Every once in a while when I need some comic relief, I go back and read the Vice President’s statement posted on Whitehouse.org:

In closing, please keep in mind that I’m speaking as the mastermind of a legislative agenda predicated almost exclusively on Social Darwinism when I confess that I experience a slight, non-pacemaker-induced pang of chestal discomfort each time so-called American citizens – like these WHITEHOUSE.ORG terrorists – err on the side of publishing ideologies that doom them to lifetimes of FBI monitoring, politically-motivated income tax audits, and – in special circumstances – mysterious newfound predilections to bathing fully clothed with a whole Radio Shack’s worth of plugged-in appliances. Do I have to remind anyone what happened to that Enron would-be snitch? No, I didn’t think so.

That case is history now, I believe, but taxpayer legal staff are at it again and apparently sending nasty memos to the Onion about the use of Presidential imagery such as their official seal. Emergent Chaos reports:

Silly Onion. Everyone knows the President reads and endorses Emergent Chaos, not the Onion. Who’d read anything with such a silly name?

From The New York Times, “Protecting the Presidential Seal. No Joke.”

PS: Dear Mr. Dixon, I’d like an exception for satirical use, but couldn’t find a form on your web site.

The Counterterrorism blog reminds us that Pakistan is still playing both sides of the fence, by working with the US to catch terrorist plots, while harboring the terrorists and even signing treaties with them:

As Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper explains, the Pakistani government has entered into a peace agreement with the Taliban insurgency that essentially cedes authority in the North Waziristan tribal region to the Taliban and al-Qaeda

What better country to hide in than a shaky ally of your enemy who has nuclear weapons capabilities? The duplicitous logic runs deep:

Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has proclaimed that the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan won’t be allowed into the tribal areas covered by this peace deal: “On our side of the border there will be a total uprising if a foreigner enters that area. It’s not possible at all, we will never allow any foreigners into that area. It’s against the culture of the people there.”

Taliban and al Qaeda are not foreigners? Do they mean non-fundamentalist Muslim when they say “foreigner”? Identities are so tricky when it comes to access control. Speaking of local identities and fighting, American troop casualties will decline as the civil war heats up in Iraq, according to the Telegraph:

American combat deaths in the capital are down 50 per cent on this time last year and some terrorists say the US has succeeded in deflecting attention from its own troops.

“Now we are fighting each other,” said one insurgent. “That is what the Americans wanted and now they are winning.”

[…]

Abu Tayseer, a Baghdad councillor, said he was very angry that the militias were fighting each other instead of the Americans.

Tens of thousands of people have fallen ill and seven have tied from shipping waste disposed of in Abidjan, an economic hub of the Ivory Coast with approximately four million residents. The latest figures reported show close to 40,000 people have visited a doctor in just a few days time as a result of the waste. Apparently more than 500 tons of highly toxic material was poured into fourteen city landfills. TerraDaily has an english translation of news about the crisis:

[Ivorian firm] Tommy is blamed for dumping the sludge — which has caused nausea, rashes, fainting, diarrhoea and headaches — onto ordinary Abidjan tips in August. [Dutch firm] Trafigura had planned to offload the oil sludge in Amsterdam in July but the Dutch authorities said they had refused to accept it because it was too toxic. The Dutch firm said it had finally offloaded the waste in Abidjan, on its way back from delivering a cargo of Estonian petrol to Nigeria, because the port was “one of the best equipped in west Africa” to treat it.

The Ivory Coast government resigned last week over the pollution scandal and seven people, including the heads of Tommy and two other local companies, have been arrested.

The health ministry announced on Wednesday it was recruiting 1,031 “young unemployed doctors, surgeons, dentists and chemists” to help cope with the flood of people seeking medical help.

Two Dutch environmental experts left on Monday to join the six French and three UN experts already in Abidjan and Switzerland is also planning to send help.

This incident is of such magnitude that it will surely impact the way toxic waste is regulated, and perhaps even how it is handled and disposed of, around the world.