James Moore - Banned from flights in the US.

James Moore is an Emmy-winning former television news correspondent and the co-author of the bestselling, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential and other books. He has been writing and reporting from Texas for the past 25 years on the rise of Rove and Bush and has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

The TSA has put him on a terrorist watch-list which effectively forbids him from flying anywhere in the country. Worse, he can't find out how he got on this list or how to get off of it. He doesn't appear to have any rights in this regard at all under the Patriot Act.. It's a very real form of government harassment by GOP loyalists which should absolutely not be tolerated, because if it is, it will surely spread and become commonplace. The democrats in congress should investigate this immediately and if they're given a load of 'state secret-can't tell you' bullshit, then they should make this a major campaign issue. This is a concrete example of abuse of authority and intimidation.


In Other news,

Ariel Sharon has had a massive stroke. He is not expected to survive, and if he does he will no longer be a presence in Isreali politics.

John Stewart will host the Academy Awards

12 of 13 coal miners in WV have perished.

Russia briefly turned off the gas to Ukraine, but Ukraine had some negotiating power because a pipeline traversed the country, supplying gas to Europe. I guess market energy prices are what being a soveriegn nation is all about.

There was a major, very unpopular transit strike in NYC. It had virtually no public support and was called off before Bloomberg fired them all. Memorable times.

The Abramoff-lobbyist scandal is exploding, as Jack is about to squeal to the Feds. Hmm..
I expect large parts of the press will work hard to turn this into a bipartisan event.
Unfortunately I think this kind of bribery is conmonplace and Abramoff was just the most brazen. Time will tell. It's bad press and an unfortunate curiousity that both he and Andy Fastow of Enron are practicing orthodox Jews.

Al Franken has moved his show to Minneappolis, Minnesota.
I expect he'll run for senate in 08.

Beloved actress Wendy Joe Sperber passed away last month. I hadn't seen the news.

The entire paper from the South Korean genetic engineers who had supposedly cloned customized stem-cells for disease treatment, possibly the largest scientific event of 2005 and a sure Nobel prize-winner, has been thrown out as fraud.
This guy surely must have known that other research teams all over the world would immediately try to duplicate their work and thus would quickly invalidate it with the backlash ruining their careers. This story has a touch of mental illness about it.

Gwyneth Paltrow is expecting her second child.

The evolution-in-the-classroom debate in Pennsylvania has ended, with the ID'ers being decisively rejected. What a shame - all they wanted was the freedom to repeatedly tell us their opinion until we break down and agree with them.

David Lee Roth is replacing Howard this week.
So far it's really bad - almost unlistenable.
Maybe he'll improve.