"President Bush won congressional approval for his proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security as the Senate last night joined the House in launching the largest government reorganization since the Defense Department was created in 1947."

At least Senators Paul Sarbanes and Carl Levin showed some spine and integrity.

10:10:46 PM    

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 Court Overturns Limits on Wiretaps to Combat Terror [New York Times: Politics]

10:02:55 PM    


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 Haggis, the Food of Poets (Well, One Scottish Poet) [New York Times: International News]  Now you can even get vegetarian versions and haggis made from halal meat slaughtered under conditions that allow Muslims to eat it.  The article was sparked by a recent attempt of the English to regulate the haggis out of existence.

10:02:35 PM    


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Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/17/2002 | Files reveal how FBI hounded chess king 

"Regina Fischer spoke eight languages. She was brilliant but paranoid, a psychiatrist determined in 1943.

"Then again, she really was being followed.

"The FBI went so far as to read case notes compiled by the social workers Regina Fischer visited as a struggling single mother who moved from state to state. During her pregnancy, she considered putting her baby up for adoption.

"Did she hear FBI footsteps? "Absolutely," said her son-in-law Russell Targ, now a physicist in Palo Alto, Calif. "They made it hard for her to keep a job."

"She raised Bobby in Brooklyn. They were poor; in a 1952 letter, she said she couldn't afford to patch his torn shoes.

"The FBI began watching her and her circle in the 1940s. The last entry in her file is in 1973: Agents noted her opposition to the Vietnam War."

What an irony that this story should break on the same day that the Courts ruled the Justice Department may engage in expanded wiretaps and the Senate passed a bill creating the mammoth, Orwellian-sounding Homeland Security Department.

10:01:20 PM    

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Yahoo! News - Files reveal FBI feared chess prodigy Bobby Fischer was recruited by Soviets 

"PHILADELPHIA - Bobby Fischer, the eccentric chess prodigy who dueled Soviet grand masters and won a world title in 1972, was investigated by FBI (news - web sites) agents who suspected his mother was a communist spy, according to the bureau's records."

Even paranoids have enemies.  One can only wonder what responsibility the FBI bears for the world's greatest chess player's descent into lunacy.  One would have thought a small part, but the suggestion seems less far-fetched today than it did yesterday.

9:52:35 PM    

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