Outrage time

[tagryn]

* per Windsofchange.net, the ATF has requested 2,000 Leatherman tools for their agents engraved with the slogans "Asset Forfeiture" and "Always Think Forfeiture". Took me a little bit to figure out what this meant, but basically, its the ATF's way of reminding agents that any time they have someone under suspicion, if they can make an arrest the suspect's assets - home, car, possessions - become property of the ATF and help fund the agency. Think this isn't a corrupting influence when deciding what cases to pursue?

* David Kay, head of the Iraq Study Group, reveals that the German intelligence agency BND held back key intel on the Iraqi WMD program, specifically refusing to allow the CIA to speak to the key source ("Curveball") on the alleged Iraqi mobile bio weapons labs. The BND also apparently never bothered to vet "Curveball" for reliability.

Kay believes that without the dramatic Curveball data, the Congressional authorization for the war in Iraq may never have passed. It would have forced the Bush administration into a more limited set of options for dealing with Saddam Hussein, such as the kind of limited strikes that the Clinton administration used, which proved completely ineffectual. As Kay noted in his Iraq report, Saddam had prepared to restart his WMD programs as soon as the faltering sanctions completely collapsed anyway, and the Harmony documents show his support for al-Qaeda organizations like the Army of Mohammad in Bahrain and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s terrorist group that produced a large portion of AQ’s leadership.

* Finally, folks are starting to figure out that CFL fluorescent bulbs - the low-energy light bulbs were all supposed to be replacing our "regular" incandescents with - have their own problems, namely that they're contain mercury, which makes them dangerous if broken(check out the recommended cleanup procedure) and very difficult to dispose of when they stop working. I have one that recently broke, and I have no clue how to get rid of it. Can't throw it out, can't put it in the recycling either. John Dvorak put it well:

These things do save energy, but at what cost to the environment? They are loaded with mercury, which I can assure you will end up in landfills leaching mercury into the water and fish that the greeners so dearly love. Seldom will these lightbulbs be "disposed of properly." Exactly what does that mean, anyway? Who do you call? The mercury-removal company? To most people, "dispose of properly" means throw it in the recycle bin, where it will get busted up and contaminate everything in the bin.

Yet, there's now a law which phases out the sale of incandescents. Looks like mercury poisoning is about to stage a comeback.

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Pardon while I don my counter-sarcasm hat.

"Gosh, you'd think that in a free market, someone might come up with a way to make a profit by collecting and recycling the worn out bulbs so that the mercury wouldn't ever reach the environment!!"