Brit report said Saddam was no threat, was ignored

“Downing Street is to come under fresh pressure this week to explain why an intelligence report, which said there was no proof that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat to the West, was suppressed.

MPs on Sunday said British Prime Minister Tony Blair and communications and strategy chief Alastair Campbell should be forced to appear before a committee of MPs to explain why the intelligence dossier produced last March was shelved.

The six-page report, produced by staff working for the Joint Intelligence Committee, said there was no evidence that Saddam posed a significantly greater threat to the West than in 1991.”

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Be scared Martha, be very scared

ImClone founder gets 7 years in prison

“ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal was sentenced Tuesday to seven years and three months in prison for an insider-trading scandal that ensnared his family and threatens Martha Stewart and her home decorating empire.”

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Gray Davis recall attempt gathering critical mass

“Amid signs the recall movement is gaining momentum, Democratic and Republican leaders are bracing for a political earthquake in the nation’s most populous state, one whose tremors could ripple all the way to the White House.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political situation so uncertain and with so many potentially bizarre outcomes,” said Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist here. “It’s a really strange, eerie thing.”

“Republican Congressman Darrell Issa has contributed another $200,000 to the campaign to recall Gray Davis, the Democrat he wants to replace as governor, according to records posted on the California secretary of state’s Web site Monday.

The latest check boosts Issa’s total commitment to the recall effort to $645,000. The money comes from Greene Properties Inc. of Vista, a company Issa and his wife own.”

If the recall election happens, “earthquake” would indeed be no understatement. Given that many candidates will run, and that whoever gets the most votes wins with no runoff election, then it is quite possible that someone could become governor with 15% of the vote. Among the candidates will probably be Arnold Schwarzenegger and Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate for California governor in 2002.

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CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida

“The debunking of the Bush administration’s pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.

The interrogation reports of two senior al-Qaida members, both in US custody, showed that the CIA had reason to doubt the allegations of a connection between Saddam’s regime and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.”

Congress reluctantly moves toward challenging Bush on WMD

“The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq andnew claims that evidence of the threat was manipulated are edging Congress toward a position many members had hoped to avoid: that of challenging a popular wartime president.

After voting President Bush broad powers to use force in Iraq, members on both sides of the aisle are now questioning whether the move to war was based on sound intelligence - or at least demanding a fuller accounting.”

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Bye bye Internet Explorer and Outlook. Hello Mozilla!

I’ve been using IE and Outlook for years because, despite the bugs and security holes, I though they had the best features.

But no more! The new Mozilla version 1.4 is demonstrably better. It’s faster, endlessly configurable, and comes with a virus free mail reader and has no gaping security holes requiring endless patches and downloads to fix.

The browser has many useful features such as a password manager, forms manager (no more typing your name and address every time a site asks for it), popup stopper, image manager ( you can block images not from the originating site), tabbed browsing, and lots more.

The mail reader imported virtually everything no problem from Outlook, which included several address books, dozens of mail folders, and about 60 mb of data.

This is open source. The code for the browser is avaialable to all. Anyone can tweak it to their liking. The best of the tweaks and changes are put into the next version. Mozilla is the platform used by Netscape, however Mozilla has way more features than Netscape and, because it is open source, it is continually evolving, and has an enthusiastic community supporting it and doing the programming.

Check it out! There are versions for Windows, OS X, and Linux, among others.

Mozilla home page

Download

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Makes our monster trucks look puny!

From Boing Boing

Extreme truckmodding from Japan

“Stunning gallery of extreme, mecha/Transformers-lookin’ truck-mods from Japan. I’ve never owned a car, and until I can drive one of these, I never will. Link“ 

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