(LATE) Morning Memo:

- Dateline: Tamarac, Florida- A town once famous for being the home of the great Kathy Willets, held an election yesterday where nobody showed up to vote. For the record, had anyone showed up the votes would have counted.

- Some of you may recall that war in Iraq. If so, you may remember the Carlyle Group. One of its subsidiaries, Carlyle Capital, is about to go under, as they can't pay a margin call. Normally when scum go down in flames I am happy. But when bastards like this are falling, that reflects the overall vulnerability of everyone in this economy, and that reality is something I can not rejoice.


- The Pentagon is seeking a uniform policy on video taping interrogations. I actually think all such interrogations should be recorded and filed away. Then, after a reasonable period of time (save for circumstances extreme in nature- ie- pending doom), they should be available to the public. While I recognize this would give prisoners a chance to prepare for their interrogations, the civil libertarian in me would rather error on the side of transparency and due process than brutality and safety.

- Lastly, the Chinese are again cracking down on the good people of Tibet. Please, boycott the 2008 Olympics...

Shocking....

Despite the fact that we already know the gist of what is in the Pentagon "exhaustive" study into the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, the Pentagon announced it will not be releasing the report. This is from an ABC news story that's breaking:

The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S.military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention. This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online.The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.
Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive.

What a freaking joke. It could be "too politically sensitive"!?? These guys have broken pretty much every law in our Constitution and this report would be TOO sensitive! Someone give Bush the number to Spitzer's ring of whores so we can finally bust his nut.