“The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI are investigating a possible plot to kill Gov. Jeb Bush with a truck bomb in Tallahassee, law enforcement officials confirmed Thursday. “The governor, who had been out of state on a fundraising trip, was ‘safe and in good spirits,’ FDLE officials said. He returned to Tallahassee late Thursday from a fundraising trip in Pennsylvania,” The Miami Herald reports. The story about

David Brooks provides some interesting background on the relationship between Enron and members of the Clinton administration in his Weekly Standard piece, “Enron and the Clintonites.” Here’s the gist: […] the connections between the Clintonites and Enron remind us that the scandal is not the donations. The scandal is what gets done by federal officials in return for the donations. And while the Clintonites received less money from Enron than

“U.S. forces in Afghanistan have recently been informed that several more of Osama bin Laden’s top henchmen have been killed in U.S. airstrikes over the past three months, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.” The New York Post reports that “captured al Qaeda prisoners have told American interrogators of the deaths of 10 to 15 senior al Qaeda leaders in U.S. strikes that were not previously known, Rumsfeld told reporters.

We at protein wisdom are going to take this weekend to develop some “extended blogs” — tackling such issues as Ted Rall’s latest imbecility, pernicious kid-lit icons Curious George and Scooby Doo, the Village Voice, and the good folks who support PETA (and, it seems, certain politically-connected chickens). We urge you to check in often…

Reason’s Michael Lynch, in the 2/02-Issue, writes: “As the media exposed our Saudi Arabian allies as double-dealing despots, attention has turned to the practical: Can the Unites States live without Saudi oil, which, at 1.6 million barrels a day, accounts for 14 percent of our imports? the answers are mixed. The Wall Street Journal’s Susan Lee says we can, since other countries will simply sell more oil. Newsweek reached a

From U.S. News and World Report’s “Washington Whispers”: Memo to State Department employees: New boss Colin Powell is a nice guy, but he won’t excuse those who open porn sites on State Department Internet accounts, join X-rated chat rooms, or send out nasty E-mails. Proof: Probes and punishments are up for those who tap porn sites or send chain letters or jokes of questionable taste. Like, for instance, this joke

“In a kind of apotheosis of multiculturalism, the choicest al Qaeda suspects captured in the war on terrorism are about to take up residence under the American flag, at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. Navy base at the eastern tip of Cuba,” Claudia Winkler writes in The Weekly Standard. The arrival of the detainees from halfway around the world shouldn’t directly affect those not interrogating or guarding them or otherwise involved

Rich Lowry’s current NRO column takes on Norman Mineta and the rest of the Bush administration for its insistence that ethnic profiling play no part in airport security measures: As I write in the latest National Review, this is an instance of a piety of our racial politics

“A hospital admitted Thursday it mistakenly sent letters to 30 patients, including six elderly men, telling them they were pregnant,” Reuters reports. “They were sent by a computer system that automatically generates letters telling patients their operations have been postponed. “‘The girl operating the system has simply chosen the wrong option. It’s human error,’ a spokeswoman for the Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital said.” Edgar Reese Copperthwaite, 88, was

“The French parliament has voted to overturn a controversial legal ruling that established the ‘right not to be born,‘” BBC News reports. “The bill, passed with the support of the government, follows three cases in which judges ruled that families whose children were born with birth defects could sue because doctors did not spot the problems during pre-natal scans.” It states that ‘nobody can claim to have been harmed simply