Downing street in the internet cafe

It's funny: the cheaper the motel, the more likely to find free high-speed Internet access. Here in Milwaukee we're at a Hyatt, and the wi-fi costs ten bucks a day, so I said the hell with it.

This morning we're at the very fine Stone Creeek Cafe down on East Wisconsin St., where you park on the street at a meter for two hours and have a decent latte (and a power pastry, we all need power), and I finally get a little mail.

Much of the political stuff centers on the Downing Street Memo, and P. sends two stories that seem really important to me. The first concerns the recent meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, whose Democrats are apparently considering a Resolution of Inquiry. Don't get too excited, but that could be the first step in a pre-impeachment hearing. Wouldn't that be nice?

Steve Cobble writes about this at The Nation: Opinion

But an even more important link takes you to an article in The (online) Nation about the Washington Post's handling of this emerging story. It shows the Democratic congressmen still have some spunk: The Nation: report on Washington Post story

Speaking of the media, crucial reporting, and truth, Robert Parry has a provocative column on AfterDowningStreet.org which not only suggests what the Left needs to do to correct the sad state of press coverage of the Iraq war and its inception, but also analyzes clearly and efficiently the reasons for the present largely Rightist tilt of the mainstream media. It's worth reading.

I've been meaning to mention, too, a Washington Spectator column that ran a while back. (At the website you'll have to dig a little to find the original report; I left our hard copy back in the hotel.)

It's fascinating: it covers the panel of luminaries, including Jimmy Carter, James Baker, and Tom Daschle, into voting irregularities in Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, resulting in discrepancies between exit polls and the official count. Why is this interesting? Because they're just like the discrepancies that were discovered in the Ukraine and in Georgia, where election outcomes had to be reversed.

(Of course this raises, or "begs" as American English is beginning to say, a question: If a president is unseated because it's proved his election was fraudulent, what happens to the officers he appointed while in office?)