The death of J. Clifford Baxter was ruled a suicide yesterday by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office. Despite some wild speculation that I’m reading here and there involving Vince Foster-esque theories about conspiracies by unnamed people to do Baxter in, I believe that his death was a suicide. Anyway, the contents of his suicide note have not yet been released, but according to “sources”, it does mention Enron.

These poll results are very interesting. The people surveyed are pretty sure that people in the Bush administration are hiding something about Enron, and that the problems that brought down Enron are widespread, but they’re not so sure who has the majority in Congress. Despite the fact that most people believe President Bush is doing a good job and is a strong leader, according to question 33, only 52% of the people believe President Bush is in charge of what goes on in his administration most of the time. Fifty percent have correctly pegged that his policies favor the rich. A good sized majority of those surveyed have correctly assessed that big business has too much influence over the Bush administration and over Congress. To put things in perspective, though, only about 40% of the people surveyed know that the Republicans control the House of Representatives.

That clever President Bush sent a message to the media by striding onto his helicopter with Bernard Goldberg’s book Bias on prominent display. Who knew he reads books without pictures? (photo)

I’m continually disgusted that this story gets so much less coverage than this stupid, annoying, irrelevant story.

The recently famous one-eyed lion at the Kabul zoo died on Saturday, probably of old age.

IBM announced two lines of Linux-only mainframes today.

Paul Krugman defends himself in the New York Times today: Spreading It Around. He also disses Andrew Sullivan by never mentioning him by name, despite the fact that Sullivan has been his most dogged and shrill critic.

Here’s some truly tragic news from the Enron scandal — Enron’s former vice chairman, J. Clifford Baxter, apparently committed suicide last night.

The Economist has a fine article on foreign aid for Afghanistan, or rather the lack thereof. Frankly, the idea that the world in general (and the US in particular) would negligently let Afghanistan slip back into anarchy (and possibly the hands of terrorists) makes my jaw drop. A big chunk of the money we’re giving to Afghanistan is going to be spent on anti-drug programs. The best anti-drug program is giving the farmers in Afghanistan a chance to make money growing something other than opium. I supported rousting al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, but if we neglectfully leave them without the opportunity for something better, it will all have been for naught.

This Michael Dorf column explains what an unlawful combatant is, and what the implications under the Geneva Convention are for prisoners of that status (as opposed to prisoners of war).