Go to this link and read Clarice Feldman’s report by Dr. Laurie Mylroie on the anthrax that was mailed to Senators Daschle and Leahy several years ago.

From Dr. Mylroie’s report, enough to whet your appetite from the piece:

To start, I have believed all along that Iraqi intelligence had their dirty hands on this event. Based on ISG findings that Iraq had apparently decided in 1994 to not attempt production, but rather only research to enhance “break-out” capability and that the Iraqi and Syrian intelligence services had formed an alliance to develop the field “in chemical and biological of mutual interest,” I now suspect that Syria made the anthrax product with Iraqi Intelligence assistance. The cooperation included Iraqi scientists assisting the Syrians.

Katie Couric is having a hard enough time in the news ratings without having a scandal over one of her producers plagiarizing an article from the Wall Street Journal on the “Couric and Company” blog and on the CBS Evening News.

A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal.

The essay was removed from the CBS Web site and an editor’s note was posted saying the item should have credited Jeffrey Zaslow of the Journal, the network said Tuesday.

An editor for The Wall Street Journal called CBS News to point out the similarities of the April 4 notebook item to Zaslow’s article, headlined “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?” The pieces talk about how libraries are seen differently by children from their parents.

“We were horrified,” CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said. “It was almost verbatim.”

The news media are ’supposed’ to be our watchdogs. This is the second scandal in the past couple of years involving shady reporting by CBS and its producers. Who watches the watchdogs?

Is it any wonder we don’t trust the networks or the major newspapers to give us the unvarnished objective truth in their reporting?

In the ongoing feud between the legislative and executive branches of our government, Rep. John Conyers has served the subpoena authorized a few weeks ago to compel Attorney General Gonzales to give more information on the firings of the US Attorneys.

It’s important for everyone to remember the Executive Branch has total control over whom they hire, whom they fire and for whatever reasons, including no reasons.

Admittedly, the spokespersons for the Justice Department, including Gonzales, did themselves no favors in the way they botched up the testimony they already gave.

Just sit there and say you did it and quit trying to dig a deeper hole making up a story about why. Say you did it because it was your right to do so and that’s it.

Why congress thinks this is something they need to involve themselves in seems to be just another way to force Gonzales out of office so we can have another food-fight trying to confirm a new Attorney General.

Dear Lord, how did this great country ever come to this?

President Bush invited Senate Majority Leader Reid to the White House to discuss the stalemate over the war funding supplemental.

Mr. Reid’s response? Basically he told the president to take his invitation and shove it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday turned down President Bush’s invitation to meet at the White House next week to try to break through the stalemate over Iraq war spending bill, charging the invitation came with “preconditions.”

Reid’s response was the latest in the intensifying push-and-shove match between the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House.

Reid said Bush needs to “take a seat of negotiation, of compromise, of direction change.”

“The president is inviting us down to the White House with preconditions. That’s not the way things should operate,” he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “The president is now having to deal with a Congress. He’s never had to do that before. The president in the past, he has just done whatever he wanted. He had a big rubberstamp here up on Capitol Hill, whatever he wanted, they stamped OK. That’s not the way it is now.”

Just how long are the leaders in congress going to keep telling us there’s a new sheriff in town?

Since when has a leader of congress refused to work with the President of the United States to get a compromise bill they can both be satisfied with?

Bush shoved back with these words:

“Democratic leaders in Congress are bent on using a bill that funds our troops to make a political statement about the war,” Bush said. “They need to do it quickly, get it to my desk so I can veto it. And then Congress can get down to the business of funding our troops without strings and without further delay.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called Reid’s rejection of the president’s invitation a “knee-jerk reaction.”

“The invitation stands, we would like for them to come down and talk with us,” Perino told reporters at the White House.

Bush said without funding, the “clock is ticking for our troops in the field.”

“Instead of approving that vital funding, the Democratic leadership in Congress has spent the last 64 days pushing legislation that would undercut our troops just as we are beginning to make progress in Baghdad,” said Bush, who sent the funding request to lawmakers 64 days ago.

Speaker Pelosi also weighed in with her “do-nothing Congress” line.

Referring to a letter from some Republican senators and representatives asking her to call congress back in session and work on the supplemental bill, this was her response:

“Coming from the Republicans, who ran the ‘do-nothing’ Congress, this letter is a cheap political stunt,” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said in a statement to FOX News.

“The American people overwhelmingly support the Democratic plan for change in Iraq, yet the president has threatened to veto legislation that contains his own benchmarks for success in Iraq, ensures our troops have the training they need, and supports our veterans,” Daly added.

I’m just wondering when the two leaders of congress are going to stand outside the White House and throw rotten tomatoes at it, hoping to hit the president while he is outside for some event.

Today, I am not proud of my government and the child-like behavior they are exhibiting. Compromise is the name of the game in politics and with the slim majorities the democrats have in both houses they would do well to remember that and work with a president who no longer has majority support in congress. Both sides must be willing to negotiate or nothing will ever get done and this will be the biggest “do nothing congress” our country has ever seen.

Meanwhile, our soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors in the field are being kicked around like a football.

This is unacceptable and thoroughly disgusting behavior.

What is it going to take for us to get meaningful immigration reform that keeps millions of illegal aliens from entering our country?

To me, that’s the biggest question of all. We need to keep them from entering the country first and foremost to stem the tide.

After that we need to start rounding up as many illegals as we can find and deport them to their country of origin. We need to enforce existing immigration laws that forbid employers from hiring illegal aliens. We need to stop figuring out ways to give these people drivers’ licenses. We need to stop providing free social services to them, and they should never collect one cent of Social Security benefits earned while they were here illegally.

Full disclosure: My niece’s father is Mexican and I don’t know if he’s legal or illegal, but my sister is an American and raised their daughter herself.

If a child is born to illegals in this country that child is an American according to the law. He should remain an American but the parents should be given the choice of returning to their home country alone and our country provides foster care for the child, or they can take the child with them and the child can come back here to live when he or she is 18 years old.

That would be ideal to me, but I’m not the president and I’m not Congress and they are the ones who have to wrestle with this problem, all the while calculating how many votes they can get if they can get the right to vote for these illegals.

Yesterday President Bush was in Arizona, checking out an area he checked last June and telling us of his latest plan to help resolve this problem that has been in the making longer than the years he and Clinton were both in office, but somehow it fell on his shoulders as though it were something caused by him.

“Securing the border is a critical part of a strategy for comprehensive immigration reform. It is an important part of a reform that is necessary so that the Border Patrol agents down here can do their job more effectively,” the president said.

Despite frosty relations with the Democrat-controlled Congress, Mr. Bush urged lawmakers to move forward with his five-point plan, the centerpiece of which is a guest-worker program that would give the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the United States legal status and a path to citizenship.

“Congress is going take up the legislation on immigration. It is a matter of national interest, and it’s a matter of deep conviction for me. I’ve been working to bring Republicans and Democrats together to resolve outstanding issues so that Congress can pass a comprehensive bill and I can sign it into law this year,” he said to applause.

After running into fierce opposition from his own party — which failed to pass the legislation when it controlled both chambers of Congress — the White House has overhauled its immigration reform plan. A draft sent out to advocacy groups and top Republican lawmakers calls for work visas to be granted to illegals but would require hefty fines and that they leave the U.S. briefly. They could then apply for three-year work visas, dubbed “Z” visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time, and would eventually be able to apply for citizenship.

The revealed plan prompted thousands of demonstrators to take to the streets of Los Angeles on Saturday in protest.

The president’s trip yesterday was targeted at members of his own party, who have opposed his guest-worker program. He was joined by Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, whose support is key to any deal in Congress.

See full story.

The Democrats who run Congress now believe they were put in with a mandate to stop the war in Iraq and that probably was the number one priority of most of their voters.

What they, and a lot of people, fail to recognize is many conservative Republicans stayed away from the polls in droves last November over the illegal immigration issue.

We had at least one blog have a complete melt-down and fire all the bloggers because they didn’t toe the line of the owner, who never blogs except about illegal immigration and only because he’s a legal immigrant.

So these people who stay away from the polls really showed them, didn’t they? They’re the same ones doing the loudest howling about what’s going on in the congress they helped elect by their own inaction and temper tantrums. They wanted all or nothing, just as Arafat wanted all or nothing. They turned down a good percentage of what they wanted because they couldn’t get it all just as Arafat turned down 90% of what he demanded because he couldn’t get 100%.

I’m not now and never have been a single issue voter. I look at the platforms and the stands taken by the candidates for any office and go for the one I think best serves the interests of what concerns me the most, and right now homeland security is the most important issue to me, and that includes immigration reform. That does not mean, though, that I will stay away if a candidate disagrees with me on that issue but generally agrees with me on everything else.

I repeat: This was not caused by President Bush and yet he has been the one unfairly charged with the whole mess. He’s not the one who passes legislation, people. He just signs it into law or he vetoes it. It’s been that way for over 200 years now, so it should come as no surprise to anyone how our system works.

I may sound harsh in my ideal circumstances scenario, and it’s probably unrealistic to think it could all be done, but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step.

I’m ready to back the president on his current immigration stand.

Now it’s time for Congress to quit playing the gotcha game and start passing some meaningful legislation.

Also blogging on this: Captains Quarters

We are always trying to get the best features WordPress has to offer, so today kimsch of Musing Minds and Schratwieser Consulting installed a new plug-in so you can preview your comment before hitting the post button.

There does seem to be a problem with comments wrapping to the right and the left of the box and I’ll see about getting that fixed. If kimsch can’t figure it out I’ll put in a trouble ticket with my server and see if they can find the offending code. I don’t mess with any code other than the sidebar.

On Easter Sunday our meal was a New England boiled dinner made with a smoked shoulder and all the veggies that go with it.

We have a friend at church who is divorced for many years and eats out just about every meal. Except for the fact I got sick at church Sunday and went home before Sunday School, I would have gone to lunch with him and my husband.

Last night we decided Jim would probably like the boiled dinner because he likes just about anything.

FYI, the ingredients are ham (some use corned beef but I prefer ham), potatoes, carrots, rutabaga and cabbage all cooked together in the same water. Of course you add the veggies later so they don’t get mushy, but it actually has a good flavor to it. Maybe you have to grow up with it to appreciate it.

Anyway, my husband took a warm dish of the dinner to our friend Jim and visited for awhile. It’s the first time he’s been inside Jim’s apartment and they sat there and shot the breeze about yesterday’s sermon (it was perfect) and about Jim’s visits to Israel.

After awhile my husband came back home and told me he had seen a gadget at Jim’s that he would like. Now, if you know me at all, you know I love gadgets. This gadget is a thermometer that really looks like a small alarm clock. You put a part outside and put batteries in the other part and get a reading of the outside temperature as well as the inside temperature of the room.

Of course I was interested in that because we don’t have an outdoor thermometer, but now our old Golden/Chow mix dog who has had 3 knee surgeries is pretty arthritic and loves to stay out on the back porch during cooler weather. We just don’t want him to be out there when it’s too cold.

My husband bought one and showed me how it works. I thought it was nifty and asked him to pick up another one we could put upstairs so we could tell the outside temperature wherever we are in the house.

I have Weatherbug on my computer, but from comparing the temperatures I can tell Weatherbug must be getting our outside temperatures from another city as it shows about 8-10 degrees lower than the two new thermometers.

If you like gadgets and think you’d like this they cost about $25 and are available at Radio Shack.

I like the new toy, but I don’t keep it where the computer is because it’s the hottest room in the house anyway and it’s even hotter with the electronics in here.

Anyway, I thought I’d tell you about it in case you’re interested. I don’t know what it’s called but I’m sure Radio Shack knows what it is if you call or go there.

In today’s Day by Day cartoon at the header on this site you will notice a link to Editor and Publisher. Please follow the link and read what this reporter has to say about McCain’s recent visit to Iraq and what he wrote in the Washington Post about it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just about tired of seeing which reporter can pee higher than McCain and I’m not even a McCain voter as my first choice.