The Nightowl Newswrap

Reduced bail for a war profiteer Just days after one convicted CEO faked his own death and attempted to flee from justice, a New York appellate court judge has reduced the bond requirements for a war profiteer CEO David Brooks, who stands accused of plundering his company and moving his ill-gotten gains out of the country. The company he drove into the ground, DHB Industries, sold bulletproof vests to the military. [And we wrote about it back in April] Even though Judge Joanna Seybert deemed Brooks a "danger to the community" based on reports of past threats he allegedly made, she agreed to loosen his home confinement. Her new order allows Brooks to leave his Manhattan home unescorted between the hours of 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. After her ruling, he can now leave his home for medical visits, business meetings, religious services and to meet with his lawyers. Seybert said Brooks must still wear an electronic monitoring device. Previously, Brooks was restricted to house arrest, with guards posted at his home 24 hours a day. He has pleaded not guilty and secured his $400 million bail with $48 million.


As McClellan's testimony before Congress drawn near, GOP insiders are on the verge of panic, fearing what he might reveal about not just the act of treason committed by the outing of Valerie Plame, but also about the inner workings of the Rove/Cheney/Bush White House and the boycott on honesty by the idiot in the oval in making the case to go to war in Iraq. White House officials are attempting a headfake - "pay no attention to the man behind the podium - look! over there! a deadlocked congress!" Well, Okay, if that is how the obstructionist bastards want to play it...


The time to act was five minutes after the convention doors opened, not mid week after a public outcry. Last weekend at the Texas GOP convention, attendees had the chance to purchase buttons that read "If Obama is president...will we still call it the White House?" After the public got wind of it and took exception to the overt hateful bigotry, the Texas republican party said it plans to “donate the $1,500 rent it collected from the vendor to Midwestern flood victims.” After the fact, it's too little, too late. The bigotry and desperation that emanates off the republican party positively reeks.


Since when does der Chimpenfuhrer care what Congress thinks? In a bizarre twist today the idiot in the oval came out in favor of off-shore drilling, but he won't issue an executive order overturning President Clinton's executive order prohibiting drilling on the outer continental shelf. Instead he insisted on playing politics with the issue by insisting that Congress be the initiators of the bad idea that is likely to go nowhere. Bush talked tough, like drunken frat bouys are wont to do, shrieking that "our nation must produce more oil, and we must start now." He said that expanding drilling offshore could produce enough oil to "match America's current oil production for 10 years" - In ten years. But he left that part off.



Question: Who the hell is Larry Sinclair? It's multiple choice:

A) A felon with a rap sheet that goes back 27 years and at least one outstanding arrest warrant.
B) One of the lunatics that appear on the fringes of every presidential campaign, claiming that he and he alone knows the real truth about a candidate who has sucked everyone in, and although he hates to be in the spotlight, he must come forward and tell all to save the country he loves.
C) A known liar who rented space at the National Press Club to try to give a patina of credibility to his delusional fantasy about illicit behavior committed with Obama in 1999.
D) All of the above

The answer is D.

Sinclair is the lunatic making all sorts of unsubstantiated allegations and hopefully he will go away after todays little psychodrama - emphasis on psycho - is finished playing out.


And to think there is still four and a half months of this crap Nervous about perceptions, two campaign volunteers in two separate incidents told two Islamic women who wear headscarves that they could not appear on stage behind the candidate before a rally in Detroit on Monday. "I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to," Smith quotes one of the two women, Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer, as saying. "The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters." One of the volunteers gave an explicitly political reason, while another made some mealy-mouthed excuse about "no headware at all" like a Nun would be told to remove HER wimple or have a seat in the audience!

Tibet back in the news: More than 1,000 protesters detained during anti-government riots in Tibet three months ago have not been accounted for, a human rights group said Wednesday. Amnesty International said a quarter of about 4,000 people detained by police during the riots in Tibet in March are unaccounted for. The others have been either released or placed under formal arrest. The Olympic torch will pass through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on Saturday, and Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, said the event should draw attention to the missing and those in prison. "There is very little information coming out of Tibet, but the information we have paints a dire picture of arbitrary detentions and abuse of detainees," he said. "With the torch relay about to enter Tibetan areas, this should be an opportunity to shine some light on the situation there."

Did you look out back? Under the tarp? Four U.S. military helicopter engines worth a combined $13.2 million are missing in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the American military said Wednesday. The engines were being shipped over land from the main U.S. base at Bagram and were destined for Fort Bragg, N.C., where the 82nd Airborne is based, said U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green. "The components went missing en route to port — the exact location is undetermined," Nielson-Green said. The parts went missing sometime before the 101st Airborne arrived to replace the 82nd in early April, she said. They were being shipped by a Pakistani trucking company.

Update on the progress of the Midwest flooding: Floodwaters breached two levees in western Illinois on Wednesday and threatened more Mississippi River towns in Missouri, offering little reprieve for the Midwest where much of eastern Iowa was inundated by some of the worst flooding that state has seen in years. The breaches flooded farmland near the hamlet of Meyer, Ill. and south of there in the Indian Graves levee district, Adams County Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Julie Shepard said.

Oh, come on! There are men who take off their shirts wherever possible, and there are men who prefer to keep their shirts on, even at the beach. Each group finds the other faintly ridiculous. And each has taken sides in a contest as timeless as fourth-grade dodgeball. That's right, fellas: It's Shirts against Skins. You rarely hear much from either squad, but a few of the Skins were fuming recently when they attended a Nationals game and were told by ballpark employees that they needed to put on their shirts. "We bought a few beers for $7.50 each, and kicked back to enjoy the game," wrote Benjamin Correia, who sounds like a very dedicated Skin in his letter to the editor published by The Washington Post. "Around the third inning, a ballpark employee informed me and a friend that we would have to put our shirts back on." It turns out, this has been deemed a type of "indecent exposure" by Nationals management. "We pointed out the many other shirtless men," Correia continued, "and she assured us she was getting to them as well. We were dumbstruck."

We could have told you there was a shortage of smart people...The U.S. military is shifting $32 million away from its premiere research agency -- because that agency, Darpa, can't find enough qualified people to run its cutting-edge projects. A Pentagon "reprogramming action," obtained by DANGER ROOM, takes the cash from Darpa to "fund higher priorities within the Department" -- including "infrastructure to prevent IT security breaches." That money is available, the document adds, because the agency "continues to underexecute its Research, Development, Test and Evaluation programs." The document gives two reasons why: "first, several key program managers' positions are unfilled because there are few experts in advanced sciences and technology; and second, Darpa's approval process is delaying contract awards."