“Despite expected losses this fall, Senate Democrats are not backing down on their commitment to filibuster reform.” (Fun detail: Ben Nelson is described as a “centrist”.) [The Hill]

We have this running game: If you read a given piece of news as coming from the Bush Administration instead of the Obama Administration, what would you think?

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

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“The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials. When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject.”
—Mazlan Othman, UN Office for Outer Space Affairs

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During the reign of terror of our old friend, Tom DeLay, there was one thought that kept coming to mind: “would somebody take him out to a baseball game or something?”

It was a semi-serious thought.  Everything about the Hammer screamed a single-minded focus on political gain — mostly, through cold, calculating attempts to make the Democratic Party look like a bunch of baby-eating, God-hating, economy-killing monsters.  My strong desire was to see verifiable evidence that Tom DeLay had the capacity to do something fun — in the hope that taking time for the finer things in life would make DeLay less of a jerk.

You see a bit of this in the lip-flapping about Stephen Colbert’s performance on Friday before Congress — as further explained post-jump.

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Let us not even mention the iQ – now that Toyota has been found innocent in the the great Unintended Acceleration case (see, e.g., Audi) why can’t we have have this car? It’s an Aygo, by the way:

“(NEWSER) – A potentially life-saving “emergency bra” invented by a Ukrainian doctor has gone from award-winningly odd idea to actual commercial product. The bra, which doubles up as a pair of gas masks has gone on sale online for $29.95, Fox reports. Inventor Elena Bodnar, who witnessed the devastating effects of the Chernobyl disaster, says readily available gas masks could have prevented many cases of radiation sickness.”

Title: “Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race”

Authors: Jon Stewart; many others not named Jon Stewart

Rank: 1

Blurb: “Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These questions have puzzled us since the dawn of time, but when it became apparent to Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show that the world was about to end, they embarked on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race… After two weeks of hard work, they had their book.”

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