Lake Trout

I.  Two Republican representatives, both of whom I think the worst of as a rule, seem to be battling against Cheney over the White House’s leaking of false information that indicates Israel struck a nuclear facility in Syria that was being built with the help of North Korea. Check this out:

(Raw Story – GOP Accusing White House of Leaking) In 2006, Larisa Alexandrovna reported for RAW STORY on Hoekstra’s approval of Vice President Cheney’s renewed use of former Iran-Contra middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar to help frustrate diplomatic talks between the US and Iran. A follow-up article by Alexandrovna revealed that Hoekstra himself had met with Ghorbanifar in the late spring or early summer of 2006 in a possible attempt to create “falsified intelligence” that could lead to war with Iran. Alexandrovna has also reported that the target of the Israeli airstrike was not a nuclear facility and, most recently, that sources in the intelligence community believe Vice President Cheney is behind the selective leaks concerning the incident.

One intelligence official told Alexandrovna, “The allegations that North Korea was helping to build a nuclear reactor have not been substantiated by US intelligence, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Cheney and his minions at the NSC, Elliot Abrams and Steve Hadley, from leaking the information [to the press], which appears to be misleading in the extreme.”

II.  After the bloggers (including myself and others) jumped all over the story about Senator Rockefeller’s love for the idea of granting immunity to telecom companies coinciding with a campaign bucks bonanza – the NYTimes finally covers it, on a Tuesday and thus far only online.

III.  “(Murray Weiss – NYPost) THE number of NYPD cops using drugs, stealing property – even from the dead – and committing other acts of corruption, including extorting sex from female suspects, spiked sharply last year, according to a confidential NYPD report.“

IV. (Raw Story) “The mayor of the Indian capital said Monday that authorities could not deal with the scourge of violent monkeys, blamed for the death of a top city official over the weekend. The danger posed by the estimated 10,000 monkeys that roam the city was brought home sharply on Sunday when deputy mayor S.S. Bajwa, 52, died after falling from his apartment while fighting a horde of wild simians. If the animals are caught, “we are under pressure to release them due to pressure from animal activists and from people due to religious reasons“