Quick Hits

It's been a draining, annoying, shitty day, and I'm still a little out of sorts about it. But I'm going to soldier on and go over some things.

• The first thing you need to do is go watch Russ Feingold on Keith Olbermann's show tonight. Dammit, why isn't he running for President? There's nobody smarter and sharper and more clear-minded about Iraq, and he has been from day 1.

• Nice story from CNET on James Kim, full of quotes from former colleagues of mine. It's a very strange day.

• Something that I didn't get around to mentioning, but of incredible importance, is that Pakistan is trying to broker a deal with NATO to get them to accept the Taliban as a coalition government partner in Afghanistan. This is our ally in the war on terror, a country still in bed with a murderous regime that harbored the killers on 9-11. Good thing we've get the party of moral clarity in the White House, huh?

• Hey, good news, the FBI can remotely activate your cell phone's microphone and use it to eavesdrop on any conversation you're having. Cool James Bond kind of stuff, right? Only merged with the destruction of all civil liberties. Other than that, cool.

• Joe Biden: the only man left in America willing to brag about his state being pro-slavery. I mean, now that Strom Thurmond's gone, anyway.

• The last official act of James Inhofe, the outgoing chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, was a hearing on how the media hypes climate change. The incoming chair is Barbara Boxer, who will immediately conduct hearings on climate change itself rather than being outraged by the outraged, will be somewhat different in the role.

"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night — it's over," Boxer said. "We're going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ... This is a sea change that is coming to this committee."

Good for us and the air we breathe.

• While the whining Republican babies on Capitol Hill are in shock over having to put in a full work week, the residual benefit is that there won't be enough down time for the President to make recess appointments of his most odious judicial nominees. This is good all around. The recess appointment is a relic of history that's been abused by Presidents of every political stripe, and I want my representative to be doing my business five days a week.

• And you wonder why we have a $9 trillion dollar debt? Maybe because we don't even bother to collect royalties from Big Oil for drilling discoveries made on federal property. Incidentally, this falls once again in the sportscaster-turned-only-real-journalist-around category, as Armen Keteyian filed the report.

• Making sure all votes are counted=disgrace to democracy... if you're a Republican.

• Hey, I made this running for President on the Connecticut for Lieberman Party joke a while ago! Although, The Poor Man probably can pull it off better than I can. By the way, Lieberman continues to embarrass himself, saying essentially that the 40 years we talked to the Soviet Union while they were the enemy was a tragic mistake, I guess.

My heart's only half in this one, guys. I'll sleep on it.