The new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, seems to agree, albeit it politely, with the most of the civilized world that Dick Cheney and his crew are nuts.

From the Times …

He rejected the counsel of those who might urge immediate attacks inside Iran to destroy nuclear installations or to stop the flow of explosives that end up as powerful roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing American troops.

With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region “has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.” The military option, he said, should be a last resort.

…

He pushed back against those who are calling for military action against Iran’s nuclear program, saying that diplomatic and economic pressure must take precedence.

The threat to American and allied troops from high-powered explosives from Iran, he said, should be countered by halting their flow into Iraq or Afghanistan across the borders, and with attacks on those bomb-making and bomb-planting cells inside Iraq or Afghanistan.

“That said, that doesn’t get at the source of it,” he acknowledged. Asked whether the American military should aim at sites inside Iran if intelligence indicated that such interdiction could halt the flow of those bombs, he said “the risks could be very, very high.”

“We’re in a conflict in two countries out there right now,” he added. “We have to be incredibly thoughtful about the potential of in fact getting into a conflict with a third country in that part of the world.”

State Department contracting is massively screwed up.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) is apparently pulling out of the Virginia senate contest. That leaves embarrassingly failed presidential candidate and former Gov. Jim Gilmore as the probable Republican challenger. And unless I’m missing something that comes close to guaranteeing Sen. Warner (D).

Shirley MacLaine says Dennis Kucinich received messages from a UFO when visiting her in Washington state. And his campaign’s not denying it.

This isn’t the first time that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has dabbled in, um, the extraterrestrial. Here’s an excerpt from a 2003 piece in his hometown Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Kucinich, for instance, appears on the August 2002 cover of Whole Life Times, billed as a “Journal of the Holistic Lifestyle,” which is published in Malibu.

In it, he also responds to the question of whether he supports “full disclosure by the government of information on UFOs and other anomalous space sightings?”

“I’m in favor of expanding opportunities for people to have a deeper understanding of the universe. . . . I don’t think we could ever discount the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe,” he said.

Kucinich’s willingness to listen to non-mainstream groups has created some controversy.

For instance, in his original 2001 bill to ban the use of weapons in space, Kucinich listed a series of weapons that should be outlawed.

The list went beyond the interceptor missiles and subatomic particle beams often associated with government’s “Star Wars” programs.

His bill banned “other energies” directed at individuals or targeted groups for the purpose of “mood management or mind control.” It also banned “chemtrails.”

The term chemtrails is part of a conspiracy theory that has been at the center of lively Internet chat room debates and radio talk shows.

Its supporters believe the white streaks jets leave in the sky – known as contrails, which are formed by condensed water vapors – are actually toxic substances the government is spraying on people.

After being questioned about the bill last year, Kucinich rewrote it, removing the controversial language.

“I’m not into that,” he insisted. “Understand me. When I found out that was in there, I said, ‘Look, I’m not interested in going there.’ ”

Dana Milbank has some fun with the legal defense being mounted by Montgomery Blair Sibley on behalf of the notorious DC Madam:

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler’s courtroom yesterday experienced the kind of harmonic convergence generally reserved for those occasions when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

In a legal pleading that may have set a new standard for inventiveness, the lawyer for the alleged D.C. Madam argued that his client is a victim of — you guessed it — the scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys. The federal charges that Deborah Jeane Palfrey ran a prostitution racket, her lawyer said, were cooked up to fit the “political purposes” of former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and his now-former aides Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson and the like.

Just what these “purposes” would be was unclear, for the case has ensnared from political Washington only Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and then-Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. But this bit of logic did not trouble the madam’s lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley.

Did you know it’s Islamo-fascism Awareness Week? Founder David Horowitz promises “the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever.” You may think it’s a clownish buzzword designed to prop up President Bush’s War on Terror. But Horowitz is raising an army of courageous college students on campuses around the country to fight the forces of the terrorist-loving establishment and prove you wrong. See all the gory details in today’s episode of TPMtv …

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Watch this episode on YouTube.

Late Update: In today’s episode we ask you to email us and let us know how you’re going to celebrate and/or raise awareness for Islamofascism Awareness Week. We’ll pub the good ones …

From TPM Reader JN …

To commemorate Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, I intend to hide in a closet with an old Lee Geenwood 8-track tape as a symbol of feeling free. Being free is dangerous. Feeling free is the best we can hope for now.

From TPM Reader JS:

To commemorate Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week I will be hosting a marathon movie party featuring such greats as Red Dawn, The Day After, Top Gun, First Blood, Rambo, The Manchurian Candidate, North by Northwest, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day the Earth Stood Still and any other wildly paranoiac Cold War flick to remind myself how good it was to be in an age where two Super Powers constantly reminded each other and their citizenry that mutually assured destruction or internal political subversion or spies and saboteurs or suitcase bombs, etc. was just around the corner. Surely we can all find some solace in a little Cold War nostalgia, considering how much more “threatening” the new bogeyman is.

Rep. Stark (D) apologizes.

Dennis Kucinich’s congressional office not denying his UFO claim, as related by Shirley MacLaine.

From TPM Reader DF:

If Kucinich actually thinks he’s seen a UFO, that is, at some level, “fair game”, but consider this – on the scale of rating as prima facie disqualification for holding high office, how does belief that one has encountered an alien spacecraft above Shirley MacLaine’s house compare to all the stated beliefs of all the GOP candidates (let alone their top advisers – cough, Norman Podhoretz, cough)? And, how much harm might come to us all if that person got into said office and could then act on those beliefs?

And with that consideration in mind, how appropriate is it for TPM to pile on with all the righty smear-merchants, when Kucinich is one of the few candidates out there consistently uttering the truths that TPM “holds dear”?

One particular point I take exception to – David included the part of the Plain Dealer article with this graf:

“I’m in favor of expanding opportunities for people to have a deeper understanding of the universe. . . . I don’t think we could ever discount the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe,” he said.

That’s a totally non-controversial statement. There are 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe, of which ours is but one; ours, alone, holds 100,000,000,000 star systems, probably averaging more than one planet each; many serious astronomers not only don’t “discount” the possibility of other intelligent life, many millions of dollars are being spent searching for radio signals from possible civilizations in other star systems.

So, please, don’t participate in a slime that’s partly based on Kucinich agreeing with significant numbers of very reality-based scientists.

Getting back to the nub of it – by peddling this unconfirmed (if undenied) report, you are doing us all a grave disservice by reinforcing the meme that Kucinich is a far-out wacko (DFH, even?) and helping to spread the notion that he shouldn’t be listened to, when you could, instead, be talking about the substance of his policy ideas and helping to foster the national debate we need regarding where we want to go as a country, and how to get from here to there.

You folks do so much good work – please don’t descend to the level of the sloppy, lazy reporting of the conventional media, the countering of which I thought was one of the main motivations for forming TPM in the first place.

I would draw a distinction between assuming there is other life in the universe and thinking it is sending you messages.