Links and Minifeatures 06 11 Sunday

Washington Post has an article giving the story (as told by the Post) of the Marine squad leader and others at Haditha. I do not know whether the Iraqi account of an atrocity or this account is closer to being correct, but it's a long way from settled as to whether anything untoward happened there.



The Marines' lawyers say that their accounts are consistent, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, the lawyers having a primary responsibility to their clients.



I know which I'm inclined to believe in the absence of further evidence, but the investigation is ongoing, and soon enough we will all have more in the way of answers. If the Marines involved are guilty, they should be punished to whatever degree they are individually culpable. If they are not, they deserve an apology, to be made whole for what they have been put through, and their accusers need to be investigated for the making of false accusations.



Mudville Gazette has more.



Blue Star Chronicles comes up with some interesting information.

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Jack the cat chases black bear up tree



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Manatees off Fla. endangered species list Mind you, it's a state list and has no effects on their federal status. But this is a good thing, denoting the fact that there are more of them than there used to be. Why, then, are the environmental groups, who should be jumping for joy, doing this?

"As species like the manatee are reclassified to a less imperiled status before their populations have actually recovered, state funding for research, management and law enforcement will likely be directed elsewhere," said attorney Martha Collins.



Collins represents 17 environmental groups who last week filed a petition with the state seeking to have the entire protection classification system revamped.

aka moving the goalposts? The idea of conservation is to have the populations actually recover to stable levels, not to be perpetually endangered. Of course, if the population has recovered, there really isn't any need to keep working quite so hard and spending so much money on it, is there? We're talking unemployed conservationists! Only I don't see why they should be any more insulated from economic reality than anyone else is.



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Iowahawk has the afterlife report from Zarqawi.



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Negotiator: Iran Wants Unconditional Talks



Yeah, they'll take all the carrots they can get. But they want this talk of sticks gone. The best way to do that? Marginalize the one country with the fortitude to make them happen.



"...told reporters that Iran would not accept the proposal if it contains any threats of punishment in case of rejection"



If I have no intention of committing a certain act, I'm probably not interested in the consequences of that act. But if I'm intending to do something like , for example, build nuclear weapons, I'd be real concerned if the world was willing to do something to stop me from having them.



Reuters has a few more details, most notably that Iran is refusing to give up what it sees as its "rights".



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enrevanche installed the latest betas of the new MS OS. He's not impressed, although I'm not certain you're allowed to short shares for as long as he's talking about.



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Thanks to Ramona going to visit her folks for the day, I've got four articles for the week ready to go. I think that the Wednesday and especially Thursday articles are particularly worth reading. I'll try to stay a little bit ahead of the game for a week or two.



By the way, Chris at Powerblogs told me not to edit or add any more articles to the main real estate chain until he fixes his software. Since he hasn't gotten back to me on my question as to whether it would help to pull out the real estate articles out from the mortgage ones, I'm just starting a new chain for the time being.