what goes on

scary info about the royal family

So Dick, were ya drunk? Sure looks like you were closer to Harry than you said you were. And why did y'all prevent the local Sheriff from entering the property, after the shooting?

This is apparently not getting much coverage by the U.S. media. Surprise, surprise.

This November, demand a paper ballot!

Life imitates art.

Air America Radio. Just listen. Randi Rhodes is particularly awesome, but I like the Rachel Maddow show, too.

Drop Dead Gorgeous

So, Dick, what the hell? Why'd you shoot your friend? Cheney's been a hunter "for years," he says. In fact, we know he hunts several times a year, preferring 'canned hunts'- on private land, where the game is often tame enough to eat out of human hands -but that's beside the point. He should be familiar with guns and gun rules. Still, accidents happen, I suppose.

All questions about what exactly happened -and-how- and why aside, there is a relationship at play here which is ...very interesting.

See, Harry Whittington is an Austin-based lawyer, and a long-time big-wig Republican. Way back when George was still Governor of Texas, another old Bush family friend, Robert Waltrip got in trouble when hundreds of corpses were found in buildings and woods on the premises of his funeral home and crematorium (Service Corporation International, aka SCI). Yeah, remember Funeralgate?

Well, Eliza May was in charge of the Texas Funeral Services Commission (TFSC) when the bodies were discovered, and felt it was her job to investigate. When she got curious about why so many politicians were pressuring her to drop the investigation, she started to dig up campaign contribution reports, and was promptly fired and replaced with... Harry Whittington (who could not have been ignorant of the situation at SCI). She brought suit against the State of Texas and SCI for being forced out of her job, but the suit was quietly settled out of court -get this-- just weeks before two other SCI funeral homes in Florida were found doing the very same thing, and worse:

In one instance at Menorah Gardens, a Jewish cemetery, SCI desecrated graves and left corpses in the woods where they were devoured by wild hogs.

The general manager of Menorah Gardens, Peter Hartman, died by apparent suicide on December 27, 2001. From Wiki -I didn't want to disturb the original links.

So you'd think they'd be shut down by now, eh? No, silly! Remember- Robert Waltrip is a good, old friend of the Bushes. So what's SCI up to now? They got a no-bid contract to handle the remains of the dead from Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans. Maybe the 'gators will do a better job of cleaning up, than the hogs did?

I think I'm gonna be sick.

Hats off to Jeff at Rigorous Intuition for taking the lead on this side of this story.

Apparent suicide. Remember that one. "Apparent," like Gary Webb's "suicide," perhaps. One wonders how many guns were involved.