Saturday afternoon I was bicycle riding down Murdoch Drive and saw a police car blocking off passage to one of the side streets. As I rode by I glanced down the street and saw at least 6 more police cars 1/3 of a mile or so away. It’s unusual anytime you see a police congregating on a side street, but this was even more notable because it’s a mostly commercial area that’s quiet on the weekends.
At the time I didn’t know what it was, but apparently it was this:

Man found dead with bicycle in West Knoxville ditch Authorities are investigating the discovery of a man who was found dead alongside a bicycle in a ditch on the side of a West Knoxville road.
The man was found about 4 p.m. near Cogdill Road. It was not immediately clear if foul play was involved in the man’s death.
Authorities were not available Saturday to provide any additional information about the discovery of the body.

Oy. I hope we don’t have a murderer stalking bicyclists in West Knoxville.
UPDATE: Information from an e-mail list indicates that the rider, Tom Olmstead, died of a heart attack. Apparently Mr. Olmstead was active in Knoxville bicycling for many years and would have just turned 60.

It’s only a matter of time until Iran comes to the fore, I suppose:

The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.
The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.
Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.”
One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, “This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign.”

I’m very surprised to see Pentagon correspondents relaying official denials to this story today. Government officials are usually quick and forthright in coming clean about secret operations.

South Knox Bubba photo blogs the Tennessee Theatre. I’ll have to get down there sometime.

Interesting:

The U.S. military rejected a 1994 proposal to develop an “aphrodisiac” to spur homosexual activity among enemy troops but is hard at work on other less-than-lethal weapons, defense officials said on Sunday.
The idea of fostering homosexuality among the enemy figured in a declassified six-year, $7.5 million request from a laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for funding of non-lethal chemical weapon research.
. . .
“One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior,” said the document, obtained by the Sunshine Project. The watchdog group posted the partly blacked-out, three-page document on its Web site.

Tax dollars at work in the Department of Defense.

Good news. There is accountability in the Bush administration . . . at least a moment’s worth:

President Bush said the public’s decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.
“We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.”

Great. Now that we’ve used up our “accountability moment,” what do Americans have to address the “mistakes or misjudgments” of the next four years?