ebonlock | (no subject)

If you haven't been following the story of one David Safavian lately, may I humbly point you to The Whiskey Bar where Billmon will lay out all the pertinent info and links you need to get caught up:

When Josh Marshall reported that the head (at least until last Friday) of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, one David Safavian, was arrested today on charges of making false statements and obstructing an IG's investigation, I have to admit, I kinda shrugged it off.

Granted, the guy used to work for Jack Abramoff, and was a guest on one of Jack's luxury golf junkets to Scotland, and tried to help a charitable front group controlled by Abramoff get its hands around some surplus federal property (an early version of Shrub's urban homesteading initiative, I guess) and then lied to investigators about it.

Did I mention that Safavian also used to work for Grover Norquist?

[...]

I could go on, but to tell you the truth, now that I've run down what everyone else has reported about Safavian and the the slime trail linking him to Davis, Norquist and Abramoff, I don't have anything original to add -- other than my deeply held suspicion that God has subcontracted the fashioning of reality to the spirits of Mark Twain and Franz Kafka, who are sitting around in heaven like a couple of coked up screenwriters, dreaming up ever more ridiculous characters and swapping increasingly absurd story lines.

No, wait, Twain says, I can top that . . .

Update 1:35 AM ET:

Kafka: Oh? Well what about zees, Herr Twain: What if zat verrückt president of yours tried to fill a critical homeland security post with a 36-year-old lawyer whose main credentials for ze job are zat she once worked for Ken Starr, and is der niece of Herr General Dick Myers?

Twain: OK, you got me there, Franz. Not even an idiot or a congressman -- I repeat myself -- would fall for a damnfool yarn like that. Not after Katrina. Now tell me the one about the fellow who turned into a cockroach again.

Oh, hey, and speaking of Dave, did you catch this story? Via No More Mister Nice Blog:

By the way, don't forget that young women in the North Marianas Islands -- a U.S. territory -- were apparently forced into sex slavery, and required to have abortions, while fine folks such as Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and newly indicted White House aide-until-just-a-few-days-ago David Safavian worked to keep the Marianas exempt from various U.S. laws relating to human trafficking, sexual abuse, and civil rights, not to mention the minimum wage. Over at Sisyphus Shrugged, Julia has a roundup of the relevant news stories.

And on a slightly different subject, Atrios rightly labels this story "WTF?"

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A British armored vehicle escorted by a tank crashed into a detention center Monday in Basra and rescued two undercover troops held by police, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official told CNN.

...

In a statement released in London, Reid did not say why the two had been taken into custody. But the Iraqi official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said their arrests stemmed from an incident earlier in the day.

The official said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several, including a traffic police officer. There were no fatalities, the official said.

The two gunmen fled the scene but were captured and taken in for questioning, admitting they were British marines carrying out a "special security task," the official said.

I've seen at least one picture of a British soldier leaping out of a flaming tank so far. This is just...wow...