'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Fannie, Freddie and You (nytimes.com)
While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are problematic institutions, they aren't responsible for the mess we're in.
Froma Harrop: What Americans Want in Immigration (creators.com)
Immigration is said to be a divisive issue, but it really isn't. Large majorities of Americans favor legal immigration, and large majorities oppose illegal immigration. But the failure to control the process has created a tiger that periodically pounces onto the national stage.
Garrison Keillor: At 96, the Wonder has plenty to say (chicagotribune.com)
I stopped by to visit an old friend in Chicago last Sunday. And by "old" I mean 96 years but with all his faculties intact, which makes him a natural wonder you could exhibit on the carnival circuit for two bucks a head, children under 10 admitted free with a parent: SEE MAN BORN ON DAY TITANIC WENT DOWN-HE TALKS, HE MAKES SENSE.
Greg Archer: The Story Thus Far... (advocate.com)
David Sedaris opens up about embarrassing hairs, gay marriage, and whether or not he's gay enough.
Dorothy Snarker: The importance of being a "Buffy" fan (afterellen.com)
I love it when I find another closet Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan in the most unexpected of places - like a colleague at work, an old high school friend or a cop who pulled you over for speeding and notices your Once More With Feeling soundtrack. (Not that that's ever happened to me.)
GAIL COLLINS: APPRECIATIONS; Buffy Rides Off Into the Sunset (nytimes.com; from 2003)
''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' which ended its seven-year run last night on UPN, was originally aimed at a teenage audience, then turned out to be for everybody. But it had a particular resonance if you happened to be a woman who grew up in the 1960's, ...
Joshua Holland: "John Cusack: Bypassing the Corporate Media" (alternet.org)
Cusack's anti-war polemic, War, Inc., continues to defy expectations, despite the traditional media's dismissive reception.
Stephanie Schroeder: The Lesbian Brokeback Mountain? (curvemag.com)
The plot of WKMK centers around Kiran Lohar, a Bollywood starlet promoting her latest film, A Himalayan Love Story in New York City. Three days before the film's premiere, Kiran (Chriselle Almeida) meets and falls for Karen (Kelli Holsopple), an out lesbian reporter chasing the story of a lifetime that could catapult her to international journalistic fame. What transpires next had been kept under wraps since before the filming ended. In fact, Holsopple didn't even know the ending the night before full shooting commenced.
Suzanne Corson: Donna Deitch Wins Highest Honor from Outfest (afterellen.com)
The director of Desert Hearts talks about her career achievement award, upcoming projects and working with Gloria Steinem.
Brian Juergens: "Set Visit: Cyndi Lauper Helps 'As the World Turns'" Celebrate Gay Pride (afterelton.com)
We talk to Van Hansis, Jake Silbermann, and Lauper about bringing "True Colors" to daytime.
Dirty witty things (music.guardian.co.uk)
We're all used to overtly obscene records and films being banned but, wonders David Stubbs, are we missing the many hidden meanings that are slipping through the net?
Is this it? (music.guardian.co.uk)
From Mama Cass' house - or was it Joni's? - to the inside of a Texan nick, David Crosby has seen it all. And he knows where all the flowers have gone.
Reader Suggestion
Renaissance Faire
Reader Comment
Caption Mixup
Hey you got the "Bernadette Peters, left, and Mary Tyler Moore" photo
IDs
reversed.... must have been a bad day. LOL
Pete
Thanks, Pete!
All fixed now.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Hot and more humid than comfortable.
Newspaper Unmasks
Banksy
Reclusive graffiti artist Banksy is a 34-year-old former pupil at Bristol Cathedral School called Robin Gunningham, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Banksy's distinctive cartoon-style spray can art is found all over the streets of London, Bristol and several other British cities.
But despite his massive popularity he has zealously guarded his anonymity, fuelling rumours and speculation about his true identity.
The Mail on Sunday tracked down a former neighbour of Mr Gunningham in Bristol who identified him in a photograph of a man believed to be Banksy.
Banksy
Bush's Brain Demands Special Treatment
Turd Blossom
Former White House adviser Karl Rove on Monday defended his defiance of a congressional subpoena, saying he's offered lawmakers other ways to question him about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department.
In five letters to the House Judiciary Committee, "my lawyer has offered for me to go up to visit with members of Congress, visit with the staff or respond to written questions without foreclosing any future action by Congress," Rove said.
Rove, now a Fox News contributor, was responding to questions from Television Critics Association members during a Fox News panel session.
Turd Blossom
Fuzzy Memories Hurt Probe
Pat Tillman
A "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials prevented congressional investigators from determining who was responsible for misinformation spread after the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a House committee said Monday.
Although military investigators determined within days that the onetime NFL player was killed by his own troops in Afghanistan following an enemy ambush, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in April 2007 that his goal was to discern the genesis of the misinformation. "Was it the result of incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy?" he said.
The panel acknowledged Monday it had fallen short of this goal. The committee received a flurry of White House e-mails sent as the Bush administration responded to Tillman's death, but no documents about friendly fire. The committee interviewed several top White House officials about the case, but "not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response," it said in its 48-page report.
The committee reported a similar lack of information relating to misinformation surrounding Pvt. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after she was badly injured and captured in a 2003 ambush. The committee examined how the story of the ambush of her convoy was changed into a tale of heroism on her part.
Pat Tillman
Splitsville
Silverman & Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman have broken up, their publicists said Monday. "Jimmy and Sarah have no further comment," Kimmel's spokesman Lewis Kay told The Associated Press, confirming the split that was first reported on Vanity Fair magazine's Web site.
Silverman's publicist, Amy Zvi, confirmed the breakup in an e-mail message to the AP. Zvi didn't immediately respond when asked for further details.
The pair dated for five years, and were one of Hollywood's funniest - and seemingly solid - couples.
Silverman & Kimmel
Auctioned For $24 Million
Death Row Records
Death Row Records, the hip-hop label that released seminal gangster rap albums by Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, has been auctioned for $24 million.
The New York-based Global Music Group Inc. said in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday that on June 24 it purchased Death Row, including its enviable back catalog and current artist contracts.
The purchase concluded the roller-coaster saga of one of hip-hop's most famous labels. Under owner Marion "Suge" Knight, Death Row sold tens of millions of albums in the heyday of early `90s rap - its artists often flashing the spoils of the high life in music videos - before collapsing in debt and mismanagement.
Death Row Records
Prosecutor Flagged
Terror Watch List
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled.
Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them.
Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists.
"It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying - despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year.
"I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it."
Terror Watch List
Skates On Libel Suit
New York Times
A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the dismissal of a libel lawsuit by former Army scientist Steven Hatfill against The New York Times Co. over a series of columns he said implicated him in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the newspaper over the lawsuit that claimed that columns by Nicholas Kristof published in 2002 defamed Hatfill and caused him emotional distress.
Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert who formerly worked at the Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick in Maryland, has denied involvement in the mailings of anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and infected 17 others in the month following the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks.
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, threw out the lawsuit. He ruled Hatfill, a public figure, had failed to show that the newspaper acted with malice by knowingly printing falsehoods or recklessly disregarding whether they were false.
New York Times
Blew Probation
Khloe Kardashian
Khloe Kardashian, the youngest daughter of the late defense attorney Robert Kardashian admitted violating her probation stemming from a 2007 drunken driving arrest during a July 3 court hearing, according to court records.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered Kardashian, who's featured on E! Entertainment Television's "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," to surrender to authorities on Friday and serve up to 30 days in jail.
Kardashian will also have to enroll in an alcohol treatment program - one of the terms of probation she failed to complete - within three weeks of her release. She will also remain on probation.
Khloe Kardashian
Bizarro World Nuremburg
Sleep Deprivation
A newly-released document suggests Osama bin Laden's former driver may have been subjected to 50 days of sleep deprivation at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, the prisoner's defense lawyers said on Monday.
Lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni in his late 30s, previously alleged Hamdan was beaten and abused. But they said sleep deprivation for 50 days, if proved, would be among the worst abuse he suffered at the hands of his American captors.
They also said the records indicated Hamdan and other prisoners at the remote detention camp in southeastern Cuba were visited by someone called "Alfred Hitchcock," apparently after the British master of psychological thriller films who died in 1980.
Their motions allege Hamdan was beaten in Afghanistan and subjected to "more sophisticated" abuse at Guantanamo including sexual humiliation, isolation, intimidation and deception.
Sleep Deprivation
Sight Damaged at Russian Laser Show
Ravers
Dozens of partygoers at an outdoor rave near Moscow last week have lost partial vision after a laser light show burned their retinas, Russian health officials said on Monday.
Moscow city health department officials confirmed 12 cases of laser-blindness at the Central Ophthalmological Clinic, and daily newspaper Kommersant said another 17 were registered at City Hospital 32 in the centre of the capital.
Attendees at the July 5 Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems, health officials told Reuters.
"They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80 percent, and regaining it is already impossible," Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.
Ravers
Breeding Earlier
Tasmanian Devils
The little devils just can't wait. Faced with an epidemic of cancer that cuts their lives short, Tasmanian devils have begun breeding at younger ages, according to researchers at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
"We could be seeing evolution occurring before our eyes. Watch this space!" says zoologist Menna Jones of the university.
Since 1996 a contagious form of cancer called devil facial tumor disease has been infecting these animals and is invariably fatal, causing death between the ages of 2 and 3.
In the past devils would live five to six years, breeding at ages two, three and four, but with the new disease, even females who breed at two may not live long enough to rear their first litter.
Jones, who has been studying the animals' life cycles since before the disease outbreak, noted that there has been a 16-fold increase in breeding at age one. She reports her findings in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tasmanian Devils
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