Unexploded Car Bomb Found in Manhattan

Yikes.  You know, it's a really good thing that so many would-be terrorists are incompetant. Maybe they went to the Squeaky Fromme school of political activism?

[Excerpt]

'We Avoided What Could Have Been a Very Deadly Event'



Police found an "amateurish" but potentially powerful bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square, authorities said Sunday.


Thousands of tourists were cleared from the streets for 10 hours after two vendors alerted police to the suspicious vehicle, which contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. . .

Read more at: AOL News

Soldiers "Honored" at Pet Crematorium

I cannot even begin to comment on this story. My comments would be a very dark shade of blue... Fuckers.

Since 2001, the U.S. military has cremated the remains of approximately 200 service members at Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service, a Delaware facility that primarily cremates pets. The practice was stopped yesterday, as the Washington Post reports:... Read more at ThinkProgress.org

... & more at The Washington Post

Private IRS Collectors Costing Us Money

Well, that's just super. The Republicans' very strange desire to privatize everything once again proves to be less efficient than if it was just left alone. And these guys were sent out to get $1 billion, why did they only come back with $49 million? Can the Bush administration do anything right?

[Excerpt]

Collectors Cost IRS More Than They Raise

The Internal Revenue Service expects to lose more than $37 million by using private debt collectors to pursue tax scofflaws through a program that has outraged consumers and led to charges on Capitol Hill that the agency is wasting money for work that IRS agents could do more effectively. . .

Read more at: Washington Post

FAA Allowed Airline Inspectors to Cheat?

Photo from source, CNN

More airline news. And this is really scary. Apparently, after the Aloha Airlines "deskinning" accident in 1988, airlines were required to check for fuselage fractures, to prevent a recurrence of this problem. But the FAA has been letting them skip this inspection. Yikes.

[Excerpt]

FAA Safety Chief Apologizes For Southwest Errors

The top safety official at the Federal Aviation Administration said officials in FAA's Dallas-Fort Worth regional office erred in not responding more swiftly to maintenance problems at Southwest Airlines ( LUV).

But in testimony before a House panel Thursday, Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety Nicholas Sabatini did not acknowledge a failure in judgment from officials in Washington headquarters with respect to the Southwest incident. . .

Read more at: CNN

Pilots Say Cockpit Dangers Being Ignored

Photo from source, CNN

Gaaah. With The Other Half regularly working (ok, not lately, but soon) on airplanes--this gives me a wiggins. Hopefully, they're exaggerating?

[Excerpt]

Pilots: Cockpit dangers being ignored

Regulators have largely ignored a series of dangerous incidents in which cockpit windshields in commercial airliners shattered in midflight, sometimes forcing emergency landings, according to an American Airlines pilots' group.

Since 2004, at least 10 windshields have had problems on Boeing 757s, mostly the result of wiring problems with windshield heaters that cause smoke to fill the cockpit and sometimes make those windshields crack, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Four incidents have been on American Airlines planes, the NTSB says. . .

Read more at: CNN

Thanks to Stupid Monkey Planet for the link

Karl Rove Investigator Now Being Investigated

Photo from source, Raw Story

Karl Rove left his official position at the White House some time ago, and yet still keeps turning up in the news. This is at least the third post today that I've put up that had something to do with the man.

Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio was reading this story on her program today, and laughed through most of it. That's because, though this story is sleazy, dirty, and disgusting, it has a strong element of humor. It's sort of like Hot Shots! Part Deux, when they send in the rescuers to rescue the rescuers who were rescuing the rescuers. . . I don't think it's a long shot to guess that the investigators investigating the investigator of Karl Rove will likely also have to be investigated!

[Excerpt]

Official probing Rove now under investigation himself

The federal official helming a probe into potentially illegal partisan political activities conducted by Karl Rove and other White House officials is himself the focus of a federal investigation.

Scott Bloch, the Bush-appointed head of the US Office of Special Counsel, is under investigation for the alleged improper deletion of emails on office computers, The Wall Street Journal's John R. Wilke reports. . .

Read on at: Raw Story

Bush Administration Leaks Info, Kills Contact

Way to go, W. In the White House's zeal to leak information to cable outlets like FOX "News," they killed an intelligence link. Outstanding. How's Rush going to spin this one?

[Excerpt]

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide. [snip]

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz. . .

Read the rest at: WashingtonPost.com