News Morning News
Tour de France champ Floyd Landis tests positive for a banned substance.
More of what Condoleezza Rice calls “birth pangs of a new Middle East”, as the Israelis lose 9 soldiers and Hezbollah dozens. From his undisclosed location, Al-Zawahri muses about another kind of birth: an Islamic fundamentalist empire that stretches all the way to Spain.
The usual death and despair from Iraq.
The Big Dig gets a fall guy.
Big Oil gets richer and richer.
In local news, check out Erica C. Barnett’s piece on a pizza joint in Alki that is experiencing the wrath of Nickels, and Eli Sanders reporting on the Washington State Supreme Court’s upholding the Defense of Marriage legislation.
Nickels has a vision for a new waterfront.
And the school board approves the closure of 6 schools.
" ... (A)n Islamic fundamentalist empire that stretches all the way to Spain."
Just like the good old days. Remember those thrilling days of yesteryear when the militant, expansionist Religion of Peace had expanded to Portugal and was puching against the gates of Paris (not to be confused with a later peaceful interlude when the R of P was pushing against the gates of Vienna.)
Sort ofr puts the Crusades in context, doesn't it? Every schoolboy knows that the Crusades were Christian imperialism, beginning to end, and are the only part of history worth knowing (aside from the Inquisition) because they make Western "civilization" look bad. The Crusades, in fact, were a delayed and inept response to centuries of pre-emptive, unilateralist, imperialist invasion and incursion.