timmmmmmmmmmmmmmay!!!!!

(04-24) 20:00 PDT ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) --

President Bush is trying to calm Americans' outrage over soaring gas prices by ordering an investigation into whether the price of gasoline has been illegally manipulated, his spokesman said Monday.

During the last few days, Bush asked his Energy and Justice departments to open inquiries into possible cheating in the gasoline markets, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Bush planned to announce the action Tuesday during a speech in Washington.

Bush is under pressure to do something about gas prices that have reached nearly $3 a gallon. In a new CNN poll, 69 percent of respondents said gasoline price increases had caused them personal hardship. Other polls suggest that voters favor Democrats over Republicans on the issue, and President Bush gets low marks for handling gas prices.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., urged Bush in a letter Monday to order a federal investigation into any gasoline price gouging or market speculation.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada dispatched his own letter, calling for a multi-pronged approach to restrain gas prices. Among the steps were swift enactment of anti-price gouging legislation, an appeal to oil companies to refrain from further price increases; use of more alternative fuels and increased attention to existing fuel-saving laws and regulations.

Bush was working on the speech aboard Air Force One as he flew home Monday evening from a four-day trip to California that ended with a swing through Las Vegas. McClellan outlined part of the speech to reporters traveling on the plane.

McClellan said Bush also will announce that his attorney general and Federal Trade Commission will send a letter to all 50 state attorneys general, who have primary authority over price gouging, to remind them to stay on top of the issue and offer federal help to do so. And he will call on energy companies to reinvest their profits into expanding refining capacity, developing new technologies and researching alternative energy sources.

"I think you'll hear the president say very clearly that he will not tolerate price gouging," McClellan said.

Bush has consistently said that gas prices are high because global demand is rising faster than global supply and that the problem cannot be solved overnight. McClellan said Bush will talk about how experts predict that the price is expected to increase this summer and how the switch to a summer fuel mix is contributing to the problem.

Bush's actions are part of a four-part plan to address gas prices in the short- and long-term, McClellan said. The steps McClellan outlined are:

1. making sure consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly;

2. promoting greater fuel efficiency;

3. boosting gasoline supply at home;

4. aggressive long-term investment in alternative fuels.

___

On the Net:

White House:

www.whitehouse.gov

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/04/24/national/w180238D72.DTL

(04-17) 12:20 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) --

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and The Sun Herald of Gulfport, Miss., have won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith of The Washington Post have won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for coverage of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

David Finkel of The Washington Post has won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for writing about the U.S. government's attempt to bring democracy to Yemen; Dana Priest of The Washington Post has won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting on secret prisons and the government's counterterrorism campaign.

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times and the staffs of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley News Service have won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

James Kahn and Jim Yardley of The New York Times have won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of China's legal system.

Jim Sheeler of the Rocky Mountain News has won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his story on a Marine major who helps families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss.

Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times has won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Robin Givhan of The Washington Post has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for her fashion coverage. Rick Attig and Doug Bates of The Oregonian of Portland, Ore., have won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for writing on abuse inside a mental hospital.

Mike Luckovich of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

Todd Heisler of the Rocky Mountain News has won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for behind-the-scenes funeral coverage of Marines from Colorado.

The Dallas Morning News has won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/04/17/national/a121239D98.DTL

for myspace users that have died:

www.mydeathspace.com

(04-13) 06:35 PDT Oceanside, Calif. (AP) --

A former humane society official told federal investigators that she obtained 3,600 tablets of the prescription painkiller Vicodin for her dog, authorities allege.

Stacy Steel, 38, was arrested Monday for investigation of obtaining controlled substances by fraud, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. She resigned on March 25 from her $95,000-a-year job as executive director of the North County Humane Society's Oceanside animal shelter.

Dan Simmons, a special agent with the DEA, alleged that Steel directed Humane Society workers to order 36 bottles of Vicodin between October 2005 and February 2006.

Jennifer Stewart, a veterinarian who served as the interim Humane Society director from 2001 to 2003, said DEA investigators indicated to her that her drug registration number had been used to order the Vicodin. Stewart said she told investigators that she had revoked permission for the agency to use her number when she left in 2003.

"I can't imagine (Steel) would be using (Vicodin) for her dog, and I don't know why she would be self-medicating her dog without the care of a licensed veterinarian," Stewart said.

Steel referred all questions to her attorney, Peter Liss.

"We plan on having this case heard in a court of law and nowhere else," Liss said Wednesday.

Steel is scheduled to be arraigned on April 17 in San Diego Superior Court.

Information from: North County Times,

www.nctimes.net

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/04/13/state/n063537D29.DTL

Report Raises New Questions on Bush, WMDs
- By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006

(04-12) 17:04 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The White House faced new questions Wednesday about President Bush's contention three years ago that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

The Washington Post reported that a Pentagon-sponsored team of experts determined in May 2003 that two small trailers were not used to make biological weapons. Yet two days after the team sent its findings to Washington in a classified report, Bush declared just the opposite.

"We have found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush said in an interview with a Polish TV station. "We found biological laboratories."

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Bush was relying on information from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency when he said the trailers seized after the 2003 invasion were mobile biological laboratories. That information was later discredited by the Iraq Survey Group in its 2004 report.

The CIA and DIA publicly issued an assessment one day after the Pentagon team's report arrived in Washington that said U.S. officials were confident that the trailers were used to produce biological weapons. The assessment said the mobile facilities represented "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

McClellan said it was unclear whether officials at the White House were aware of the contradictory field report when Bush repeated the claim in the television interview.

"If and when the White House became aware of this particular issue, I'm looking into that matter," McClellan said. "The White House has asked the CIA and the DIA to go and look into that issue."

The Post did not say that Bush knew what he was saying was false. But ABC News did during a report on "Good Morning America," and McClellan demanded an apology and an on-air retraction. ABC News said later in a clarification on its Web site that Charles Gibson had erred. McClellan said he had received an apology.

"This is nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," McClellan said. "I cannot count how many times the president has said the intelligence was wrong."

"The intelligence community makes the assessment," he said. "The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency."

Navy Cmdr. Greg Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a written statement that the report from the expert team was sent to the DIA on May 27, 2003, but he said the findings were not vetted until over the summer. The statement did not say whether the information was immediately shared with the White House.

"This further analysis led to the conclusion of the ISG that the mobile units were impractical for biological agent production and almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen," Hicks' statement said.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Dyck declined to speak specifically about the classified field report but said in general that producing a finished intelligence report takes time, coordination, debate and vetting.

"This is not a fast process, especially when dealing with complex issues," she said. "It is not typically something that happens in a matter of hours."

The trailers — along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program — were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied claims that intelligence was exaggerated or manipulated in the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Iraq Survey Group concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991.
___

On the Net:

CIA/DIA report on mobile trailers:

Duelfer report on the WMD claims:

www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraqi_mobile_plants/paper_w.pdf

www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/04/12/national/w141324D30.DTL

Indonesia Muslim hardliners attack Playboy building

1 hour, 45 minutes ago

About 300 hardline Indonesian Muslims vandalized a building housing the office of Playboy magazine on Wednesday in a protest against its publication in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Clad in white shirts and skull caps the protesters threw rocks at the front lobby, breaking the windows of the building in the south of Jakarta several days after the magazine hit news-stands for the first time.

Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), the protesters also ripped apart several copies of the Indonesian Playboy, which unlike the U.S. original does not show any nudity.

Despite being a much tamer version, the magazine sold out very quickly, partly thanks to controversy surrounding its publication and protests from some Muslim groups.

Apart from Playboy, Indonesia already had its own versions of men's magazines Maxim and FHM, as well as homegrown publications, which feature color pictures of women in minimal clothing.

Members of the hardline Muslim group that organized the demonstration, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), are known for taking laws into their own hands, for example by attacking bars selling alcohol during the Muslim fasting period, and massage parlors.

Dozens of police were on the scene when the militants carried out the attack but did not make any arrests.

South Jakarta police chief Wiliardi Wizard told Reuters he would question the leader of the group in relation to the incident and detain the perpetrators.

"If they can hand over the perpetrators then that's good. Otherwise we'll have to hunt them," he said.

(with additional reporting by Telly Nathalia)

kudos to flavorpill and mother jones magazine (and the onion and beck), but flickr nominated for four separate categories ... including best navigation/structure, best visual design/function and best practices  ????????????????????

YOU HAVE TO FUCKING BE KIDDING ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10

what a load of crap.

Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says

By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON / NY Times

WASHINGTON, April 9 — A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein. But the official said that Mr. Bush did not designate Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., or anyone else, to release the information to reporters.

The statement by the official came after the White House had declined to confirm, for three days, Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony that he had been told by Mr. Cheney that Mr. Bush had authorized the disclosure. The official declined to be named, because of an administration policy of not commenting on issues now in court. Confirmation that Mr. Bush ordered the declassification was published late Saturday by The Associated Press, which quoted "an attorney knowledgeable about the case." Once it appeared, the administration official was willing to confirm its details.

The official responded briefly via e-mail on Sunday to questions from The New York Times.

Before the invasion of Iraq, the information from an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was used by both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to bolster their argument that Mr. Hussein posed a threat, and was trying to reconstitute a nuclear program that was dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War.

The disclosure on Sunday appeared intended to bolster the White House argument that Mr. Bush was acting well within his legal authority when he ordered that key conclusions of the classified intelligence estimate should be revealed to make clear that intelligence agencies believed Mr. Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa.

Moreover, the disclosure seemed intended to suggest that Mr. Bush might have played only a peripheral role in the release of the classified material and was uninformed about the specifics — like the effort to dispatch Mr. Libby to discuss the estimate with reporters.

The explanation offered Sunday left open several questions, including when Mr. Bush acted and whether he did so on the advice or at the request of Mr. Cheney. Still unclear is the nature of the communication between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Also unknown is whether Mr. Bush fully realized what information Mr. Cheney planned to disclose through Mr. Libby or was aware of the precise use that Mr. Cheney intended to make of the material.

It has been known that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were focused on the uranium issue in June 2003, well before Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying that nothing he had seen on a mission to Niger for the C.I.A. confirmed that Mr. Hussein was seeking uranium.

If Mr. Bush acted that early, it would suggest that the administration was growing concerned as evidence emerged that the intelligence was flawed. But the White House account also appears to separate Mr. Bush from the involvement in the selective release of the information to a few reporters, first Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, then Judith Miller of The New York Times. Both say they met Mr. Libby; neither authored articles about the disclosure after their meetings.

A separate effort was occurring simultaneously at the White House to declassify a significant part of the estimate by July 18, 2003. It is unclear why that process was necessary if Mr. Bush had already authorized the release of the information.

The disclosure that Mr. Bush had spoken with Mr. Cheney about the release of material from the intelligence report on Iraq was made in a legal brief filed last Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Fitzgerald's brief indicates that Mr. Cheney spoke twice with Mr. Libby about the leak of information from the intelligence estimate. Their first conversation took place sometime at the end of June, according to lawyers with clients in the case. The Washington Post reported Saturday that Mr. Libby provided information from the estimate to Mr. Woodward on June, 27, 2003.

Mr. Fitzgerald divulged the White House leak effort as part of his legal maneuvering to restrict Mr. Libby's access to classified documents for use in his trial on perjury and obstruction charges. Mr. Libby has sought the material in an apparent effort to show that he was primarily focused on the intelligence estimate and might have misspoken when he was asked during the inquiry about his conversations with journalists relating to the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer.

Inside Baseball/Blogs

- Tim Sullivan
Thursday, April 6, 2006

1. San Francisco Giants: The Splash, on www.sfgate.com, and www.onlybaseballmatters.com. The good: Barry Bonds. The bad: Barry Bonds. The ugly: Barry Bonds.

2. Oakland A's: The Drumbeat on www.sfgate.com and www.athleticsnation.com. The good: Youth Brigade! The bad: Milton Bradley's temper. The ugly: attendance.

3. Los Angeles Dodgers: www.dodgerblues.com and www.6-4-2.blogspot.com (Dodgers/Angels blog). The good: They got rid of Jeff Weaver. The bad: press conferences with Grady Little. The ugly: Nomar's already injured.

4. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: www.halosheaven.com and www.mattwelch.com/warblog.html. The good: Vlad, the Impaler. The bad: the Lost Angels Angels of Anaheim? Sounds about right. The ugly: Disneyland.

5. Boston Red Sox: www.bostondirtdogs.com and www.sonsofsamhorn.com. The good: Coco Crisp. The bad: Beckett's blisters. The ugly: Tavarez.

6. New York Yankees: www.ingeorgewetrust.blogspot.com and www.waswatching.com. The good: money, money, money. The bad: the Curse of Pay-Rod. The ugly: Johnny Damon sold his soul to Satan.

7. New York Mets: www.metsblog.com and www.metsville.com. The good: Carlos (Beltran and Delgado). The bad: Pedro's toe. The ugly: Pedro's hair.

8. Chicago Cubs: www.viewfromthebleachers.com and www.bleedcubbieblue.com. The good: opening day beatdown on the Reds. The bad: Bartman. The ugly: billy goats.

9. Chicago White Sox: www.southsidesox.com and www.soxmachine.com. The good: Ozzie Guillen. The bad: A.J. Pierzynski. The ugly: They're scary good.

10. San Diego Padres: www.sdpf.blogspot.com and www.gaslampball.com. The good: Peavy! The bad: Piazza? The ugly: those godforsaken military camouflage uniforms.

11. Seattle Mariners: www.niceguysfinishthird.com and www.marinerds.blogspot.com. The good: Ichiro Suzuki and Kenji Johjima. The bad: that entire pitching staff. The ugly: Guardado meltdowns.

Page H - 3
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/06/NSG3AI0Q3K1.DTL

DAN SHAUGHNESSY

It'll be love at first sight with Sox

By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist  |  April 3, 2006

ARLINGTON, Texas -- They are a Greater Boston institution on a par with Harvard, Durgin Park, and the Swan Boats. They have their own Nation (which has gone global) and their own television station. They've rebuilt their sacred home office yet again, and next week they'll be on the face of their very own scratch card. We all know it doesn't get any bigger than that.

This is part of the reason the first game of any Red Sox season is a legitimate, only-in-Boston holiday -- like Evacuation Day, Patriots Day, and those other blow-off-work days that confound friends and relatives who don't live in New England.

Eighteen years after he was traded from the Boston organization and 18 months since he won the World Series with his bloody sock, Curt Schilling gets the ball this afternoon (no truth to the rumor that he arrived here on Air Force One with a macrobiotic chef), starting against the Texas Rangers in his first Opening Day assignment for the Red Sox. Schill says he's back in 2004 form (21-6) and he anchors a staff that could be one of the best in team history.

Much has happened since the Sox played their last game of consequence -- a limp Game 3 playoff loss to the world champion Chicago White Sox Oct. 7. In a winter that could only be characterized as hideous, wonderboy general manager Theo Epstein walked out in a huff (escaping Fenway in a gorilla suit on Halloween); the Sox said goodbye to Idiot heroes Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Bronson Arroyo, Bill Mueller, and Doug Mirabelli; the fishtank known as the 406 Club was demolished as part of the most extensive Fenway renovation since 1934; World Series stud Josh Beckett was acquired from the Marlins; Edsel Edgar Renteria was sent away while a new infield was acquired; breakfast of champions Coco Crisp took over in center; Manny Ramírez and David Wells asked to be traded (and were retained); and Epstein returned with the newfound power and attitude of Bill Belichick.

And so these 2006 Red Sox are a new-look team, stressing defense, pitching, and boredom -- unless you want to count Kung-Fu-fighting reliever Julian Tavarez, who has a chance to make his mark as the Dominican Carl Everett. Outside of Tavarez, and of course, Manny, the Idiot culture is gone and has been replaced by an organizational professionalism that would make Boss Steinbrenner proud. There are only nine players left from the 25-man World Series roster that thrashed the Cardinals in the magical autumn of 2004: Ramírez, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon, Mike Timlin, Schilling, Keith Foulke, Tim Wakefield, and Kevin Youkilis.

Nationally, this exodus of hair and talent has inspired many experts to dismiss the Red Sox as a noncontender and perhaps a third-place team in the vaunted American League East. The made-over Toronto Blue Jays are the flavor of the month in the April rags and a lot of prognosticators see the Yankees winning their ninth straight division title with the Jays vaulting into second place over a weakened Boston entry.

That opinion is not shared here. Not in the New York Times Co.-owned sports pages of Daddy Globe (the Times Co. owns 17 percent of the Red Sox). It says here this is the year the Red Sox finally vault over the Yankees and win the AL East outright for the first time since 1995 (ah, the Kevin Kennedy years). Despite the ridiculousness of the winter of 2005-06 (remember when Ben and Jed were co-GMs?), the Red Sox at this hour are perfectly capable of overtaking the Yankees.

It all goes back to pitching and defense. The Sox have starters named Schilling, Beckett, Wakefield, Wells, and Matt Clement. They have rookie stud Jonathan Papelbon warming up in the bullpen if one of the starters gets hurt. They have bolstered their pen (Papelbon again) and it actually looks like baseball-hating closer Foulke is back to his 2004 self. Sure the Yankees have Randy Johnson and closer Mariano Rivera, but the Pinstripes are lamenting the wounded wings of Carl Pavano (and you thought Renteria was a bad signing?) and Jaret Wright. Mike Mussina could implode at any moment. The Sox have far better pitching than the Yankees. Better defense, too: Mike Lowell, Alex Gonzalez, Mark Loretta, and J. T. Snow/Youkilis could be downright spectacular defensively.

The Sox have lost some punch, but not much. Crisp won't have the first half Damon had in 2005, but he's a better long-term solution and fans are going to love him the way they loved the Jesus action figure. Manny and Big Papi are the latter-day Ruth and Gehrig and that'll cover for diminished numbers from the infield. As for Wily Mo Peña, he'll make batting practice a must-see and maybe someday become a righty Mo Vaughn. Bottom line: the Sox can't match the 1-through-9 firepower of the Yankees' lineup, but Boston will score enough runs to win 95-100 games.

It is Opening Day 2006, all teams are 0-0, but the Red Sox this time are better than the Yankees. The wacky winter doesn't change that. So take the day off and watch Schill pitch to the Rangers and try not to overreact if your team loses the first game. The 2006 Red Sox may not win the World Series, but they are positioned to be sitting in first place in the American League East Oct. 1 when the season comes to a close.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.