AUSTIN, Texas -- Is it just me, or was that the worst presidential press conference in history? So I went back and read it over. Of course, in print you don't get the testy tone: I heard it on radio and thought the man was about to blow up -- not just because he was being questioned, which Bush appears to consider an offensive action in the first place, but because people continue to refuse to see things the way he does. How can they be so stupid or malign, he appears to wonder.

I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?

Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well.

It is ridiculous that you're email address contains the word 'truth' as your columnist Andrew Cockburn has recently proved himself to be a liar in his September 8th article 911 Conspiracy Nuts.

For him to claim that there are pictures which exist of the aftermath of the pentagon wreckage which purport to show the outline of 'wings' surrounding the initial impact zone is prepostrous!

Show me these photos, or forever consider yourselves part of the mainstream media, nothing but distraction.

For The Guardian (UK) -- Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded?  You bet it is.  Has been for more than a decade.  Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created?  Just ask the "smart pig."

Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system.  I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline.  I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

ACTION NEEDED: Contact your Governor NOW!

The Senate version of the FY 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (HR 5427), approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 29, 2006, authorizes the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to take irradiated nuclear fuel currently housed at commercial reactors and temporarily store it at federal sites. The “interim” storage sites, termed Consolidation and Preparation (CAP) facilities, would be located within a state or regional site for up to 25 years, without the possibility of license extensions. Current DOE sites would be the most likely locations. If enacted, this provision would result in a dangerous transformation of the nation’s nuclear waste policy without the prospect of a public debate or hearings.

Currently, more than 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is piling up at nuclear power plants in 31 states, awaiting geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. However, a series of scientific, political and technical problems have delayed the opening of Yucca Mountain.

Dear Friends: Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) is about to plead guilty to two federal charges in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal. This is good news and bad news.

The good: Ney will be getting his just desserts. The bad: Ney will disappear from the media radar screen, while they focus on current "hot" stories like the next runaway bride or Paris Hilton's latest romance. Brad Friedman connected the dots from Ney to the stolen 2004 election in Ohio via his former aide-turned lobbyist David DeStefano and Diebold (oh, what a tangled web they weave!), but with Congressman Bob no longer on the ballot and now apparently headed to tennis camp somewhere, this part of his story might get lost.

It's up to us to keep it alive. Onward and upward...