The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Outrageous Outtakes | Ari Berman: "** Remember when Tom Ridge upped the terror alert in the run-up to war in Iraq? Then again after Abu Ghraib and the 9/11 Commission hearings in May? Then three days after the Democratic Convention for New York and New Jersey? And it stayed orange all the way through the election. Finally, with Bush safely re-elected, Ridge lowered the alert a week before the inaugural. "In retrospect," the Washington Post wrote, "[the alerts] were based largely on faulty intelligence, dated information or...an educated guess." Thanks for informing us now."

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"** While DC pays, who parties? Corporations and their executives. According to a report by Public Citizen, corporate fat cats donated 96 percent of the $24.9 million raised as of Tuesday, with the finance and investment sectors leading the way at $6.3 million. In no way did Bush's plan to privatize Social Security influence their charity."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)