According to my sources, the Senate takes up the PATRIOT Act again tomorrow. More info as it arrives.
I had a lot of penny rants stored up -- in fact, this was going to be the "Super Fat Sunday Sleep-In" version of the penny rants -- but I didn't have time to make them as good as I wanted them to be, so I'll just run them down quickly:
No, Mrs. Clinton, being a Democrat in the Senate is not like being on the plantation, no matter how brutish Republicans get. For one thing, no one on the plantation made $100,000 a year to be brain-dead.
No, Al Gore is not insane, but anyone who calls Al Gore "insane" without responding to any of his points should receive a psychological evaluation. Though not at government expense -- I'm not going to be anyone's enabler.
Tha Bush Mobb is harrassing Google because it wants to see how many kids are using the internet to look at porn? Yeah, sure. For standing up to them, Google is my hero this week, but they're so big they're always skating on thin ice with me. (That's despite the fact that I use their search engine all the time.)
About 27/100 of one percent of Americans will pay the Estate Tax in 2006. That means out of every 10,000 folks who die, some 27 -- twenty-seven! -- will pay the Estate Tax. Note to the rageaholics who call it "the death tax" because Frank Luntz told them to: you will never make enough money to pay the Estate Tax -- unless you support programs like the Estate Tax.
According to the February 2006 Consumer Reports, standards for free-range chicken are so lax -- basically, federal regulations permit a "free-range" chicken to spend as little as five minutes out of its coop per day -- that you might as well not bother, unless you really know your local organic grower very well. Oddly enough, that localharvest.org link I have on the left side might help you with that. (Can't link to Consumer Reports, though, because it's for subscribers only. But why aren't you a subscriber?)
Mr. bin Laden makes a surprise appearance yeah-sure (and I'll bet they pondered its Deep Meaning in These Troubled Times all day on TV Pravda), right around the same time Karl Rove makes a speech saying terror is going to be the big issue in 2006. I thought terror was the big issue in every election lately -- you know, as in "terrorizing the electorate."
I'd love for The Daily Show to play ZZ Top's "Sharp-Dressed Man" every time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes an appearance. Partly because Mr. Ahmadinejad does dress rather sharply, but mainly because I know that being associated with a video famous for its leggy, scantily-clad women would irritate him to no end.