Oooh, That Smell

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez complained to the U.N. General Assembly in New York yesterday that the hall “still smells of sulphur” following U.S. President George W. Bush’s address to international diplomats there the day before. Standing firm as one of the world’s more outspoken critics of the Bush administration and of the influence of U.S. policy in international affairs, Mr. Chavez called for reform of the U.N. and charged that Mr. Bush promotes a “false democracy of the elite” and a “democracy of bombs”.

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Here Come De Judge

In a landmark ruling handed down Thursday, U.S. District Court Justice Anna Diggs Taylor ruled the Bush Administration’s warrantless spying program is an “obvious” violation of the Fourth Amendment, was illegally implemented without regard to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and should be halted immediately.

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Goat It Is

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald — the man who has kept the blogosphere, if not quite the entire nation, on the edge of its seats for much of the past two-plus years in his ongoing work as the investigator into possible crimes attending the public outing of former undercover CIA agent Valery Plame — will not, after all, be pursuing a criminal indictment against White House svengali Karl Rove.

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A Tale of Two Men

American Shock and Awe came to a remote hideaway north of Baghdad Wednesday, when two 500lb bombs delivered by American F-16 fighter jets killed notorious terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and five others gathered with him at a safehouse in the isolated town of Hibhib.

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The White House Shuffle

In Las Vegas, American culture’s monument to itself, when a new dealer takes the shoe or a new croupier the stick, it’s time for gamblers to check their bets. Will the mojo be upset? Is juju about to reign? It’s never an easy moment for those with their money on the line, and the house always has its own inscrutable plan for retaining the favorable odds.

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Mama Tried?

Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man in Texas over the weekend, giving fresh and all-too-real meaning to the term loose cannon, when he sprayed a quail hunting companion with bird shot in a hunting accident on Saturday afternoon.

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