Here’s a pretty picture from about an hour ago of the slender crescent Moon and — if you look really closely in the upper left-hand corner — Venus:

Not as awesome as last month’s Venus and the Moon pictures, but still, pretty.

Speaking of moons, Caltech astronomers have discovered that the solar system’s “tenth planet” — or as I like to call it, Grimsby — has a moon.

Drudge: “‘THREAT’ TO NYC SUBWAY.. DEVELOPING…“

UPDATE: Here’s the story. Excerpt:

A “credible threat” to the subway system has prompted a vast mobilization of police officers, law enforcement sources said today.

Hundreds of officers were expected to be dispatched as early as this afternoon to every station in Manhattan — and possibly system wide — to thwart the attack, which was said to timed to the Jewish High Holidays and the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Here’s another story:

Sources say that the NYPD has stepped up patrols on the city subways over the last couple of days - especially Thursday after developing information that has been deemed credible. One source says that it may be 85 percent credible.

Yikes.

UPDATE 2: I just called my mom, who is in Manhattan, and told her about this. She had actually just heard about it on the local TV news. She was planning to take the “A” line all the way from 190th Street down to Canal Street this evening. (You’d be hard-pressed to take a longer subway trip than that without leaving Manhattan.) Now she’s thinking she might drive instead. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that any attack would come in the evening, after rush hour is over…

UPDATE 3: ABC News has more:

The New York City Police Department is investigating what it deems a credible tip that 19 operatives have been deployed to New York to place bombs in the subway, and security in the subways will be increased, sources told ABC News.

While the police department is taking the threat seriously, it is also urging the public not to be alarmed because — while the source is credible — the information has not been verified.

According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, when three Iraqi insurgents were arrested several days ago during a raid by a joint FBI-CIA team, one of those caught disclosed the threat. Because it slipped out during the arrest, the plot was deemed credible.

After several days of work, sources said, the NYPD is increasingly concerned because it has been unable to discredit the initial source and additional information from the source.

The 19 operatives were to place improvised explosive devices in the subways using briefcases, according to two sources.

What is it with Al Qaeda and the number 19?

But the article adds: “Department of Homeland Secuirty sources told ABC News they are very doubtful the threat information is credible, though NYPD sources said the information continues to come in and is disturbing.”

UPDATE 4: CNN is reporting that officials in Washington say, whether or not the threat is credible, the plot is “not viable” — i.e., not likely to succeed. Umm, I hope Al Qaeda doesn’t take that as a challenge!

CNN’s sources are also saying that the source is not credible, etc. It sounds like the locals and the feds are taking very different views of this… kinda like the California bridge threat in November 2001.

Mayor Bloomberg is set to have to news conference momentarily.

Here is the New York Times article.

UPDATE 5: Bloomberg says he’s taking the subway tonight. :)

He also says “nobody in New York has been arrested or detained” in relation to this threat.

And he says there is “does not seem to be any ties” to the Jewish holidays.

CNN says that a highly classified military (and maybe CIA) raid on Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq was based on the same tip that produced this alert, and may have resulted in the capture of the people who were going to carry out the attack, but they’re not sure about that yet. (The Fog of War.) According to Bloomberg, a media organization which knew about this story two days ago agreed to a government request to hold off on publishing it until today, so that — if I’m understanding this right — the raid in Iraq could be carried out. Bloomberg thanked the unspecified media organization for this.

UPDATE 6: The Kos Kidz think this is a Bush/Rove conspiracy. Well, of course it is! Everything is!

Karl Rove update:

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer’s leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won’t be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others. …

Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.

The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances. …

“I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl,” [Rove’s attorney, Robert] Luskin said.

Stay tuned, as they say.

If you’re a Safari user and a Simpsons fan, check this out. Heh. (Hat tip: Dane.)

Hurricane Stan is turning out to be a huge disaster. 171 people are already confirmed dead, thanks mostly to landslides, and it sounds like that number could climb significantly. Dr. Jeff Masters writes: “Stan, who barely made it to Category 1 strength for a few hours, will likely have his name retired, thanks to this unfolding disaster. This would make the Hurricane Season of 2005 the first season to have five names retired (1955, 1995, and 2004 all had four storm names retired).”

Meanwhile, “Stan Jr.” now appears unlikely to develop into a tropical depression or storm, according to Dr. Masters. The new most likely “proto-Vince” is a tropical wave between Africa and the Lesser Antilles, which could develop into something over the next few days. More generally speaking…

Conditions are expected to be unusually conducive for tropical storm formation throughout the Atlantic for the next 10 days, and it is quite likely we’ll make it to the end of the alphabet by mid-October. When that happens, we go Greek–Alpha, Beta, and hopefully not much further into the Greek Alphabet!

Yeah, as I’ve said before, we’ll be fine as long as we don’t get to “Omega.” ;)

The Notre Dame pep rally for the USC game has been moved to Notre Dame Stadium, weather permitting, so that a larger crowd of people can attend, and beat Becky and me to a bloody pulp if we attend. :)

From the comment section, on Republican opposition to Harriet Miers for SCOTUS:

Those damn obstructionist Republicans! How DARE they! The President should be able to appoint anyone he WANTS! An up and down vote, I say! There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives the obstructionist Republicans in the Senate the right to tell the President who he should select for the Supreme Court! These people are being unpatriotic! They are siding with the terrorists!

LOL!!

UPDATE: More on Miers, from the late-note comedians:

“Big news this morning at the White House, President Bush defended his nominee, Harriet Miers, calling her ‘plenty bright.’ Not only that, but then the president said Miers has ‘real purdy hair.’ Then he got on a mule and headed south.” –Conan O’Brien

“She’s never been a judge before…never served on the bench. This is part of President Bush’s strategy of surrounding himself with people who are also in over their heads.” –Jay Leno

“Welcome to the ‘Late Show,’ ladies and gentlemen. It’s like the Supreme Court, anyone can get in here.” –David Letterman

Heh.

Bush sent out emissaries yesterday to assuage conservative leaders’ fears about his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. It did not go well. Excerpt:

A day after Bush publicly beseeched skeptical supporters to trust his judgment on Miers, a succession of prominent conservative leaders told his representatives that they did not. Over the course of several hours of sometimes testy exchanges, the dissenters complained that Miers was an unknown quantity with a thin résumé and that her selection — Bush called her “the best person I could find” — was a betrayal of years of struggle to move the court to the right.

At one point in the first of the two off-the-record sessions, according to several people in the room, White House adviser Ed Gillespie suggested that some of the unease about Miers “has a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism.” Irate participants erupted and demanded that he take it back. Gillespie later said he did not mean to accuse anyone in the room but “was talking more broadly” about criticism of Miers. …

Even some GOP senators continued to voice skepticism of Miers, including Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who pronounced himself “not comfortable.”

“Is she the most qualified person? Clearly, the answer to that is ‘no,’” Lott said on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” contradicting Bush’s assertion. “There are a lot more people — men, women and minorities — that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is. Now, that doesn’t mean she’s not qualified, but you have to weigh that. And then you have to also look at what has been her level of decisiveness and competence, and I don’t have enough information on that yet.”

The main complaints…centered on Miers’s lack of track record and the charge of cronyism. “It was very tough and people were very unhappy,” said one person who attended. Another said much of the anger resulted from the fact that “everyone prepared to go to the mat” to support a strong, controversial nominee and Miers was a letdown. As a result, a third attendee observed, Gillespie and Mehlman came in for rough treatment: “They got pummeled. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

It will be very interesting to see how all this plays out.

Miers is reportedly unfazed by the criticism.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Hat tip: Nick.)

I’m reminded of a scene from the South Park episode “The Return Of The Fellowship Of The Ring To The Two Towers,” in which Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny spend the entire episode playing an elaborate Lord of the Rings role-playing game. The whole episode is freakin’ hilarious; the “Ring of Doom” equivalent is a porno movie, Butters become Gollum, etc. But I digress. In this scene, they’re walking down the street — continuing on their Lord of the Rings “quest” — when they pass a different group of boys who are waving sticks around and playing a different role-playing game. From the transcript:

Boy 1: I shall put a magic spell on you!
Boy 2: I have blocked your spell, wizard!
Kyle: Hey, what are you guys doing?
Boy 3: We’re playing Harry Potter.
Cartman: HA!! Fags!!

Heh. I don’t normally approve of, let alone use, that “f” word, but man, that’s funny. :) Of course, you have to picture Cartman dressed up as Gandalf when he says it…

Over in Kos world, the rumors are flying. Who knows?

Could the Left handle Tom DeLay and Karl Rove both being indicted in the space of a week? Or would liberals everywhere be so filled with joyful schadenfreude that they would spontaneously combust or something? :)

UPDATE: 22 indictments?

A slightly less breathless summary of events/rumors here.

UPDATE 2: Josh Marshall writes: “The fact that the president has decided to schedule a ‘major speech’ on Iraq and terrorism [for Thursday at 10:10 AM EDT], apropos of more or less nothing, would seem to suggest some bad [news] coming down the pike.”

P.S. Of course, if Rove is indicted, that just means that prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald is obviously a co-conspirator in Bush and Rove’s secret plot to deliberately lose the 2006 elections so they can win in 2008. :) But, you ask, would Karl Rove really have himself indicted for political gain? Of course he would! He’s Karl Rove! He’d dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, too, if it’d win him an election! C’mon, people, ask a hard question. ;)

Breaking news! The United States Senate is growing a backbone!

The Republican-controlled Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects, delivering a rare wartime rebuke to President Bush.

Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held.

The amendment was added to a $440 billion military spending bill for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The proposal, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, also requires all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Bush administration officials say the legislation would limit the president’s authority and flexibility in war.

But lawmakers from each party have said Congress must provide U.S. troops with clear standards for detaining, interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects in light of allegations of mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay and the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“We demanded intelligence without ever clearly telling our troops what was permitted and what was forbidden. And when things went wrong, we blamed them and we punished them,” said McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“Our troops are not served by ambiguity. They are crying out for clarity and Congress cannot shrink from this duty,” said McCain, R-Ariz.

And one half of the Congress, at least, did not shrink from it.

Andrew Sullivan has McCain’s whole statement. It’s great. Read it.

Marty Lederman explains that, among other things, the McCain Amendment would “close the ‘CIA loophole’ that was created by virtue of the Department of Justice’s controversial conclusion that Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture does not apply outside the U.S.” Take that, Alberto Gonzales!

President Bush has threatened a veto of the underlying bill if it passes with the McCain Amendment attached. Imagine that: Bush’s first veto of his entire presidency could be of a bill banning detainee abuse. Now there’s something to put on your resumé: “I vetoed a bill outlawing cruelty, inhumanity and degradation!”

But of course, the veto threat could be irrelevant anyway, as the Senate vote is easily veto-proof. So… the ball’s in your court, House of Representatives. (Fellow South Bend residents may want to contact Congressman Chocola to find out where he stands on the amendment. If you live somewhere else, click here.)

Anyway, bravo to Senator McCain, and to the rest of the 90 senators — including 46 Republicans — who voted for the amendment. One does have to wonder, though, how Sens. Allard, Bond, Coburn, Cochran, Cornyn, Inhofe, Roberts, Sessions and Stevens are feeling about their votes right now. They probably thought they were towing the party line, but as it turns out, they’re looking more like an isolated, extremist “pro-torture” caucus. (I’m not saying that label is fair, mind you, I’m just saying that perception-wise, it doesn’t look real good to be on the “9″ end of this particular 90-9 vote.)

From Barely Legal: The Blog: “Does anyone else miss 1998? For God’s sake, gas cost $1.09 a gallon and our biggest national crisis was that there were too many blowjobs.” Heh.

Alex notes an uncanny resemblance betwen a certain Supreme Court nominee and a certain galactic emperor. Also, he’s got a good Cyberlaw quote of the day.

Brooke has a different kind of quote of the day.

Emily declares war on “hat tips.” Heh.

Ryan has some more thoughts on Harriet Miers.

Chai reminds us what it was like to be a stressed-out 1L in early October, with practice exams and Legal Writing papers looming. How quaint! :)

Kristin links to a pair “very disturbing” stories. Teehee.

Charles is “picking up the pieces” after his own personal Katrina relief efforts. Charles is a good man.

Adrienne is criticizing the L.A. media (which is just too easy, really).

Craig is giggling at Tom DeLay’s misfortunes.

Casey is your #1 source for giant squid-related news.

BoiFromTroy notes USC’s 125th anniversary, and says “the Trojan Football team hopes to score one point for each year the school has been open when they play Arizona on Saturday!”

The Backer shares some unflattering pictures of Kyle Orton.

Andrew Leyden talks about resurrected viruses.

Last but not least, Scientizzle went skydiving!

Heh.

P.S. On an unrelated note, but also from The Onion, here’s an oldie but goodie. (Hat tip: Dmytro.) LOL!!

Following up on my earlier post, here is a detailed explanation from weatherblogger Steve Gregory about the spawns of Stan:

Hurricane Stan’s low level center was ’shredded’ by the mountainous terrain in Mexico — but the huge, synoptic scale area of anticyclonic flow, with several ‘centers’ of circulation within it, was forecast to both spin up a system in the Pacific - and possibly regenerate a system in the southern Gulf. What ended up happening was a strong Vorticity MAX was spun off from the massive system, and developed an area of very intense convection over the Yucatan by this morning. Some 3-8 inches of rain likely occurred over the Yucatan from this system alone last night and earlier today. It simultaneously developed two other large, intense areas of convection off the west coast of Mexico. Maybe this has occurred before — but in my 40 years of watching weather — I’ve never seen anything like it.

Dr. Jeff Masters is referring to Stan’s Yucatan spinoff (what I’m calling “proto-Vince”) as “Stan Jr.,” and to those Pacific convection areas as “Stan III.” He notes:

The remants of Stan [i.e., Stan III] appear likely to spin up into a new tropical cyclone that may threaten Baja California later in the week. If both this system and the Stan Jr. system off of the Yucatan do become tropical storms, this would be the first time a dissipated hurricane spawned two new tropical cyclones, one in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific. How many firsts can this season have??

Quite a few, apparently!

If Stan Jr. (in the Caribbean) forms into a new cyclone, it will be named Vince. If Stan III (in the Pacific) forms into a new cyclone, it might be named Pilar (the next name on the Eastern Pacific list), or it might keep the name Stan, depending on what the NHC decides.

(Hat tip to B. Minich on the term “spawn of Stan.”)