Smelly Fish

From the “its so silly, its true” segment. Kofi Annan gave a speech the other day about increasing anti-terrorism measures. Sounds good, except that he apparently specifically mentioned increasing punishment for suicide bombers. Those of us outside the UN asked ourselves what Mr. Annan had in mind? Jail terms sound nice, but one blogger noted that you would have to make the bars real close together or the pieces of the bomber might be able to work their way through.

Also pinging on the UN radar, the organization admitted that it paid for the legal fees of UN Oil-for-Food program aide Benon Sevan. Mr. Sevan is one of the major players in the alleged dirty dealing concerning taking oil from Iraq and either pocketing the money or allowing Saddam Hussein to buy all sorts of goodies for himself rather than spend the money on food and medicine for the Iraqi people. Congress and an internal branch of the UN are investigating the incidents.

Also picking up a slightly rotten stench is the discussion of the supposed Republican Talking Points Memo. For those of you not familiar with this: ABC and the Washington Post ran a story on Monday, I think, where a memo from one Republican senator (alleged to be Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania) circulated to all 55 members of the GOP senate telling them that the Terry Schiavo case was political gold and would score the GOP points with pro-life voters back in their home states. The said memo was unsigned and apparently printed on simple paper with no letterhead, much as if someone had just typed it up in Word. All members of the GOP have denied both authorship and even seeing such a memo. ABC has published the text of the memo but apparently has not produced the actual memo for examination, possibly fearing Rathergate type implications.

But it’s already too late. The conservative and MSM watchdog bloggers have already pounced on the story, looking for evidence on either side as to the authenticity of the memo. Powerline linked to a couple of sites that have pointed out both several flaws in the memo with the facts of the bill, but that apparently the entire text was copied, verbatim from a post at the Traditional Values Coalition website. No Rather-type stonewalling has come from either ABC or the Washington Post yet but both organizations are currently still insisting that the document is authentic.

Stay Tuned.