And the loons on the moor, the fish in the flow

* From Ed Sander's 1968: A History in Verse

"The 9:45 am entry in Sirhan Sirhan's diary
on May 18:

'My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more
the more of an unshakable obsession port wine port
wine port wine R.F.K. must die -- R.F.K. must be killed
Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated R.F.K. must be
assassinated R.F.K. must be assassinated R.F.K. must
be assassinated...'

and repeated nine more times before the grim words:

'Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June
1968.'

Although it appears to me that the words 5 June 1968
were written in a different handwriting
and the the pages of this diary
might have been written druning robo-mumble

Anything mentioned in the presence of a subject
under hypnosis is automatically etched into his mind
especially if it comes from the hypnotist,
and it might flow out at any time

His handles could have
made sure incriminating notebooks
were written, or perhaps,
Mr. Sirhan might have quick-scripted
some of his note pages
in a 'trance regression.'"

* A must read letter from Iraq at Talking Points Memo.

* The roots of torture: How the Bush Adminstration rewrote the rules. excerpt:

"The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive, policy of interrogation in a covert war—designed mainly for use by a handful of CIA professionals—evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war. Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break prisoners' resistance to interrogation."