Wonkette

While the Blame America First crowd erroneously predicted Cheney would pull another 9/11 on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, we figured it would be a lot easier to do a nostalgic anthrax freakout before the midterms. (Guess what also happened five years ago this month?)

Really, what does it take? Some envelopes, stamps, a few addresses you get off some websites, and some of that scary anthrax from the anthrax factory up the road at Maryland’s Fort Detrick– or just use lousy cocaine or dishwashing detergent or whatever.

It has begun. Come get your Cipro after the jump.

MORE »

• As the clock ticks towards the break for elections, “the most do-nothing Congress in the history of our country” continues to be just that. [NYT, WP]

• Army chief asks for $40 million increase in funding to cover massive shortages in manpower and equipment. [LAT, NYT]
• Comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate document provoking debate on Iraq policy, origin of terrorist fervor. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• FBI still investigating anthrax attacks, learning lots of about science but not arresting anybody, yet. [WP]
• Iraq to stay one country til a least 2008, anybody’s guess after that. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Bill Clinton appears on Fox News, blasts host, wags finger. [WP]
• Rick Santorum still convinced he has a chance to hold his Senate seat. [NYT]

Just as Sept. 12 was the day the White House actually got it together, some of the iconic Sept. 11 moments happened in the days and weeks after the attacks. Here are some memories we refuse to surrender:

* A Nation Challenged That was the first time we laughed after 9/11. A Nation Challenged? Good job maintaining that NYT air of comical pomposity under tremendous pressure!

* Somber Wagnerian dirges on CNN Just to add to the “Empire Strikes Back” vibe, all the cable-news stations switched to this outrageous “Imperial March”-style music, which was a hell of a lot more foreboding than we knew. When you were drunk enough — which was always, remember that? — you could almost see Darth Vader walking out of the Ground Zero smoke.

MORE »

Ah, state legislatures! Democracy’s petri dish! Where political parties try out new techniques and positions to see what might win votes on a national level. If events in Pennsylvania are any indication, we may all soon be seeing threatening phone calls, fake accusations of fake terrorism, and egregious abuse of taxpayer-funded photocopiers, followed by arrests and humiliation. And isn’t that something we can all get behind?

Former state Rep. Jeff Habay was handcuffed and taken to the Allegheny County Jail yesterday after a judge revoked his bond. “Mr. Habay continues to avoid what he should be doing, which is serving his sentence,” Judge [Jeffrey A.] Manning said.

Wacky antics in greater Pittsburgh, after the jump.

MORE »

A federal appeals court greenlighted former Army scientist Stephen Hatfill to proceed with his libel action against New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof yesterday. Kristof published a series of 2002 columns accusing the FBI of dragging its feet in investigating Hatfill as a full-blown suspect in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. You know, it was also Kristof who was the first person who reported on Joe Wilson’s charge that the Bush administration’s Niger yellow-cake cause for invading Iraq was bogus, thereby setting in motion the inadvertent chain of events landing Judy Miller in jail between extended bouts in Scooter Libby’s (merely metaphorical, we’re sure) lap. We’re not advancing an argument here, just noting an odd congruence. But we will note that if we were Times senior management, we’d closely heed Kristof’s veiled appeal in today’s Editor and Publisher piece on the TimesSelect fiasco: MORE »