Interestingly enough, it apparently isn’t Grover Norquist who’s ginning up “mosque” madness. Glenn Greenwald went digging and turned up Norquist sort-of nemesis Frank Gaffney. He’s the nutty nutball who TPM editor Josh Mashall says he first saw at a conference talking up the impending Chinese takeover of the Panama Canal. This year, he tried to stir up a tussle over the Obama administration’s missile defense system logo, which he claimed contained a crescent, which proves that Obama is engaging in an “increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.”
Is he that dumb or that shameless?
Oh. Nevermind.
ADDITIONAL: Seen any fisher cats lately? They’re turning up even in Boston. The article in question raised a weird point. John Organ, a biologist at the Hadley Fish and Wildlife Service office, said, “They will growl and hiss, chirp and chatter” Organ said. But, he said, “I’ve never heard [a screech] from a fisher.”
But for my entire 15 years in the Valley, I’ve heard from most everyone that the otherworldly, baby-like yowl that can be heard sometimes at night is the sound of a fisher cat. I heard it often when I lived in Leverett, and it was distinctly different from a coyote howl. So what animal is behind that hair-raising sound if it’s not a fisher?
LASTLY: Some exceptionally lucky actual good news from the Gulf. I’m sure Louisianians can use it about now:
A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe suddenly is flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico and gobbling up the BP spill at a much faster rate than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.
Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled since the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Also, the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers reported in the online journal Sciencexpress.
