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A view from the inside. "George Bush isn't in control...the country's been hijacked," says Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Middle East specialist for the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy. She describes how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern were politically staffed," adding: "What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra look like amateur hour. . . it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam."

Linguist Noam Chomsky predicts that the Bush administration will "manufacture" a new threat to the American people in order to win the next election. "They have a card that they can play... terrify the population with some invented threat, and that is not very hard to do."

The FDA says meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat. Right now, the technology is too expensive for your butcher to sell much of the stuff, but when it becomes feasible, pray for a labeling law.

According to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity, "More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years... Those companies donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush—a little over $500,000—than to any other politician over the last dozen years."

Will Bush's outright lie about the "Mission Accomplished" banner be his undoing? Dave Lindorff writes: "As voters, we're willing to forget many things. We'll forget about the stealing of an election, about scandals like the doctoring of a report on global warming, even about the deliberate outing of a CIA agent. But we won't forget being taken for yokels with a cheap lie."

A draft of Minnesota's statewide public school standards in social studies has come under attack for its conservative bias. While the standards aim to "reflect the greatness of the country," according to Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke, the standards fail to include presidents Kennedy and Johnson while giving multiple mentions of Reagan and Eisenhower. Said Yecke, "I don't believe in the hate America agenda, and it would be inappropriate to have that agenda in our standards."

A young design guy and a 71-year old with tendonitis have teamed up to make some pretty cool t-shirts. Check out their limited-edition wares at sharpastoast.com.

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Pun intended. Here's a book I thought I'd never see: The Pop-Up Kama Sutra.