Everything's coming up ominous, Part 1

Everything sucks. Here's why:

1) Creation Evangelism:

Ham encourages people to further their research with the dozens of books and DVDs sold by his ministry. They give answers to every question a critic might ask: How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies. Why didn't a tyrannosaur eat Eve? All creatures were vegetarians until Adam's sin brought death into the world. How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog "kind" — a master blueprint — and let evolution take over from there.

2) The only two U.S. judges who were briefed on the wiretapping program (successive heads of the FISA court) thought it was unconstitutional. Not just illegal, mind you, but unconstitutional. In the same article, a new journalistic way of saying: "The Administration Lied" without, you know, saying it:

Shortly after the warrantless eavesdropping program began, then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden and Ashcroft made clear in private meetings that the president wanted to detect possible terrorist activity before another attack. They also made clear that, in such a broad hunt for suspicious patterns and activities, the government could never meet the FISA court's probable-cause requirement, government officials said.

So it confused the FISA court judges when, in their recent public defense of the program, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that NSA analysts do not listen to calls unless they have a reasonable belief that someone with a known link to terrorism is on one end of the call. At a hearing Monday, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "reasonable belief" standard is merely the "probable cause" standard by another name.

Several FISA judges said they also remain puzzled by Bush's assertion that the court was not "agile" or "nimble" enough to help catch terrorists. The court had routinely approved emergency wiretaps 72 hours after they had begun, as FISA allows, and the court's actions in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that its judges were hardly unsympathetic to the needs of their nation at war.

So these judges are confused and puzzled. Hmm.

3) Bizarre and idiotic case of a six-year-old suspended from school for sexual harassment. He touched a girl on the back.

4) Bush dumps his entire social security privatization scheme into the budget, without telling anyone. As in: Make It So. Because who needs democracy anymore, any-old-how. Democracy is so pre-9-11.

5) Why should the President and CEO of Wal-Mart get to put a Wal-Mart PR ad disguised as an Op-Ed in the Washington Post? Shouldn't he have to buy ad space:

If we closed our doors in Maryland, a lot of things would happen, and none of them would be good for the working families of this state. Seventeen thousand associates work for us in Maryland. Every one of them -- both full-time and part-time -- can become eligible for health coverage that costs as little as $23 per month. Our stores here collect $112 million in sales taxes and generate $13 million more in tax revenue for state and local governments. We buy $678 million worth of goods and services from 667 Maryland suppliers. Thanks to our foundation and good works in our stores, we donate $3.7 million to local charities in Maryland. And when it comes to our customers, we save the average household more than $2,300 per year by offering the products people want at affordable prices in one convenient place.

We think those are valuable things we do for the working families of Maryland. And we're planning to do more. We will build more stores, create more jobs, offer even more affordable health care, generate more tax revenue, do more business with suppliers and give more money to local charities. Though the General Assembly passed a bill that affects our company and our company alone, we will not flinch in our commitment to our customers, our associates and the communities we serve. Working families want us in Maryland, and we're staying in Maryland.

6) Speaking of corporations ruling the world, there's this:

This just in for the snaking lines of air passengers waiting in their socks to pass through airport security: homeland security officials have proudly approved the diversion of 16 screeners from Kennedy International Airport to a private heliport entrepreneur so Wall Street executives can purchase speedy velvet-rope clearance and chopper right to their planes for $150 or so.

Our point here is not to gripe about the can-do prowess of the private sector, but rather to object to underwriting this venture with scarce federal resources. In July, the Port Authority, which runs the New York area airports, protested the federal decision to cut the number of local security screeners by more than 240 slots — a 6.5 percent drop despite a growing market of waiting travelers.

Now that same Port Authority has blessed the heliport screenings, including shifting security equipment at no charge from Kennedy to the heliport. "Well, why not?" asks Charles Gargano, the authority's vice chairman, who says the service will be "selective" and help business.

7) Yet another person has come forward to say that the Administration lied us into the war, this time from the CIA:

A C.I.A. veteran who oversaw intelligence assessments about the Middle East from 2000 to 2005 on Friday accused the Bush administration of ignoring or distorting the prewar evidence on a broad range of issues related to Iraq in its effort to justify the American invasion of 2003.

That's not the half of it, but I'm sick of writing now.