General Augusto Pinochet "who terrorized his opponents for 17 years after taking power in a bloody coup, died Sunday, putting an end to a decade of intensifying efforts to bring him to trial for human rights abuses blamed on his regime. He was 91." according to Yahoo! News. Though his death may finally give thousands of people who he was responsible for repressing, torturing, and killing, it is nonetheless too bad that that he was never forced to stand trial for his crimes against humanity. This is direct relic of good old fashioned american gunboat diplomacy for those of you who dont recall, where the legimitally elected socialist president of Chile, Salvadore Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup orchestrated by the CIA. The following suppression led to the "dissappearance" (ie. abducted by the Chilean secret police and subsequent torturing, raping, and killing) of literally thousands of dissidents, intellectuals, protesters, and inconvenient bystanders.
Next, the US House Ethics "committee harshly criticized SpeakerDennis Hastert, R-Ill., saying the evidence showed he was told of the [Foley] problem months before he acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former Louisiana page. It rejected Hastert's contention that he couldn't recall separate warnings from two House Republican leaders.", according to the AP. This is no surprise to those of us who have paid attention to the gross misconduct perpetrated by the Republicans over the last 6 years, where might made right, regardless of the price. Funny that the party that claims the moral high ground on family values issues keeps getting busted with shit like this. Paedophiles, drug use with gay prostitutes, outright lying and covering up, welcome to the GOP.
And finally, the dismal 109th Congress is finally over. But just to prove how pathetic they are, they rammed thru a decisive and moronic final bill which only approved a temporary government spending bill (a stop gap measure), renewed the Bush tax breaks for the rich (thereby increasing our 8.6 trillion dollar national debt to an ever deeper hole), and cut medicare by 5% (among many other draconian things). Yahoo! News covered the story fairly well.
