Al-Qaeda to U.S. Politicians: We Won

It's no secret that al-Qaeda loves to meddle with American politics. In fact, the appearance of a bin Laden videotape helped ensure a re-election for George W. Bush in the 2004 elections against anti-war advocate John Kerry. And now, al-Qaeda is taking credit for the USA's midterm election results as well. "You aren't the ones who won the midterm elections," said Ayman al Zawahiri in a recent tape released. "Nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen - the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq - are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost."

*TDIN neither agrees nor disagrees, for the sake of ambiguity. (This isn't a site we're much political commentary is published, so, you'll have to be content to form your opinion without my input this time.)
(Click here to read the rest of the article from ABC News' The Blotter.)

Report: AP fabricated source, Mosque masacre made-up

Did they, or didn't they? That's the question surrounding the Iraqi offices of the Associated Press, where it sounds like they might have made up at least one police officer's name and perhaps fabricated accounts of a horrible scene of death and carnage. The AP has put out a article detailing witness accounts. (Warning: Story contains graphic descriptions)

But this story hasn't become a firestorm among certian bloggers because of what the AP is saying about themselves, it's about what others are saying about the AP. The AP's main source for this particular news story was a "Capt. Jamil Hussein," a man that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior says is not a Baghdad police officer nor a MOI employee. In other words, the man quoted in the story does not exist, as far as the Iraqi government is concerned. In addition, the American government is denying that it had any operations in the area at the time the article stated, and as such, what the article said happened simply did not.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Is America's main source of news lying about events in the war, or is the government trying to cover-up a terrible violenent event? That's not for TDIN to say. But we can help you to make up your mind on this issue. Below are some suggested sites for continued reading on this complex, troubling scandal.
- AP: Witnesses detail Iraqi burning deaths
- Flopping Aces (Main site that helped break the story)
- Opinion Column: Pro-AP
- Opinion Column: Anti-AP
- Article talking about the whole complicated mess

Short Ends: Terrorist as Drag Queens

Time for some short ends, stories that we found across the internet that we thought we should bring to your attention.

• ABC's Gretchen Peters reports on a new tactic that al-Qaeda has taken up to avoid being captured: dressing in drag.
• A story on MSNBC reports on an insurance company who won a court battle over flooding damage related to Hurricane Katrina. The verdict? Insurance policies did not cover the wind-driven flooding damages.
• The AP reports that federal authorities do not have enough information to press terrorism charges against the men who were found with 1,000 cell phones in their possession. The fear was that the team would attack Michigan's Mackinac bridge, which connects the upper and lower pennisulars.
• Outgoing Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) gave her first public address following her election loss at the polls last week, in which she spoke out against electronic voting machines.
• British Airway passengers are a little upset... Ever since the recent security measures were put in place in Britain's airports in connection with the London Plot, a shocking 10,000 bags have been misplaced.
• The computer manufacturer Dell is recalling 4.1 million batteries produced by Sony. The reason? The batteries may suddenly burst into flames.
• In an unsurprising turn of events, a recent national survey found that more Americans can identify pop culture icons than Supreme Court justices.

Government Efficiency Act shot down on House floor

What if we could significantly cut down on government waste? On all the pork barrel spending that goes on in Congress? But what if the price for such accountability was a new position that being decried by critics as possibly unconstitutional? Enter the Government Efficiency Act, a proposed congressional bill that would create new independent review commissions to evaluate whether certain federal programs should be continued, reorganized or abolished. Shot down on the House floor on Thursday, sponsors of the bill said that Congress is just plain too busy to have such commissions of it's own. Critics said that the bill was tantamount to outsourcing Congress's constitutional oversight role.

The bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KA), said that simple politics prevents Congress from making meaningful cuts in spending. "Every government program impacts someone else's constituents," he said. "A commission recommendation on government efficiency would go through the regular committee process on an expedited schedule. Committees could amend the recommendation before it goes to the full body for a mandatory vote."
According to the Wichita Eagle, the proposed law would "let either Congress or the president create federal commissions to evaluate specific federal programs and make recommendations for how they could be changed or abolished to reduce duplication or wasteful spending."

However, critics saw the proposed bill in a far less favorable light. Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), who currently serves on the Government Reform Committee with Tiahrt, said that the outsourcing that the bill call for was unnecessary. "A schedule that has us out of Washington so much of time is not efficient or economical," he said at a hearing last week. "But... a potentially unconstitutional delegation of our jobs is not necessary to fix this inefficiency."

Ultimately, the critics won out as Republicans pulled the bill from the floor. "We didn't have the votes we needed," the spokesman for Tiahrt, Chuck Knapp, told the Wichita Eagle. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that the bill failed because Republicans failed to take the bill too seriously, and says that the Democrats plan to make their own announcements on how to reduce government waste. "I'm all for looking at waste, fraud and abuse," she said.

While the Democrats plot their counter-bill, Tiahrt isn't done, yet. If he can get it on the calendar, he plans to push the bill for a House vote again in September.

Sources: ABC's The Blotter, Wichita Eagle, Supporters of bill, Detractors of bill