The Rest Of The Week In Review

I have a bunch of other posts teed up, but I'll save them for tomorrow. For now, the rest...

• We can't just keep passing these bills with massive tax breaks for corporations and put a potential Democratic Administration in an even deeper hole. The most worthy items of this bill, which is supposed to help homeowners in danger of foreclosure, were blocked, and it's not like we can hope for executive orders to save people, the HUD's recent history includes getting emergency bids for oil portraits of the director. This corporate socialism doesn't work, and it's better to do nothing than something potentially more harmful.

• The Supreme Court decided to allow lethal injections of humans in ways that they have previously disallowed in DOGS. It is interesting that John Paul Stevens allowed that the death penalty violates the 8th Amendment, but that's one out of nine. And the Bush legacy will live on the Court for the next 30 years.

• Suicide bombings: way up. Public opinion of America in the Arab world: still down. And they also think, pretty much across the board, that a US pullout from Iraq will not cause the chaos and catastrophe that foreign policy spinners keep telling us. My rule of thumb is that the people in the region usually know a bit better than the ones at home with an agenda.

• Man, was this a bad week to be a journalist. Bill Kristol, who isn't one but plays one on TV, embarrassed himself by basically telling the 65% of the country that wants us out of Iraq that they are unserious and feckless. Maureen Dowd gets the Kathy G treatment, which includes a story of a date MoDo went on with great guy where she couldn't stop obsessing over who Bill Clinton was sleeping with; and in the most hilarious bit of schadenfreude, Richard Quest, the supremely annoying CNN British fop, was arrested in Central Park with crystal meth in his pockets (and he told the cops he had it), and... "a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot." That's frickin' awesome.

• In other media news, apparently you need the Chinese consulate on your side to do a proper protest, as they brought out thousands to rail against some random Jack Cafferty comment calling the Chinese government "thugs". The new hyper-nationalism in China is kind of dangerous considering, you know, they own everything. In addition, they're trying to arm Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe as he cracks down on his opposition. Fortunately, South African labor unions at the ports refused to allow the arms to dock. Where they are now is anyone's guess, and Chinese troops have been spotted on the streets of the capital, Harare.

• They actually did this - it wasn't printed on April 1.

Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Shit-in-yer-yard, new from Ronco.

• The Billy Zabka of the House, Patrick McHenry, is still taking heat for revealing troop positions to the enemy. He needs to be made an example.

• Al Qaeda is apparently run in much the same way as a scene from Office Space. Somehow the ferocity of the terrorist threat kind of withers after this analysis.

• In another blow for the right-wing blogosphere, Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer who was practically tarred and feathered as a jihadi, was finally freed by the US after two years in custody, and cleared of any wrongdoing. This is really going to depress Glenn Reynolds in between bouts of robot sex.

• Michael Nutter's effort to crack down on gun violence in Philadelphia has hit a snag, as a judge blocked enforcement of five gun control laws. Nutter has said "So throw we in jail then, we're enforcing it." Which is kind of Bushian, but leadership on gun control is so rare that I have to commend him.

• Some comedians created a parody of the Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch was so freaked out by it that he ordered a deputy to buy up all the copies of it in Los Angeles. As we all know, Hollywood is the financial comedy capital of the universe, so that was smart thinking.

• And finally, I think we can now say that South America, in general, is too sensitive about fictional cartoon characters, in particular The Simpsons, or in Spanish, Los Simpsons.