Headlines

What ever happened to the fiscal conservative? The federal government will default on the national debt next month unless Congress raises its borrowing authority--now capped at an all-time high of $6.4 trillion. (As Hesiod blogs, Why is it that everything George W. Bush runs eventually goes bankrupt?) Still, Bush plows ahead with his campaign to sell tax cuts: he's one vote away from approving a $550 billion tax cut.

US fires on, kills more Iraqis:Two more Iraqis are killed and 14 injured as--just a day after American troops fired on a crowd of protesters killing 13--gunfire continues in Baghdad.

Hatemongers for Peace!The White House has nominated Daniel Pipes--often described as a "Muslim basher and Islamophobe" who has claimed that up to "15% of Muslims are potential killers" and that “Western...societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples...maintaining different standards of hygiene”--to the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Click here to learn more.

Dixie Chicks rise. You wouldn't guess it reading the anti-dissent harangues in the mainstream media about the Dixie Chicks, but this country band is still at the top of the charts (#3 on Billboard's country charts) and has sold out all but one of its 59-venue world tour. As Michael Moore, whose book "Stupid White Men" is still at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list after he made anti-Bush/anti-war statements at the Oscars, proves, we need not fear the free-speech "backlash."

Don't eat the lettuce. Two news studies have found rocket fuel residue in the nation's lettuce crops; the Bush administration's response: put a gag order on the EPA so they can't discuss it, and propose a bill in Congress "that would effectively exempt the Pentagon and defense industry from much of their potential liability for perchlorate cleanup."