The Nightowl Newswrap - a roundup of news you might have missed

This we want to see! If Lieberman does make an appearance at the republican convention next month, a group of Connecticut Democrats plan to greet him with a gigantic (30 ft.) inflatable rat.


Now they want the challenges kept secret In a scant-noticed brief filed with the FISA court near the close of business on Tuesday, the DoJ audaciously requests that any review of the warrantless wiretapping law passed earlier this year by Congress be kept secret. It was also requested that the court refuse to accept legal briefs from anyone other than the Justice Department itself.


Obama promises to review aWol's executive orders On Tuesday, Barack Obama told a group of House Democrats that he would order his Attorney General to pore over bu$h's executive orders and expunge any that "trample on liberty," according to members who were in attendance.


The big winners in Ted Stevens indictment? Charities! Poltroons who received contributions from Ted Stevens' "Northern Lights PAC" are tripping over themselves in a rush to get rid of the money, and charities are the beneficiaries.




FDA finds another contaminated pepper Food-safety investigators announced to a House of Representatives subcommittee that they'd found salmonella traces on serrano peppers and irrigation water at a ranch in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. "Now we have a smoking gun, it appears," Dr. Lonnie King of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the House Horticulture and Organic Agriculture Subcommittee.


'Twas worthy of 'Reefer Madness' Coke fiends and stoners have never been "in cahoots" - for one thing there is no legitimate movement afoot to legalize the destructive and deadly blow - but it strikes us more than a little bit absurd that the cocaine-addled weasel's DEA went to the trouble to crash and hijack a press conference by Barney Frank, who favors decriminalization, even though everyone knows that the legislation offered by Frank is not going to move forward until these twitchy fuckers are out of office.


Where we come from, they call this "suborning perjury" Attorneys for State Farm insurance company made the suggestion in a sworn deposition that former GOP Senator Trent Lott encouraged witnesses to give false information in a Hurricane Katrina lawsuit, according to court records. The implication was made last week during a deposition with Lott's nephew, Zach Scruggs, who represented the former Mississippi Republican senator after his Pascagoula home was destroyed by the 2005 storm. Zach Scruggs is the son and law partner of disgraced former attorney Richard ''Dickie'' Scruggs, Lott's brother-in-law...''Has it been your custom and habit in prosecuting litigation to have Senator Lott contact and encourage witnesses to give false information?'' State Farm Fire & Casualty Cos. attorney Jim Robie asked, according to a transcript of the deposition...''I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights in response to that question,'' Zach Scruggs responded.


Where we come from, they call this sort of blatant bullshit a lie Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman went on Fox News today to stump for off-shore drilling, but he took it over the line when he said that it is so safe that no oil spilled as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That claim is bullshit. The truth is, the two hurricanes caused 124 offshore spills for a total of 743,700 gallons, including six spills of 42,000 gallons or greater.


Olmert is outta there Beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will step down once his Kadima party elects a new leader.


An obscure, overlooked email is getting some scrutiny On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”...“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.


Huh. "W" Doesn't stand for "Women" after all! If the Congress has the audacity to send the Paycheck Fairness Act to his desk, aWol says he will veto it.


Former McCain adviser John Weaver calls McCain's "Celebrity" ad "childish" For months, Weaver has held his tongue in check as McCain's campaign has spiraled into surreal territory, but with todays release of the "Celebrity" ad, he has had all he can stand. He called the ad "childish" and had this to say about McCain himself: "John's been a celebrity ever since he was shot down," Weaver said. "Whatever that means. And I recall Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush going overseas and all those waving American flags." The strategy of driving up Obama's negatives "reduces McCain on the stage," Weaver said..."For McCain to win in such troubled times, he needs to begin telling the American people how he intends to lead us. That McCain exists. He can inspire the country to greatness."...He added: "There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's. For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."


No fanfare, and no Democrats Bush signed the mortgage relief act into law today, but he did so unceremoniously, and out of public view. Maybe because until recently he was threatening a veto?