The Rest Of The Week In Review

So I'm back from my 3-day sojourn in San Francisco, where I believe I walked the entire city. Thanks to the readers for hanging in, from both myself and my better half. Regular blogging resumes... right now, with my weekly roundup of what I missed.

• Post-Super Tuesday, here's an inside look at what made Hillary Clinton's campaign run in California. Good stuff, but perhaps the last good news we'll hear from them in a little while. Obama thundered through the weekend's primaries, with the Maine results capping off four wins in four very diverse states with the margin of victory no less than 18 points. That's dominant, and yet the national polls are tied, so I don't know what's going on. I know that it's a game of inches from here on out.

• Meanwhile, the Republican contest was thought to be over, but Mike Huckabee nearly swept his party's weekend primaries in Kansas, Louisiana and Washington state, and only lost the latter after some fishy counting by the state GOP in favor of John McCain. It's deeply embarrassing that he can't consolidate the Republican base even AFTER all credible challengers drop out. This will dog him all year long, forcing him to take more and more conservative positions, alienating the moderates and independents who are his only shot at winning. Great fun.

• Here's where I actually give wet noodle California Congressman Dan Lungren some credit: he's advocating that the federal government kick in a billion dollars to bring the winner of the X Prize's quest to find a 100mpg car to market. These innovation incentives and rewards tend to work out well and spur development of disruptive technologies.

• Not encouraging, or at the very least atrocious word choice.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

Actually, they kind of should. There's a difference between state loyalty and abiding by the laws of the place where you live. Introducing some kind of extrajudicial religious process for settling disputes ought to have gone out with burning witches at the stake.

• Morgan Spurlock's latest film, where he goes searching for Osama bin Laden, sounds decent enough but not up to the hype it has generated (there was a big rumor that he actually found him). I generally think Spurlock does a good job at framing issues in an accessible way, in the manner of Michael Moore, but to do that you have to oversimplify and insert yourself as a kind of everyman when you're not, and generally open yourself and your argument up to attack.

• These companies that sold crappy pet food inside the US that killed animals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the law allows, no excuses. The dog owner in me jumps out at moments like this.

• Could be very bad for the campaign arm of House Republicans, and demands a little attention in future weeks and months:

Top House Republicans were told in recent days that a former employee of their campaign committee may have forged an official audit during the contentious 2006 election cycle and that they should brace for the possibility that an unfolding investigation could uncover financial improprieties stretching back several years, according to GOP sources briefed on the members-only discussions.

[...]

The precise details of the suspected accounting irregularities and their possible fallout are not entirely clear. NRCC officials and top GOP leaders are being tight-lipped in large part because the FBI is investigating the matter. An outside lawyer advising members and staff has warned everyone at the committee to keep quiet.

Financial malfeasance by Republican insiders comes as a surprise to who, now?

• More news on the campaign front: 3 House Republicans in Cuban-populated Florida are getting major challenges, and we could see the beginnings of a generational change down there. This could also help the top of the ticket, too.

• We've reached subpoena time in the case of the EPA denying California a waiver to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions. These things never seem to progress from there, but we'll see, I know Henry Waxman is particularly incensed about this since he wrote the Clean Air Act.

• I've definitely written about this before, but there's new information on that floating continent of plastic out in the Pacific, which is TWICE THE SIZE of the continental United States, stretches from Hawaii to Japan, weighs about 100 million tons, and is more of a soup than something you can actually stand on. I can't see this ever being cleaned up in any of our lifetimes. And it has dozens of consequences:

Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

What a dump we've created.

• Here's another heartbreaking story. So there's this nasal spray that instantly reverses the effects of a heroin overdose. At least 2,600 deaths have been averted. But the Office of National Drug Control Policy opposes its use because it might encourage people to keep using heroin. First, heroin addicts may die of overdoses at any time, it doesn't seem to stop them from doing it because they're, uh, addicted. Second, the responsibility to heal and/or prevent death would seem to outweigh the responsibility to muse about the psychological effects of providing medicine on behavior. Another example of the pathetic peculiarities of the so-called war on (some) drugs.

• And finally, first Beck, and now the voice of Bart Simpson is a Scientologist, plus she gave $10 million to the Church, twice as much as Tom Cruise. Sigh. Incidentally, if you're ever in Hollywood, the Church of Scientology runs the best brunch you'd never want to be within a mile of for fear of prosetylizing.