Brutal Hugs is a blog you should be reading. Seems a bit left but without all that conspiracy stuff that makes a lot of lefties look, well, insane.

The gang at Brutal Hugs classified me as a lefty on their blogroll. I guess they’ve not been reading long.

Knoxville expected to not really notice the difference. The KNS is all about sucking up to the Haslams. It’s almost embarassing. Bill Haslam and the KNS should really get a room.

Looks like Haslam is all set to go four terms with the same old good ol’ boy politics of his predecessor. Nothing new to see here, keep it moving.

This guy really doesn’t like John Lott, which is not necessarily bad. Lott’s credibility issues have essentially damaged any real positive impact his research may have had on the gun debate. It’s a pity Lott and I are on the same side.

He’s not as bad as Bellisiles (who Tim is hard on as well) but when comparing fraud with sloppiness, no one really wins. Tim is right, Lott is on Lott’s side.

After all, we all know that those drugs support terrorism commercials were a bunch of evil Republican nonsense designed to scare children:

A U.S. Navy ship operating in the Persian Gulf has captured millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs aboard a smuggling boat that authorities said was linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden.

A boarding team from the USS Decatur, a guided-missile destroyer, discovered nearly two tons of narcotics with a street value of $8 million to $10 million aboard a 40-foot dhow that was intercepted Monday, the U.S. Central Command announced today.

I lived for a while in Hell err New Jersey (which is why I refer to it as Hell err New Jersey) but I am from Tennessee. A coworker of mine is from New York and now lives in Tennessee. She’s going through that transplanted yankee thing even after ten years of living here. I tried to tell her that no matter how hard she tried or how long she lived here, she’d always be a transplanted yankee.

We were talking about stuff and somehow got on the subject of racism and geographical region. This is all anecdotal, of course, but I don’t care. We both (based on our experiences living in the north east and the south east) concluded the same thing. In the north, we both observed more racism. And by more, we both meant that we met more individuals who were racist. In the south, while we met fewer racists, the racists we did meet were more racist than the racists in the north, i.e., in the north, people seemed annoyed by people of other races and had names for them but southern racists wanted to hurt people.

We felt as though in the north racism was kept more of a secret attributable to lots of people. And in the south, it’s no secret (heck, we still read about the occasional cross burning here) but there’s less of it.

I found it interesting and thought I’d share it.

Eew!

I just realized that Jeff is a pit bull guy. I knew Eric was as well.

I thought I was the only dog blogger. Good. My dog is actually an American Bulldog, not a pit bull. But they have similar lineage. An American Pit Bull Terrier is supposedly a cross between an American Bulldog and a Bull Terrier.

Update: Jeff says e-Claire is too. I sense another blog alliance coming!

Update 2: CJ does too. Well, half a bully.

ABC News:

In the past 48 hours, there has been an increase in terrorist threats to a number of cities in the U.S., including New York City, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., ABCNEWS has learned.

Threat information is coming from intelligence intercepts, interrogation of recent detainees and other methods of intelligence sources say. Intelligence and law enforcement officials are currently evaluating the threat information and will determine how to respond within the next few days.

Sources say the threat to New York City involves a suicide bomber, possibly a female, but no specific target has been identified. Intelligence sources are still evaluating the credibility of this threat.

Via Kathy.

You cannot use the phrases tax avoidance and tax evasion interchangeably. Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is not. A rather important difference.

The lengths people will go to in order to make life easier for their beloved pets is astounding.

Barry responds to his critics (he’s bloggered scroll down to Vilification and Clarification).

Honestly, blaming an object I can’t buy. By his logic, we shouldn’t drive, possess household cleaners, have bathtubs, cross the street, etc.

James responds to a reader’s request for advice.

Apparently, the south comprises the largest percentage of US population:

The South now accounts for 36 percent of the nation’s total population, the numbers show, with the West comprising 23 percent, the Midwest 22 percent and the Northeast 19 percent.

I actually find that surprising. I thought it would be the north east.

No, not the facts of life, the TN GOP’s agenda:

Among the proposals: allowing concealed weapons permit-holders to take their guns into bars, as long as they don’t drink; mandatory felony charges for methamphetamine users; and government funding for faith-based efforts to treat those drug abusers.

Oh, and a ban on gay marriage and domestic partnerships.

The paper of making up the record:

A classified Bush administration report has found that the largest counterterrorism exercise conducted by the federal government since the Sept. 11 attacks was marred by communications problems, serious shortages of medical supplies and hospital rooms and confusion over where the residue of a radiological attack would spread, administration officials said on Thursday.

The five-day exercise last May in Chicago and Seattle, known as Topoff 2, tested the response of federal agencies and local governments to nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks using biological agents and a so-called dirty bomb, a crude radiological device.

Administration officials said they were disturbed by the report’s suggestion that a continuing lack of preparedness by federal and local governments would result in unnecessary deaths in the event of a major terrorist attack. But they insisted that many of the communications and logistical problems identified in the exercise had been corrected in the seven months since the $16 million exercise was conducted.

So, how many billions on Homeland Security? Plus $16M for the test and it’s still a bit buggy.

Tim Lambert writes a critique of the John Lott article that I linked to here.

It appears to me that Mr. Lambert is guilty of the same sleight of hand he’s accusing Lott of. Master of None has more.

Gun shot deaths do not always equal murder.

Some new folks on the blogroll:

damnum absque cum injuria – Screw it, I’ll call him Jeff, God of Biscuits*.

North Georgia Dogma – North Georgia is close enough to Tennessee for me.

Both worth the read!

* bonus if you know the reference!

Via Tom comes this:

President Bush (news – web sites) does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision could force Padilla, held in a so-called “dirty bomb” plot, to be tried in civilian courts.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news – web sites) said Padilla’s detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

Guiness has fewer carbs than other lighter beers.

Seems we’re always in the news for something and we appreciate it. Michael Silence writes on the effects of Iraqi bloggers. He quotes the big guy and Reverend Artillery.

Manish lists a CBS news poll of Democrat contenders. Al Sharpton is leading Kerry, Edwards, and Kucinich. And is trailing Gephardt by 1%.

A 104 year old man became a US citizen at a local hospital. Welcome aboard.

So, O’Reilly (always good for stating the internet is bad) says that the Drudge Report is bad for democracy.

If you have a website, you’re crazy and a threat to democracy.

Dog saves owner:

A man about to be shot by an intruder was saved when his dog jumped in and took the bullet for him, authorities said. The animal later died from its wound.

The shooting occurred early Monday when the 29-year-old man, who police would not identify, heard someone knock on a rear door at his Millville home. When he opened it, he saw two men, and one of them pulled out a shotgun.

As the homeowner dived to the floor to escape the gunman, authorities said the dog jumped between them and was shot one time before the two men fled. The dog’s owner was not injured.

The shooting was drug related, authorities said, but further details about the dog and the weapon used were not available. The two men remained at large early Wednesday.

Melving Spaulding will not be charged with attempted murder.

So, after Halliburton is accused of overcharging millions of dollars to the government, you’d expect some discretion in dealing with them? You’d be wrong. Instead, we give them another $222M no-bid contract.

Oh my!

Via Kevin comes this report:

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

“This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell it right,” said Thomas Kean.

“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not something that had to happen.”

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

“There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed,” Kean said.

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president’s top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.

In hindsight, anything is preventable so I don’t place too much validity in this report and its attempts at blaming someone other than a few insane zealots. This will be trotted out as some sort of failure of the administration (which it’s not) rather than as a failure of security people. Of course, if the people who were grossly negligent (which is the implication) they should fired and sued.

Chris was nice enough to give me a copy of his homemade news aggregator. It’s installed and you can access it here.

I’ve added some of my blogroll and news feeds that actually have RSS feeds to it (I was surprised at the number of folks who don’t). They’re not all there yet. It takes time to set up but it will be worth it. And if you don’t have a feed, you need to get one, it’s the future. I was actually surprised how many sites don’t have them. It makes it so easy to read your favorite sites in one place. You folks on Moveable Type have them at yoururl.com/index.xml. For reference, mine can be accessed here.

Sure, it’s a violation of civil liberties but I can’t help but find this funny.

Via Rodger.

Update: Alternate title could have been White man beaten by policeman and nobody cares.

The website that listed the last meals of Texas death row inmates (which I blogged here) has removed the last meals from the website:

The final meals of executed prisoners are off the menu on the Texas prison system’s Internet site.

Texas, which far and away leads all U.S. states in executions since a national death penalty ban was lifted in 1976, has long listed details of the meals on the prison system’s Web site, www.tdcj.state.tx.us.

But Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said they were removed last week during a redesign of the site.

“We had some complaints from people in both the U.S. and abroad that it might be in poor taste to distribute that information on the Web site,” she said.

The information about last meals will still be made available to reporters covering executions.