On October 25th I posted Grover’s Radical Roundup, a collection of clips and links illustrating a curious fight between extremely conservative and well-connected Republican insider Grover Norquist and long-time Richard Pearle protégé and right wing TV talking head Frank Gaffney.
Gaffney accuses Norquist of enabling a radical Muslim 5th Column within the United States and the Bush administration.
This fight, that last week in October, had just been given some traction with an 18 count Federal indictment of Abdurahman Alamoudi alleging money laundering and violations of immigration and customs law by taking $340,000 in sequentially numbered $100 bills from Libya, a federally designated state sponsor of terrorism, to Syria en route to Saudi Arabia.
The Boston Phoenix reported October 25 what was already common knowledge around the nation’s capital.
Norquist’s lobbying firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies LLC, was officially registered as a lobbyist for just indicted Abdurahman Alamoudi.
The Phoenix also reported that public records showed Alamoudi doing more than $20,000 worth of business with Norquist’s firm.
Since October the needle on my Grover Detector has barely budged as Norquist devotes time to increasing beer taxes, shoehorning Reagan onto the dime and the usually mad swirl of gala fundraisers.
Last evening the needle jumped as Gaffney posted on David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, with a David Horowitz introduction, A Troubling Influence.
In the heavily footnoted article Gaffney, among other things, broadens Alamoudi’s connections to Norquist:

The investment began when Alamoudi wrote two personal checks (a $10,000 loan and what appears to be a $10,000 gift) to help found Norquist’s Islamic Institute. In addition, Alamoudi made payments in 2000 and 2001 totaling $50,000 to Janus-Merritt Strategies, a lobbying firm with which Norquist was associated at the time.

While interesting reading, there seems to be some holes in the case Gaffney presents.
I, however, continue to find it curious how little coverage this story is receiving from our old friend the mainstream press.

If you still hunger for things radioactive after concluding the Grover material may I recommend this excellent New York Times article on the radioactive realities confronting humans outside the Earth’s magnetic field:

Radiation in space is not like radiation on Earth… beyond Earth's protective atmosphere and magnetic field, the radiation is mostly ions of every element on the periodic table up to iron (No. 26), moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, and approaching from distant stars in all directions.

In recent stories on the Bush Moon Mission some wondered about our present lack of Earth to Space transport much less Earth to Moon. Today’s Times article gives an indication that a difficulty greater than vehicular requirements might be the search for effective shielding from interplanetary radiation.

Modified Photo: mediatransparancy.org
- posted by Sean @ 3:31 PM