And what rough beast, its hour come at last, crawfishes towards Bethlehem to be born

Bush sent the London Times reporter scurrying for his slang dictionary to figure out what the hell it means that Saddam Hussein has “crawfished” out of UN agreements. The foreign pages’ editor comments, “Presumably UN support, if it is given, will register more formal offences than these.”

In Florida, a DA is concluding his second murder trial for the same murder. This happened in Torrance a couple of years ago and got almost no publicity, but this one has gotten a bit more. This time, the jury verdict from the first trial has been sealed, so that the possibility that a conviction has already been reached won’t hurt the prosecution’s ability to put an entirely different theory to another jury. The two boys in the first trial were 12 and 13 at the time they’re supposed to have killed their father, but of course are being tried as tiny adults.

Israeli hackers have been conducting a little cyber-warfare against peace and pro-Palestinian activists in the US, sending out fake e-mails under their name with subjects like Down with the United States.