In Brasil!

As expected, I haven´t had much Internet access, but finally found a little cafe that charges in 15-minute increments. So in other words, this will have to be quick. It´s strange how different some things are -- take this Portuguese keyboard, for instance, with a super-short shift key and common characters in weird places -- and how much other things are the same.

Anyway, I´ll write more later...

The Bush recovery continues

Jobs growth remains weak

U.S. to launch 24/7 hunt for bin Laden

CNN.com - High-tech snooping for bin Laden: "U.S. forces searching for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan will soon implement high-tech surveillance tactics in the region, enabling them to monitor the area 24 hours a day, seven days a week, CNN has learned. "

Hey, I've got a question: why weren't we doing this already?

Saturday Samba

Andrea picked up my passport from San Francisco this morning, newly stamped with a Brazilian visa. We fly out Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, our cheap tickets take us through Chicago, so there's a lot of flying involved.

I'm excited to go, but I have two concerns: 1) Getting kidnapped. 2) Not having Internet access for two weeks. Andrea's sister has DSL, but it's an hour or so away from her parents' house, where we'll be staying.

I've downloaded a Portuguese-English dictionary for my Palm phone, stocked up on Claritan and sunscreen, so I'm all set. We'll take lot of pictures.

Enough said...

New U.S. Effort Steps Up Hunt for bin Laden: "Much of the timing now is driven by the weather: as winter snows melt, troops can navigate in the high mountain passes and trails where many Qaeda and Taliban members are believed to be hiding. When that moment arrived last year, many of the forces and American intelligence operatives now engaged in Afghanistan were tied up in the Iraq."

Scalia defends involvement in Cheney case

Scalia defends involvement in Cheney case

Scalia told a gathering at Amherst College on Tuesday night there was nothing improper about his accompanying Cheney to Louisiana last month to hunt ducks. The trip came three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Bush administration?s appeal in a case involving private meetings of Cheney?s energy task force.

?It did not involve a lawsuit against Dick Cheney as a private individual,? Scalia said in response to a question from the audience of about 600 people. ?This was a government issue. It?s acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That?s all I?m going to say for now. Quack, quack.?

Well, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...

If only this fad had died along with him

MSNBC - Diet doctor had heart disease

Diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins, who died last year after a fall in New York, had a history of heart disease and weighed 258 pounds at the time of his death, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Atkins' popular diet stresses people should eat high-protein meats and cheese over carbohydrates in order to lose weight.

He who makes the rules wins the game

What a surprise. It looks like George Bush's Iraqi intellegence commission will be a total whitewash.

More on the oh-so impartial Antonin Scalia

Scalia Was Cheney Hunt Trip Guest; Ethics Concern Grows

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.

The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney's bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.

Not good.

MSNBC - Mad cow's 'downer' status disputed

This could be a problem for Kerry in the general election

Green light for gay marriages in Mass.

At the least, it puts him in a tough spot. Edwards' "state's rights" approach might be a little easier for moderates to tolerate.

Nice, he even gets to pick the panel members

Bush to pick panel for WMD inquiry

A senior administration official said Monday that Bush will name the members of the commission. The official said the president had consulted some "appropriate" members of Congress about the appointments.

That way, he can make sure there won't be any conflicts of interest.

In other news, Richard Nixon will create a panel to investigate Watergate.

Capoeira

To force ourselves to get more exercise, Andrea and I took a Capoeira class today and will probably start going regularly. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art, but unlike Karate, invloves no actual fighting. It's more like gymnastics, really. Apparently, you're supposed to dance until your attacker leaves.

I thought I was going to die for the first half of the class and had to sit down to rest. So apparently, it's working.

Bush tries to pass the buck

MSNBC - Bush to order inquiry of Iraq intelligence lapses: "By setting up the investigation himself, Bush will have greater control over its membership and mandate. The senior White House official said it would be patterned after the Warren Commission, so named for its chairman Earl Warren, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, which led a 10-month investigation that concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy."

Good news! The beef industry won't be allowed to feed cows chicken crap anymore!

CNN.com - FDA: No more chicken waste for cows

Monday's measures go even further and include the following:

• Banning chicken waste, known in the industry as "poultry litter," from livestock feed. Poultry litter consists of bedding, spilled feed, feathers and fecal matter collected from where chickens live.

Keep in mind that these are the same rules Bush officials opposed just a few months ago.

Dick Cheney, are you listening?

Ex-Arms Hunter Kay Says No WMD Stockpiles in Iraq

Watergate II?

Infiltration of files seen as extensive: Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats

If nothing else, the story proves that Robert Novak is a tool.

In case you think Bush's "private savings plan" is a good substitute for Social Security...

Retirement Funds Hit by FAC Debacle

An FBI raid of FAC's office on El Toro Road turned up assets worth a bit more than 1% of the $813.9 million that Lewis' clients supposedly had accumulated. Lewis, known to his family, friends and clients as an investment genius, was nowhere to be found. As of late Friday, he was being sought by the FBI.

Among the cruel twists of the FAC debacle is that so many investors, like O'Hara, were gambling with their retirement funds. Many lost virtually everything. According to SEC filings and attorneys involved in the case, the victims include Lewis' computer technician, who mortgaged his house to invest with FAC, and the mother of Lewis' live-in companion, who handed over her entire $250,000 in retirement savings.

FAC's books listed 1,340 IRAs and Keough retirement accounts, according to analysis by Robb Evans & Associates, the court-appointed receiver in the case. That indicates that as many as about 40% of the 3,290 active investors lost at least some of their retirement savings.

Nope, no conflict of interest here

Cheney, Scalia socialized while Supreme Court considered case

"Scalia and Cheney, longtime friends, had dinner at a restaurant on Maryland's Eastern Shore in November, two months after the Bush administration asked the justices to overrule a lower court's decision requiring White House to identify task force members."

And yes, folks, Scalia participated in the 2000 Busg vs. Gore election case.

Happy MLK day, from George W. Bush.

Bush appoints Pickering to U.S. appeals court

You can read about Pickering's civil rights record here.