Krugman’s colum has both words, though not in that order – PEAK and OIL

Today’s reason: secrecy can bite you in the ass.

We’ve discussed the current administration’s love(, love, love) of secrecy and now they’re getting in trouble for it.

In a report made public Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said efforts to keep Richard Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, from giving Democratic lawmakers his projections of the bill’s cost – $100 billion more than the president and other officials were acknowledging – probably violated federal law.

Recent estimates set the bill’s cost at more than $500 billion.

About a bike trip across the Low Countries to go see the Liege-Bastigone-Liege bike race.

Bloggers covering the DNC/GOP conventions

I was kicking this idea around while running the other day – someone beat me to filing the paperwork. What with being halfway between both NYC and Beantown (But in local feeling much closer to Boston), I could probably talk MJWJ (Darling Wife) into getting the kitchen pass to go pick up the vibe.

Bears thought.

Says the San Francisco Chronicle

Some might argue that Rumsfeld is responsible for everything that happens under his watch. Nonsense — Rumsfeld is responsible for things that he allows to happen. But as the Wall Street Journal editorial page reported Thursday, Rumsfeld’s Pentagon swiftly investigated and set out to prosecute U. S. troops who mistreated Iraqi detainees. There was no cover-up. There was an investigation months before “60 Minutes II” reported these abuses.

There’s more – the true agenda is revealed: Do I suspect that administration critics want Bush to dump Rumsfeld because they think it would begin a spiral of self-recrimination? Mais oui. That’s why recent press conferences have featured reporters asking Bush to please-pretty-please catalog his many mistakes. … (PotUS) realizes that the drums beating the loudest for Rumsfeld’s head want it as a campaign trophy. And the blame that falls first on Rumsfeld would then spill over onto Bush.

Maybe it’s because the EU helped hide the evidience

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council in a letter that U.N. satellite photos have detected “the extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings” from sites that had been subject to U.N. monitoring before the U.S.-led war against Iraq. …

But U.N. and European officials confirmed that IAEA inspectors traveled to Jewometaal’s scrap yard (in Rotterdam) to run tests on the yellowcake. The search turned up missile engines and vessels used in fermentation processes that were subject to U.N. monitoring.

Turns out that his recent publicity stunt, claiming that Mike Eisner (the pig who canned Gregggg Easterbrook) was not going to distribute Moore’s new propoganda film, Farenheit 911, as a favor to Jeb Bush and the GOP, is a complete fabrication

(The admission that Moore knew Disney wasn’t going to distribute the film a year ago) lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack on the Bush administration and its handling of national security since the attacks of 11 September 2001. … Moore told CNN that Disney had “signed a contract to distribute this [film]” but got cold feet. But Disney executives insists there was never any contract. And a source close to Miramax said that the only deal there was for financing, not for distribution.

At least he rescued the POW’s in First Blood, Part II.

At least that’s what Senator Kerry must have been thinking when he ran a committee nominally to settle POW/MIA affairs, but functionally dedicated to restoring diplomatic and trade relations with Vietnam. The meat of the complaint’s below the “fold”.

This was in the 1990’s. This was on the floor of the Senate. This was done by a sitting Senator. Is it now OK to question Kerry’s committment to our troops through his abandonment of those he served with, and the crass appeasement of those who kept them captive in gross violation of the Geneva Convention and international law?