A Public Affairs Smorgasbord

Ah, Those Little-Known Legislative Rules. No Wonder Everybody Loves Congress So Much
Maybe if when you were a kid and you had a secret club, and you had second thoughts about letting somebody in your club, but you did, and then that kid all of a sudden used an arcane provision in your club rules to seal off the treehouse and go into an even-more secret session, you can sympathize a little bit with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican, whose rage is depicted up and down our top links today (he's also our no. 10 key person). Minority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, got them to pull up the ladder to the treehouse Tuesday and put the cardboard shutters on the windows, because (he said) the Senate needed to discuss the rationale for which the United States entered the war in Iraq. The Republicans were so angry that at times they were spinning around in circles, and in a town where they've got a Supreme Court nominee coming up soon, they certainly won't forget when another kid embarrassed them in their own backyard.

For A Secret War, Secret Prisons
Speaking of hush-hush proceedings, BlogPulse features a few stories today about another point of controversy roiling the nation's capital: the string of secret prisons used by the CIA to detain, interrogate (and torture) terrorism prisoners. Even the Bush Administration itself is divided on how exactly to use the foreign-based installations, according to the NYT, and how brutal the intelligence officers acting in our name are permitted to be. This line of discussion has made many bloggers uneasy, including Professor Bainbridge, who wrote: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact, but there are limits beyond which a civilized democracy should not go." Who said anything about 'civilized?'

Other Affairs Of State Carry On, Too
There are lots of other things to learn about in BlogPulse today, too, as loyal readers will no doubt discover... President Bush isn't a man who carries a lot of gear, it seems; bloggers just can't seem to let go of Lamb and Lynx; and Michelle Malkin, who never tires of sanctimoniously decrying "the left" and its "vile bile- filled political discourse" ::yawn!:: is at it again. If it all seems like too much — and darn if it doesn't — consider planning a getaway to Denver. They seem like they know how to chill out there.

BlogPulse Improvements
Whether you've noticed or not (and we hope you did), BlogPulse's performance
is now much speedier when returning links and performing searches, thanks to
the ever-diligent BlogPulse engineering team. A combination of upgraded
hardware and software tweaks should make BlogPulse about four times faster.
Enjoy!