SAVAGE ROWing

Susie Slanina: “Roz Savage is on the back cover of this children’s book I just wrote.  She will be rowing from Tarawa to Australia starting April 15 [having already rowed 3,000 miles from Honolulu].   It would be nice if you mention her in your next environmental column.   I do not work for her, I only know of her work and met her at a book signing.  Oh, and by the way, my book below makes a perfect gift for nieces and nephews.”

☞  Or just get those nieces and nephews plugged in to Roz’s magnificent adventure.  Wowwww.

RADIO.COM

Type in the name of the artist you want to hear . . . and click.

ELLIPSiS

For those who try to figure out how the public discourse could have become so broken, here is an interesting example: the tale of a guy devoted to disputing – or was it distorting? – the projected cost of the health care bill.  You decide.  Three little dots, otherwise known as an ellipsis.

INNOCENT, SHMINICENT

From The Times of London Online (thanks, Tom):

April 9, 2010

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

[ . . . ]

A spokesman for Mr Bush said of Colonel Wilkerson’s allegations: “We are not going to have any comment on that.” A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson's assertions were completely untrue.

The associate said the former Defence Secretary had worked harder than anyone to get detainees released and worked assiduously to keep the prison population as small as possible. Mr Cheney’s office did not respond. . . .