• One of the biggest questions I have on the mining tragedy in W. Virginia is how the mine could continue to operate after receiving 46 safety violations just a few weeks ago.  Well, here’s part of the answer.  Before you go off the deep end and start accusing this guy of blaming Bush for this tragedy, just read it all the way through before jumping to conclusions. 

• Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, there’s a rush afoot to cut all ties to Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to being a sleaze bag extraordinaire yesterday.  While you might, just might, be hearing that Abramoff spread his wealth around to Democrats and Republicans alike, make no mistake: this is an iceberg of epic proportions for the GOP.  There’s lots of pixels and bandwidth being devoted to the whole thing, but when you do a quick scan of any article, you’ll see more “R“‘s than “D“‘s after most of the names.  Fan, meet shit.  Oh, and if you care about anything former House speaker Newt Gingrich has to say, he thinks it’s time to “...select a new majority leader...” to replace DeLay.  As usual, Gingrich is more than a few days late for that call. 

• Not that there’s anything wrong with going over the top with your argument or anything, but I think we’re a bit far from a police state in this country, don’t you?  Well? 

Well, hell.  Proving the religious wingnuts who predicted that people would start marrying animals and anything that moved if gays were allowed to marry were right, it seems a woman has married a dolphin in Israel.  No word on how the dolphin signed the marriage license, but still…

And, finally: 

Hook ‘em!