the/diseased/republik

US President George W Bush has invoked executive privilege to deny requests by Congress for the testimony of two aides over the firing of federal prosecutors. The row hinges on whether the attorneys were sacked for political motives. Democratic leaders say they could go to court to challenge Mr Bush's move. He invoked the same little-used power last month to withhold subpoenaed documents. The White House says Mr Bush is acting in good faith and has offered to let the aides do off-the-record interviews. The pair in question are Harriet Miers, former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, former political director for the White House. Ms Miers has been summoned to appear under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and Ms Taylor to testify before the House Judiciary Committee the next day. 'Unreasonable' demands The Democratic heads of the two judiciary committees had set a deadline of Monday for the White House to explain the first invocation of p

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Internal memos show that four security contractors who were ambushed and killed in Iraq three years ago were told to go through the dangerous city of Fallujah when a safer route was available, a newspaper reported Sunday. The memos said a Blackwater USA supervisor also plucked two members of each six-man team for other work, reducing the teams' numbers and making them more vulnerable to attack, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Memos from the second team _ whose leader decided to go around Fallujah on March 31, 2004, and which wasn't attacked _ said the teams also were sent without maps, although other memos suggest maps were available, the newspaper said. "These reports were written by people who were not there," Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told The Associated Press. "The answer to what really happened in Fallujah is a tragedy in which four brave men were killed." Tyrrell said she couldn't comment on specifics because of pending liti

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'In his remarkable book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore does a service by focusing on the intimacies of power. In his detailed, highly readable account of Joseph Stalin's entourage, Montefiore shows how power is often a byproduct of informal interaction, a thing of the dinner table, the hunting expedition, the boudoir. 'But Montefiore also poses another question, one more specific to the Soviet leader. Why is it that the experienced, ruthless, conceited men and women around Stalin could so easily fall under his ruinous power, to the extent that some remained loyal even after the murder or imprisonment of members of their families? The answer is deceptively simple: There was no sovereign rule of law to mediate the relation. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Stalin himself became the law, replacing the hard but more egalitarian conventions of the Communist Party. The absolute leader destroyed a system and replaced it with his own absolute ego. 'Ob

amigoro writes to let us know about an appeals court ruling on Friday that holds that federal agents can snoop on an individual's web surfing, email and all other forms of Internet communication habits without a warrant . The court found recording this kind of information to be analogous to the use of a pen register. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that this technique did not constitute a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. fullstory and discusion @ slashdot .

From the Washington Post: 'Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival , celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer — and, naturally, the ensuing government cover-up." Discuss at slashdot .

chinmay7 writes "There is an excellent selection of articles (and quite a few related scientific papers) in [1]a special edition of Nature magazine on interpretations of the multiverse theory. 'Fifty years ago this month Hugh Everett III published his paper proposing a "relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics" — the idea subsequently described as the 'many worlds' or 'multiverse' interpretation. Its impact on science and culture continues. In celebration, a science fiction special edition of Nature on 5 July 2007 explores the symbiosis of science and sf, as exemplified by Everett's hypothesis, its birth, evolution, champions and opponents, in biology, physics, literature and beyond.' Discuss this story at: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/07/06/2323214 Links: 0. http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~chinmay.soman/ 1. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/sciencefiction/index.html