The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 19 Oct.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

• A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election season debate over lobbyists' White House access, according to AP.
  
  The Washington Post asked for two years of White House visitor logs in June but the Secret Service refused to process the request. Government attorneys called it "a fishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency."
  
  Clinton appointed U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld. Does the story come into clearer focus?

• An elderly priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex, reports AP.
  
  The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, speaking by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, said a report in the Sarasota Herald- Tribune about their encounters was "exaggerated."
  
  The Washington Posts scintillates readers with seedy homoerotic imagery in the headline: Priest Admits Intimate Contact With Mark Foley -- Retired priest acknowledges "light touching," but denies having "sexual intercourse" with Foley during encounters 40 years ago.
  
  You would think a liberal rag like the Post would be more sensitive about gay issues. In a way, the Post amplifies a popular misconception about gays being pedophiles (Recall the stories about Michael Jackson? Too, the press would have us all believe all priests are pedophiles). In any event, Mark Foley, who resigned his congressional seat two weeks ago, is still in the news and the ethics violations of Harry Reid go largely unnoticed. Is that fish I smell?

• Speaking of liberal rags, The New York Times Co. reported Thursday that its third-quarter 2006 profit from continuing operations plunged 39.2% on costs related to its job cuts and a loss on its sale of its 50% stake in the Discovery Times Channel, according to E&P. Perhaps the Times will have to initiate wide scale job cuts like NBC Universal, who today made news by announcing $750M in cuts by reducing staff, scripted shows, and news budget, according to The Canadian Press. If you listen closely you can hear violins playing in the distance. I wonder if Olbermann's job is on the line? It's not like that matters, his ratings are so far off the radar as it is.

• Reuters reports Sting said contemporary rock music is so stagnant that he prefers to sing 16th century English ballads.
  
  

  "Rock music has come to a standstill -- it's not going forward any more, it only bores me," Die Zeit quoted Sting as saying.

• File this story under "rock music at a standstill." Geriatric rockers The Who will return with their first album since 1982. AP reports Most of the 24 years since the last time the Who released a new album passed with the group's creative force, guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, believing there would never be another one.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "counterfeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive", in a live broadcast on state television, reports AFP. Additionally, AFP reports Ahmadinejad has reaffirmed in a live broadcast that the country will not back down even "an inch" from its nuclear programme, including enrichment of uranium. David Saperstein once said:
  
  

  "An extremist with a microphone can be dangerous enough; an extremist with nuclear weapons poses a danger to the entire world."

• In more news about nut-jobs with atomic bombs, if President Bush continues to ask North Korea to "kneel," war "will be inevitable," and it would begin on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean Gen. Ri Chan Bok told "Good Morning America" anchor Diane Sawyer, in an exclusive interview inside North Korea.

• And finally, ROO TV treats us to a Send in the Clowns Convention video.

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