WSJ.com - Socialism in Reverse

"This week Robert Poole and other scholars at the Reason Foundation released the 20th Anniversary Edition of their annual global privatization report. It chronicles this sweeping economic trend that began in Margaret Thatcher's England, spread to the U.S. under Ronald Reagan, then to China and the former communist nations of Eastern Europe. A 2005 World Bank report also finds that, from 1990-2003, governments around the globe have generated $410 billion in privatization proceeds."

Capitol Hill Blue - Screwing the pooch

"With the help of 'Bill' and some other volunteers who held the intervention Monday that helped me see the light we've gone back through the databases and removed quotes from unverified sources and eliminated stories that didn't fit the criteria I claimed to follow but did not.

The stories we have removed from the database include:

* Bush's erratic behavior worries White House aides (June 4, 2004)
* Bush's obscene tirades bother White House aides (Aug. 25, 2005)
* Dangers of a drunk Dubya (Sept. 22, 2005)
* Bush's Increasing Mental Lapses and Temper Tantrums Worry White House Aides (Nov. 2, 2005)
* White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 political enemies (Nov. 8, 2005)
* Bush on the Constitution: It's just a 'goddamned piece of paper' (Dec. 9, 2005)
* Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk during shooting incident (Feb. 22, 2006)
* Bush just can't stop lying (March 22, 2006)
* The decider-in-chief: Drunk with power (July 22, 2006)


There will be others. It takes a long time to go through three different databases from the three different publishing systems we've used over the years to try and correct too many mistakes."

WSJ.com - Osama in Genevaland

"Mr. England's memo overturns a 2002 Justice Department memo that ruled explicitly that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, a policy change the White House confirmed late on Tuesday. For an Administration that has fought so hard, and in our view rightly, to protect its executive powers, this is being heralded as an embarrassing reversal. It also has the smell of a bureaucratic fiasco, since we can't recall another situation in which Presidential power was so freely handed away."

12 DOWN: TOP SECRET WAR PLANS, 36 ACROSS: TREASON

"What if, instead of passing information from the government's secret nuclear program at Los Alamos directly to Soviet agents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had printed those same secrets in a newsletter? Would they have skated away scot-free instead of being tried for espionage and sent to the death chamber?

Ezra Pound, Mildred Gillars ('Axis Sally') and Iva Toguri D'Aquino ('Tokyo Rose') were all charged with treason for radio broadcasts intended to demoralize the troops during World War II. Their broadcasts were sort of like Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio -- except Tokyo Rose was actually witty, and Axis Sally is said to have used a fact-checker."