Another Republican pleads guilty

Whenever I read something like this, from the AP:

A former congressional chief of staff to Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, pleaded guilty Monday in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, admitting he participated in a conspiracy to corrupt Ney and his aides with trips, free tickets and meals.

Neil Volz, 35, admitted that he engaged in the conspiracy for more than four years, both while he was Ney’s chief of staff and after he left to work for Abramoff.

Or this, from David Shuster on Countdown with Keith Olberman, via RawStory and Crooks and Liars: 

Well, Karl Rove’s legal team has told me that they expect that a decision will come sometime in the next two weeks. And I am convinced that Karl Rove will, in fact, be indicted. And there are a couple of reasons why. First of all, you don’t put somebody in front of a grand jury at the end of an investigation or for the fifth time, as Karl Rove testified a couple, a week and a half ago, unless you feel that’s your only chance of avoiding indictment. So in other words, the burden starts with Karl Rove to stop the charges. Secondly, it’s now been 13 days since Rove testified. After testifying for three and a half hours, prosecutors refused to give him any indication that he was clear. He has not gotten any indication since then. And the lawyers that I’ve spoken with outside of this case say that if Rove had gotten himself out of the jam, he would have heard something by now. [emphasis mine] 

All I hear is:

Are you ready? Hey! Are you ready for this?
Are you hangin' on the edge of your seat?
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
Repeating to the sound of the beat.

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
An' another one gone,
An' another one gone,
Hey! Gonna get you too!

Another one bites the dust

— Queen

Afghanistan

Remember Afghanistan, home of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden?

The place that harbored Osama and other Al-Qaida terrorists, that had an active role in helping Al-Qaida train and where the idea for the Sept. 11th attacks was formed?

The one the Decider conveniently forgot about once he got his way and invaded Iraq – which a country that had nothing to do with Al-Qaida, had no weapons of mass destruction, and no role in the Sept 11th attacks? 

Things are going swimmingly….
From the Associated Press:

An outspoken female legislator was physically and verbally attacked by her colleagues after saying on the parliament floor that some of Afghanistan’s mujahedeen leaders were criminals who shouldn’t now be lawmakers, officials said Monday.

Malalai Joya, who apparently was unhurt, said several female lawmakers hit her with empty plastic water bottles, while male lawmakers made death threats and lobbed insults at her after her speech on Sunday. One lawmaker had her hair pulled during the scuffle, another official said.
[snip]

“I said there are two kinds of mujahedeen in Afghanistan. One kind fought for independence, which I respect, but the other kind destroyed the country and killed 60,000 people,” Joya told The Associated Press.

Shukari Barikzai, another female lawmaker, said Joya’s speech accusing some lawmakers of being warlords was calm and dispassionate, but she was attacked anyway. She said one female lawmaker pulled the hair of a female colleague protecting Joya.

[snip]

On Monday, she again said Afghanistan’s parliament has former warlords and members loyal to the Taliban. She said death threats would not quiet her.

“They may kill me, they may slash my neck. I will never stop my words against the criminals, against the drug dealers,” she said.

Who is she talking about?

From the Christian Science Monitor:

"We are already a narco-state," says Mohammad Nader Nadery at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has studied the growing impunity of former military commanders and drug dealers who now work within the Afghan government.

"If the governors in many parts of the country are involved in the drug trade, if a minister is directly or indirectly getting benefits from drug trade, and if a chief of police gets money from drug traffickers, then how else do you define a narco-state?"

Abdul Karim Brahowie, Afghanistan's minister of tribal and frontier affairs, says that the government has become so full of drug smugglers that cabinet meetings have become a farce. "Sometimes the people who complain the loudest about theft are thieves themselves," he says.

[snip]

[…] the opium trade is deeply rooted in Afghan society. Many regional warlords and opponents of the Taliban are now top officials in the Karzai government. One of the most complicated – and delicate – tasks is to get corrupt officials to turn away from the drug trade as a source of personal income. [emphasis mine]