? “Sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade.” Well, then. I’m certainly persuaded.

On March 29, 2007, the Commerce Department posted a new administrative order governing “Public Communications.” This new order covers the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Commerce’s new order will become effective in 45 days and would repeal a more liberal “open science” policy adopted by NOAA on February 14, 2006.

Although couched in rhetoric about the need for “broad and open dissemination of research results [and] open exchange of scientific ideas,” the new order forbids agency scientists from communicating any relevant information, even if prepared and delivered on their own time as private citizens, which has not been approved by the official chain-of-command