Harpers

If you don't ever see this weekly compilation, you ought to. Harpers took a little from the Speccie to give them their due, but it is a marvelous way of memorializing the "news".

So for last week................

The military junta in Myanmar put the official death toll
from last week's Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for "daffodil") at
28,458, while foreign observers, taking into account that
heavy rains were expected to continue, with malaria,
tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery to follow,
expected that as many as 100,000 people would die. Before
distributing foreign-aid packages, the junta re-labeled
them with the names of its generals; a referendum on a new
constitution that will perpetuate the junta's rule was not
delayed. "Let's go cast a vote," sang two female pop
vocalists on state-run television. "With sincere thoughts
for happy days, let's go cast a vote." John Goodyear, whom
Senator John McCain had chosen to manage this year's
Republican convention and who once managed public
relations for the Myanmar junta, stepped down, and one in
four Republicans voted against McCain in primaries in
North Carolina and Indiana. Senator Barack Obama crushed
Senator Hillary Clinton in the North Carolina Democratic
primary, lost by a small margin in Indiana, and then took
the lead in pledged superdelegates. Clinton pointed out
that she still enjoys support from hard workers and white
people. "A woman is like a teabag," she said, quoting
Eleanor Roosevelt. "You never know how strong she is until
she's in hot water." One hundred seventy-eight House
Republicans voted against a resolution "celebrating the
role of mothers in the United States," and Yup'ik-speaking
voters in Alaska demanded better bilingual election
materials, citing a 2002 ballot in which "natural gas" had
been rendered as "this gas in the stomach."

U.S. military reports on the interrogation of four
captured Shia militia members concluded that Hezbollah was
training small groups of Iraqi insurgents in Iran. John
Bolton, ex-ambassador to the United Nations, said that
attacking Iran was "really the most prudent thing to do";
the Iraqi government said that it would conduct its own
inquiry. "We do not want to start a conflict with Iran,"
said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. "We need
our own government documentation of this interference, not
from the Americans, not from the media." The U.S.-backed
government of Lebanon tried to dismantle Hezbollah's
extensive telecommunications network there, and Hezbollah
temporarily seized half of Beirut. "The hand that touches
the weapons of the resistance," said Hezbollah leader
Hassan Nasrallah, "will be cut off." One Wing, a bald
eagle that lost its other wing in the 1989 Exxon Valdez
oil spill, died of a heart tumor, shortly after the death
of its mate, The Old Witch; three northern elephant seals
were found shot in the head, lying in pools of blood, in
San Simeon, California, near the Hearst castle. Oil
exceeded $125 a barrel. Refined french-fry grease was 32
cents per pound, up 20 cents from 2006.

The FBI raided the headquarters of the Office of Special
Counsel, a federal watchdog agency charged with protecting
government whistleblowers, and the home of its director,
Scott J. Bloch, after Bloch was accused of destroying
evidence on government computers. David S. Addington, Vice
President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was subpoenaed by
the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution,
Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and the Humane Society
of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, increased to $1,500 its
reward for information about the torture and murder of a
ten-year-old blind pony named Kahlua. DNA tests revealed
that a skull long thought to be that of German playwright
Friedrich Schiller was not his. "Such an exact double,"
said anthropologist Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, "couldn't
have got into the coffin just by accident." Three
home-schooled teenagers in Texas were accused of digging
up the corpse of an 11-year-old boy and smoking pot out of
the skull. "He regurgitated in his plate of food when I
asked him about it," a policeman said of one of the
boys. "So I knew there was some truth to the story."
Mildred Loving, a black woman whose 1958 marriage to a
white man led the Supreme Court to declare bans on
interracial marriage unconstitutional, died at age 68, and
two women in Denver, Colorado, were found guilty of
trespassing after they refused to leave the office of a
county clerk who denied them a marriage license. "They
held hands as long as they could," said Rev. Michael
Morran, who was there to conduct the ceremony, "until the
officers put their hands in handcuffs and led them away."
Pop country singer Eddy Arnold, known for such hits as
"Make the World Go Away," died just days before his
ninetieth birthday. "He died," said Grand Ole Opry star
Jim Ed Brown, "of a broken heart."