When people who’ve worked in sensitive intelligence positions want to write their memoirs, they typically submit their manuscripts to their parent agency; there’s a back-and-forth about what can be revealed; it’s resolved; and the book goes to the printer. For Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer — and someone in the rare position of being both an operations guy and an analyst — something different happened. The Pentagon bought the entire 10,000-copy first printing of Shaffer’s memoir, Operation Dark Heart, and destroyed it.

Outside of foreclosure fraud and the chain of title issues that could bring down the entire financial system, you still have your run-of-the-mill financial fraud. Wall Street executives and traders have only a passing familiarity with integrity, and the authorities may finally be catching up with them.

Senator Richard Lugar wants the Senate to call his own party’s bluff on the new START arms reduction treaty, bringing it up for a vote in the lame duck session. He stood with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton yesterday, rebuking Senate Republicans for their stall tactics.

Of course financial lobbyists are working to indemnify financial fraud. This is a story with all the richness of “Breaking: Water Wet.”

There was a large press conference in support of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell yesterday, accompanying Harry Reid’s announcement that he would bring the defense authorization bill, with the legislative repeal of DADT included, up for a vote after the release of the Pentagon survey. Via Greg Sargent, supporters may have picked up another vote for repeal, in the unlikely person of Sen. John Ensign.

General Electric didn’t pay US income taxes last year, but it wants Massachusetts taxpayers to pony up $25 million in tax credits or face loss of hundreds of jobs. Another victory for the Corporate Person at the expense of the human person.

There seems to have been twin outbreaks of bullshittery and dipshittery in the North Star State last week. The first involves a dumbass James O’Keefe wannabee named Pierre “Pete” Arnold III, also known as “The Pete” and “Zeeboid”. The second involves a dumbass faux-Mexican restaurant mogul wannabee and Republican Party of Minnesota Chair named Tony Sutton and a dumbass Republican consultant named Diana Bratlie, the person Sutton thought would make a good witness for his latest nuisance lawsuit in the Dayton-Emmer governor’s race recount.

If you have any favorite Thanksgiving recipes you would like to share, now is the time. Thanksgiving will be here soon, and we’ll all be shopping and cooking for that often tryptophan-laden dinner – unless you are vegetarian or a vegan, in which case you’ll be eating something other than turkey. I always love trying a new new recipe, and hopefully, you will find one here that someone you already know online has mastered and can recommend.

Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie Thompson sent Transportation Security Administration Director John Pistole a letter on Friday expressing concern that the TSA did not review privacy and civil liberty concerns before implementing the new “gate rape” procedures at airports. The letter demands additional information on the pat-downs and calls on Pistole to reconsider them.

Classical Chicken — Muppet Studio‘s bawkapella version of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube.