Mouse burning down house story not true

Turns out the mouse thrown into the fire was dead, and wind blew the fire into the house.

Correction here.

UPDATE January 12: Now Mares is sticking by the original story!

DVD region encoding may kill Spielberg's chances for Bafta awards

The DVD screeners for Steven Spielberg's new film, "Munich," which were sent to members of the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Bafta) were inadvertently encoded for region one (U.S. and Canada) rather than region two (most of Europe). The DVDs, which had already arrived late due to a mess up at UK Customs, are unplayable in the DVD players of most of the Bafta members who received them.

The region encoding scheme is designed to prevent DVDs sold in one part of the world from being resold in other parts of the world. The encoding is actually fairly trivial to bypass, and many inexpensive DVD players made in China (such as those by Apex) have hidden menu options or easily modifiable firmware which allows DVD encoding protection to be disabled.

Premier PR, the company running the "Munich" PR campaign for Bafta, set up several preview screenings of the film in London, but many members of the organization live elsewhere in the UK.

Los Angeles traffic at night-time

Grass Collective makes "moving art" which includes a DVD of Los Angeles traffic at nighttime. It's pretty hypnotic. (Hat tip to BLDGBLOG.)

Cory Maye update: Public defender fired by town

Bob Evans, the public defender who has taken on the Cory Maye case, has been fired by the town of Prentiss. All appearances are that the mayor and aldermen took this action solely because of his defense of Maye. More at the Agitator.

rx / the party party

If you're not already familiar with "rx," George W. Bush's alter-ego, or if you haven't checked www.thepartyparty.com lately, there are now covers of "White Lines" and "Whole Lotta Love" in addition to "Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side," "My Generation," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday." Check it out.

U.S. troops seize Iraqi journalist and tapes

On January 8, 2006, U.S. troops broke into the home of Iraqi journalist Dr. Ali Fadhil, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children. Fadhil, who is working for UK's Guardian and Channel 4 on a story about misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars of Iraqi funds held by Americans and British, was hooded and taken for questioning, and released a few hours later. Video tapes made for his investigation were seized and have not been returned.

The troops told Fadhil they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent.

More at The Guardian.

Bush advisor says president has legal power to torture children

John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody - including by crushing that child's testicles.

John Yoo is one of the primary legal advisors to George W. Bush, responsible for legal reasoning to justify torture, warrantless wiretapping, and virtually anything else the president feels is necessary. Here's the exchange with Yoo, from a December 1, 2005 debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel:

Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

More description and a link to an audio clip here.

Bush circumvents hearing process to appoint unqualified head of refugee response team

George W. Bush continues his pattern of appointing unqualified people and bypassing rules and regulations that get in his way by appointing Ellen Sauerbrey to the post of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, a post that is responsible for a $700 million budget to address global refugee crises.

Sauerbrey began confirmation hearings in October 2005, but Sen. Barbara Boxer put off the vote until after the winter break. Bush took the opportunity to appoint her and about a dozen other candidates as "recess appointments" while Congress was out of session.

There's more on Sauerbrey's lack of qualifications and her conservative views at Salon.

Iraq war costs underestimated--could reach $1 trillion

In 2003, the Bush administration said that the $200 billion estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq from Larry Lindsey, Bush's economic advisor, was too high. Paul Wolfowitz suggested that the cost of reconstruction would be financed entirely by Iraq. Congress has so far appropriated $251 billion for military operations, and the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that we should expect another $230 billion in costs over the next ten years.

Now a paper by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes argues that the CBO's estimate leaves out some significant costs, like healthcare for injured soldiers--lifetime care for brain injuries alone may cost $35 billion. Their paper argues that $1 trillion is a conservative estimate of the total costs.

(Story at The Guardian.)

Rev. Lusk's support for Alito

In a Washington Post article about conservative Christian support for the confirmation of Samuel Alito, Rev. Herbert H. Lusk II, a recipient of over $1 million in federal grants from the Bush administration's Faith Based Initiative, says:

"My friends, don't fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics. And those the church has not buried, the church has made funeral arrangement for."

As Pharyngula points out, this sounds a little threatening...