The queen marked her 50th anniversary as queen yesterday by opening a cancer ward, symbolic of her family being a cancer on the body politic, I’m assuming.

The EU establishes an arrest warrant across the EU covering 32 crimes, including some that are not crimes in every EU country, like racism and xenophobia, and after voting down habeas corpus & speedy trial safeguards.

The US admits that its most recent botched raid in Afghanistan was a botched raid and releases 27 prisoners, although it may have released them to the puppet regime....

The US has paid at least 35 Afghan warlords $200,000 each. I believe at the current exchange rate, that equals about 3 weeks of undying loyalty.

The justification of the US’s participation in the civil war in Colombia has officially been expanded from drugs to terrorism this week, without any debate or indeed notice in this country. Hell, the CIA director’s testimony to Congress yesterday was the first time he’d been seen in the 5 months since 9/11, which should give you some clue to the thoroughness of Congressional oversight, although they will haul every single Enron executive up to make them recite the 5th amendment.

Even that wasn’t as edifying as today’s re-enactment of the Monty Python 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, with Robert Byrd & Paul O’Neil bragging about their crappy childhoods. Said O’Neil: “I won’t cede to you the high moral ground of not knowing what life is like in a ditch.” Heaven forfend. He also called Byrd a Klansman.

Speaking of high moral ground, during WW II Chaim Weizmann offered the British use of Palestine as a site to develop mustard gas.

I hope the report in the Post is incomplete on the hearings into Bush nominee to the 5th Circuit Charles Pickering, since it seems they skipped over a good deal of his racist past (which you can look up yourself, I have a headache.)