Chris Matthews in a Brutal Moment

It's from Hillary's campaign, but a fair question was asked. Click the link and watch this video.

Today's Winning Story

As bad as Philly can be, at least I'm not paying taxes in San Francisco.

Magic Bullet Man

Ugh. Our illustrious senator from Pennsylavania is at it again. First, he gave us the magic bullet theory. In the Clinton impeachment, he chose to ignore law and precedent, borrowing instead from Scottish law to vote "not proven". Recently, he has tried to make himself the Senate's unelected NFL investigator.

Then this most recent brainfart. In an effort to address the congressional boneheaded move that allowed FISA to expire, Arlen came up with this gem. Instead of immunity, lawsuits against telecoms would be allowed to go forward, and would make the federal government subject to such suits.

Now, God knows I have little faith in the competence of our government. That said, the methodology used by the intel community would certainly come up in any such trial. Why not just make an imam-friendly website detailing all of our intel standard operating procedures and buy some advertising time on Al Jazeera?

The International Community is Finally Interested

Not much to add here, this opinion piece is done very well. International law, justice, keeping peace, and when the lines blur.

Another Tax Note

I'm sure there is a good answer for this, but...

If DC does not have true representation in the halls of Congress, why in the hell do they get saddled with federal taxes? Isn't "taxation without representation" one of the most basic issues in American history?

Either grant the district representation, or exempt it from federal taxes. Of course, if that were to happen, every business in the country (world) would establish a presence there, more jobs would be created, poverty, and ideally crime would face a downturn...

Yeah, never gonna happen.

Even WIth Representation, Taxes Suck, but...

Without representation, they are worse. This link is for our VA residents.

Gun Free Zone Folly

7 people are dead at Northern Illinois University. I cannot begin to comprehend how this happened, as the shootings took place in a gun free zone.

Unlcear on the Concept

This past week our representatives in the House let wiretap provisions lapse without providing alternatives, and the Senate voted to limit the intel community to interrogation techniques prescribed in the Army Field Manual.

The USMC has also been treated like a red headed stepchild (something I am intimately familiar with) in Berkeley and Toledo.

There is so much I wanted to blog about this week, but I am absolutely disgusted with politics and society in general. None of this is new, and I am not surprised. It's just some days it hits with more force than others.

New Bionic Worm from China

The hits just keep coming. I have to give the worm's designers full marks for creativity. Digital picture frames? How many average people think about scanning peripherals before just plugging them in?

Things like this are precisely why some companies prevent users from using CD drives, USB flash drives, floppies, etc. The arms race continues.

Biofuels worse than oil?

Once again, the cure is worse than the disease. Biofuels have a greater impact, hybrids have a greater impact, and yet we should all be "greener".

I'm going to keep up my habits, because it seems my ogre-like ways still have smaller carbon footprint than those of your average well-intentioned nanny state nancies.