The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 17 Feb.

Look who's not smiling now.
It's the end of the world as we know it...

• Senate Republicans today blocked a floor vote on a House-passed non-binding resolution that expresses disapproval of President Bush's plan to send thousands of additional U.S. troops to Iraq, reports The Washington Post, The Associated Press and others.
  
  It was the second time this month that minority Republicans successfully filibustered a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop buildup.
  
  Sen. Joe Lieberman joined 33 Republicans in opposing the motion.
  
  

  "A vote in support of the troops that is silent on the question of funds is an attempt to have it both ways," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP leader. "So we are asking for an honest and open debate."

  South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Senate Democrats feared funding votes because it would put numerous presidential candidates on record on the contentious issue.
  
  

  "If you did have this vote, the radical left would eat every Democratic hopeful for president alive," Graham said.

  We can only speculate how disappointed House Speaker Pelosi is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to bring in the votes needed to pass the House resolution. In any case, Washington Post Staff Writer Peter Baker says the failed vote is just the first of more actions the Democrats will use to challenge Bush for the remainder of his presidency.

• Speaking of disappointed (Or is that disappointing?) women, Britney Spears, well on her way to becoming the new Anna Nicole Smith, home after one day at an addiction treatment center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, is sporting a new look, reports ABC7.com.

• Reuters reports police called to a Long Island man's house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.
  
  

  "You could see his face. He still had hair on his head," Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home's low humidity had preserved the body.

  Perhaps the deceased was bored to death watching reruns of old Britney Spears videos?

• An elderly woman who had been living without power in her home due to hurricane damage was finally seeing the light Friday night, when power to her home was restored. What makes her story amazing is that the hurricane which put her in the dark was Andrew, almost 15 years ago, and she's been living without power to her house since August 24, 1992, reports CBS4.com.

• Victoria Toensing, writing in The Washington Post, says If we accept Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald 's low threshold for bringing a criminal case in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, then why stop at Libby? This investigation has enough questionable motives and shadowy half-truths and flawed recollections to fill a court docket for months. Toensing goes on to list her own personal bills of indictment.

• And finally, it says a lot about how unoriginal and uninspired things are in Hollywood when Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has become Paramount's single most profitable release. From Variety.

Tags: Decline and Fall of Western Civ, Open Thread, Wire, Headlines, United States
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