Speaking about turning a blind eye to terrorism, and about "how we got into" 9-11, McCain's foreign advisor for Latin America is Otto "Death Squads" Reich, the man who helped release Orlando Bosch (a convicted terrorist who blew up a Cuban plane, killing 73 people). I kid you not.

And Reich is now busy comparing Venezuela's democratically elected socialist leader Hugo Chavez with Hitler and Mussolini. I kid you not:

"I suffer seeing how he destroys the economy and how he undermines the democratic institutions... there are people like the Castro brothers or Chávez who want to create problems and when they do, someone has to stop them. When I refer to the "21st Century Socialism," as Chávez calls Venezuelan regime, for me, when you examine his actions, what he is doing is exactly what Mussolini did in Italy and Adolph Hitler did in Germany in 1930 before becoming an expansionist. It is fascism."

http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/09/05/en_pol_art_otto-reich-compares_05A1968443.shtml

Meanwhile, a week after nationalising Fannie and Freddie, the US Federal Reserve is all but nationalising AIG by extending an 85-billion-dollar loan in exchange for a nearly 80-percent stake in the company, including all company assets.

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, today compares the collapse of the GOP's patented "trickle-down" market fundamentalism with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/stiglitz-the-fall-of-wall_b_126911.html

What's all that got to do with anthrax? Nothing. But neither did Mueller's testimony today.

From AP:

The FBI will ask a group of independent scientists to review evidence from the government's anthrax investigation that concluded an Army researcher masterminded the deadly 2001 biological attacks.

The FBI and National Academy of Sciences have been discussing whether to do an independent review, likely costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, of the DNA analysis that led investigators to Dr. Bruce Ivins.

On Tuesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller says he will request the review...

"We're in discussions with and are going to request the National Academy of Sciences review the work that was done in the course of this investigation," Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee. "And it is an independent review by a panel of scientists that will be pulled together by the National Academy."

About 60 scientists who belong to the group helped the FBI track the DNA of the anthrax spores back to a flask from Ivins' lab. None of them will be allowed to participate in the independent study, said NAS spokesman William Kearney.

Mueller added: "Many of the scientists the National Academy ordinarily would seek to have on a panel are scientists that were already used in the course of this investigation. But as I say, the National Academy is an independent entity and will be conducting a review."

Link at my sig. I'll just quote Lew Rockwell's response:

I think the scientific methods and techniques will largely hold up, which will allow the FBI to claim redemption, backed by their independent panel of scientists (who incidentally are likely to all be recipients of federal grants). The science is not the issue - it's the interpretation of the results that is the problem: That the scientific and non-scientific evidence leads to Ivins, and only Ivins. And that Ivins has been convicted in the court of public opinion after being pushed to suicide by federal agents. Scientists shouldn't judge Ivins' guilt, but that's what they will do.