Whatta woil

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure Department: Bud Selig receives a three-year extension as baseball's commissioner.

Scientists are drawing closer to an understanding of prostate cancer--it's nice to know that somewhere in the world, there are still sane people are doing meaningful things.

A group of about a hundred Texas landowners are standing firm against the U.S. governments demands that they cede land for the stupendously absurd Giant Border fence. Realize that the story here is not the comic incompetence of those who think this fence would make a substantial difference to anything: the story is the way this administration, and modern Republicans in general, will endlessly spout off on Private-property rights, states' rights, "big gummint", and so on--till it's something they want to do, after which get out of the way of the killdozer or be a spot on the roadway.

Joint communique from the When Will They Learn and the What Does It Take Departments: a Minnesota man died after state troopers stunned him with a Taser when they said he became "uncooperative" after being involved in a wreck. The man seems to have had no history of problems. These things are not toys, they are potentially lethal weapons to be used only in extreme cases as a last alternative to gunfire. OK?

From the What Else? Department: President Cheney Bush has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court's decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises. Sonar, of course, causes gross damage to whales, but by all reports few whales vote Republican. Is there one thing, any one thing, however trivial, that this administration has done in its seven years that is not grossly disgusting and morally reprehensible? One?

Just a reminder: things in Iraq are not getting better and the "surge" didn't do a thing for them--no matter what the pundidiots are muttering.

And just another reminder: the "voter ID" laws that the Fearsome Five on the Supreme Court are likely to approve any day now really do involve fraud--not by voters, but by a few Republican state administrations and their dear, dear friends on the Court.

It now looks like there will be at least some coverage of the new Steroids and Baseball web site in a Major Metropolitan Daily before the end of the month. Stay tuned for details.

technorati tags: Bud Selig, prostate cancer, border fence, tasers, sonar, whales, Iraq surge,voter ID, steroids, baseball.