Afghan Official Accused of Pecking With Impunity

A Kabul newspaper asks whether a condemned student's actions were worse than this. (By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" Cassel asked during an "off the record" debate before some 200 people at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

"No treaty," said Yoo, who's married to journalist Peter Arnett's daughter.

"Also no law by Congress," Cassel said. "That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo" on torture.

"I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that," Yoo explained.

(Note to students in Yoo's course: Do not even think about cutting class.)

D'Amato Announces Super Baby

As the polls opened yesterday morning, the first news was that former New York Republican senator and longtime Loop favorite Alfonse D'Amato, 70, reported that his wife, Katuria, 42, gave birth to their first son, Alfonse Marcello D'Amato.

D'Amato, a gift to journalism, left the Senate in 1999. He switched his support in this year's race to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) dropped out.

D'Amato's office released a statement that "Baby Alfonse was born at North Shore LIJ Hospital in Manhasset at 7:47 am weighing 5 lbs and 14.5 ozs. Both mother and son are doing fantastic."

"Not only was baby D'Amato born on Super Tuesday (and Fat Tuesday!), but the Senator was quick to note that the time the baby was born, 7:47 am, coincides with the 747 airplane. Katuria's mother worked at Boeing in Seattle for several years and Katuria sits on the board of the American Airpower Museum! They sure delivered a rocket."

The couple married in 2004.

Congress Getting FY 2009 Doorstops After All

There had been building anxiety on Capitol Hill over the Office of Management and Budget's announcement that the agency would no longer provide copies of the 2,000-plus-page FY 2009 budget to Congress. The Hill had reported that OMB chief Jim Nussle, a former House member himself, said members could look at the budget online or buy copies from the Government Printing Office.

Not to worry, Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who heads the Senate's Rules and Administration Committee, wrote members last week.

"Useful as it is, on-line access to a multi-volume . . . document cannot provide members and staff with the same degree of functionality as the printed version," the duo explained, pretending that members of Congress actually read so much as a page of the document or that staffers read anything more than sections of it.

So the Government Printing Office will deliver copies to congressional offices, at no charge to office accounts, Brady and Feinstein said.