Don't mind us, we're the feds: The ill-advised call made from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to find absent Democratic legislators (story here) has come under federal scrutiny. The DHSec's Inspector General has investigated the circumstances and, for all intents and purposes, said "Don't blame us, talk to Texas."

The report concludes that only a "nominal use of DHS assets" was involved in the search and minimizes the importance of using the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center (AMICC) in the search for the "Killer Ds." (AMICC is involved primarily with counterdrug and counterterror operations, but also "assists in looking for downed aircraft for humanitarian reasons.") The transcripts show that the AMICC, the FAA, the Mineral Wells police department, FBO Miller Flying Service, DFW Airport and Lubbock (air corridor) Approach were all contacted in the course of the search.

The transcript of the phone calls made during the investigation suggest that the AMICC employee working the phones was in the dark as to the nature of the search. A callback to TxDPS wasn't made (media reports allege that the call to DHS was made from a legislative office, not from TxDPS itself) because the call was tagged by the DHS phone system as originating from within the Texas state government; as a result, the DHS employee had no reason to believe he (or she, the record being unclear) was servicing anything but a standard law-enforcement request. At one point, when talking to a regional airport thought to have received the plane, the DHS agent evinced no knowledge of the Texas walkout, as well as some confusion over who was actually trying to find the plane:

DHS: There was an airplane that was supposed to come in at Plainview there out of Ardmore, Oklahoma .... And the people up in Oklahoma is [sic] trying to find the airplane. They have not heard from it in a while. ... And these people up in Oklahoma they said that these people were like government officials, and they're trying to find them.

AIRPORT: Yeah, I'm kind of familiar with that whole -- deal.

DHS: Okay.

AIRPORT: It made the paper today.

DHS: Okay. I don't know what's going on. I'm just trying to find the people that's all.

The report (heavily redacted to remove identifying personal information, except that of DPS Lt. Will Crais, and missing virtually all of the exhibits) can be found here.

 
More than just chocolate: "[Activists in] Belgium spearheaded an international anti-U.S. boycott campaign to condemn the U.S. illegal war on Iraq and the ongoing occupation of the war-scarred country...."

Context: Belgium has yet to apologize for its brutal and murderous occupation and exploitation of the Congo, in which eight to ten million Congolese were slaughtered or mutilated in order to encourage increased production on rubber plantations. "Incentives" included mutilating and torturing the children of workers who didn't meet production quotas; chopping off the hands of children was especially favored, prompting this epitaph for Belgian King Leopold by Vachel Lindsay:

Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host,
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

American and British pressure finally forced the Belgian parliament to wrest control of the Congo from King Leopold. Although the worst abuses were mitigated, exploitation of the Congo continued until independence in the 1960s, when the Congo was effectively set adrift.

In the mid-1990s, Belgian peacekeepers participating in Operation Restore Hope were photographed holding a Somali child over an open fire; the Belgian Supreme Court later acquitted the soldiers, saying they were simply "playing a game."

The Belgian exploitation of tribal rivalries in Rwanda culminated in the vicious massacres of Tutsis by Hutus in 1994. (Admittedly, Belgian's refusal to intervene in the genocide was balanced by an equal inaction on the part of the United States.)