News Roundup for 7/8/09

Possible WMD

-Headline of the day-
"Report: Holes Found In Federal Security."

Turns out that federal buildings aren't as secure as you'd like federal buildings to be. According to the report, "Investigators smuggled bomb parts through checkpoints at 10 federal buildings as part of a test that showed gaping holes in security caused by inattentive and poorly trained guards." The findings were the result of a Government Accountability Office report submitted to the senate today.

"Once GAO investigators passed control access points, they assembled the explosive device and walked freely around several... floors of these Level IV facilities with the device in a briefcase," the GAO found. According to the report, "Level IV facilities are those that employ more than 450 federal workers and have high exposure to the public."

In one case, a guard was sleeping after taking Percocet. In another, "a guard failed to recognize or did not properly X-ray a box containing handguns at the loading dock at a facility." And it's not just bombs and guns that can be smuggled in. In yet another instance "an infant in a carrier was sent through an X-ray machine due to a guard's negligence," the GAO reports. Why would you test for that?

Here's my question; why is it that the names of the people who helped Dick Cheney write the energy policy were a big state secret, but the fact that pretty much any one of the three stooges could blow up a federal building is not?

l'm not saying we shouldn't fix the problems, I'm just saying that maybe advertising them isn't really the smartest way to go here. Before you know it, we could be up to our armpits in guns and bombs and X-irradiated terr'ist babies in federal buildings.

I just don't think that's something anyone wants to see. (NPR)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, like all this high-fallutin' technology? The tweetbooks and the facetubes and the news aggravators?


Click for animation

In related news, racist groups are using Twitter now.

The moral of this story? Go outside. (MarkFiore.com)


-Speaking of racist groups...-
...I give you FOX & Friends, a show that's such unbelievable bullshit that you wish there were a stronger word for bullshit.

In discussing the problem of dementia among seniors (let's just skip over the irony of that, OK?), co-host Brian Kilmeade went a little nazi. ""We are -- we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other..." he said. "See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes... Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."

But now the Finns marry the Swedes and the Swedes marry the Chinamen and the Chinamen marry the Latinos and that's why grandma keeps thinking you're the paperboy -- they're all "other species."

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if you actually have to prove you're an idiot to get a gig with FOX & Friends, because getting three of the dumbest people in America to host the same morning show seems like too much of a coincidence. (Salon)