As The New York Times reported today, Congressional republicans are responsible for the online publication of a how-to manual for building nukes. The manual in question dates from 1991, and was compiled by the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, which then fell prey to sanctions after the first Gulf War.

So what are they doing now?

The 'latest news' link on the web site of the House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by our very own Peter King, leads with an item from October 18th. The newest release on King's own web site is dated September 2006.

In order to rescue their discredited pre-war claims about Iraqi WMDs, congressional republicans and their flying-monkey allied interest groups pressured the Bush administration to put an archive of captured Iraqi documents online, for examination by their partisans looking for data supporting these claims. The rationale is clear: a political benefit.

In the process, they also made available online detailed accounts of pre-1991 nuclear weapons research, including material that could help other researchers avoid mistakes made by the Iraqis. These documents were online for several weeks.

The IAEA protested to American government officials about these documents last week; however, the online archive was not shut down until the New York Times made inquiries yesterday.

From The New York Times:

The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.

Four days to go. Today's news cycle is critical.

The newest scorecard from ElectoralVote.com: Senate 49 Democrats, 49 republicans, 2 ties, House 241 Democrats, 193 republicans, 1 tie.

Rothenberg: Democrats win Congress and a state-level majority of seven to nine governorships.

The New York Times: eager to remind folks what a bad guy Saddam was, congressional republicans caused an archive of Iraqi documents to be placed online. Unfortunately, among the documents was a basic guide to building nukes. Republicans: so stupid they're dangerous.

Also in the Times: On the other hand, transparency shouldn't go too far. That's why republicans shut down the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction; this office had done the unthinkable and actually held people to account for fraud, waste and abuse of public funds in Iraq.

The Washington Post describes the travels of George, whom the White House is not letting go anywhere but deeply red parts of the country.

Also in WaPo, another prominent religious leader/homophobic bigot, evangelical Ted Haggart of Colorado, is in disgrace after it was revealed that he's been rubbing sinful flesh with a gay hooker for the last three years. No news on whether he's a top or a bottom. Here's some video of Haggart from the movie JesusLand:

Lastly, The Albany Times-Union profiles John Hall.

Welcome to our first ever Blog-In theater.

Thanks to the treasure trove of public domain movies I have found on Video.Google, I am going to make it a point for us to have a saturday matinées at the blog.

This is similar to what I have started at culturekitchen. Over there though, I can run a chat (you need to be a member to participate). Over here what we can do is do a "live-commenting" event Sunday afternoon ... OR ... if you are on AIM, we can do a chat using that and then posting the results on the site.

Back to the movie.

This is the original eco-terrorist and nuclear mutant-freak Godzilla; not the saviour of Japan reinvented in the 1960s. It has a very young Raymond Burr as, Steve Martin (the irony!) the American documentarian of this iguanadonian catastrophe. It oozes post-WW2 cheeziness through each reel hole.