In other news...

The spying on American citizens by Their government, without ever getting a warrant, is now legal according to the United States Senate. They voted to remove from the FISA law the requirement that a warrant, from a special FISA court, must be attained up to 72 hours AFTER the search/spying is executed. The Senate, it seems, has learned that this administration can be trusted to act in the best interest of the American citizenry without any checks or balances. Blank checks to bushco. are what has made this Country so great over the last six plus years. I say six plus instead of seven, because bush was not given a blank check until after the tragedy of September 11th. The bill also grants immunity to telecommunications companies that gave domestic spies private information their customers trusted them with. The companies say they were just following orders from the US Government. Senator Obama voted against immunity, mccain voted for it, and Clinton failed to vote. In "maybe the founding brothers can stop rolling over in their graves for a minute" news, the Senate did vote yes on a bill that "requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding."

Presidential candidate john mccain (you might have heard he was a prisoner of war) gave the OK to waterboarding prisoners, a "method" the United States of America prosecuted as a war crime in 1947. He voted against the bill banning it, because he thinks that the CIA should not be restricted to the Army Field Manual. Not to come down on the great pander bear, but he was definitely against waterboarding, formerly known as "water torture", before he was for it. Then again he was against bushco.'s tax cuts for the rich, before he was for them. He was against rover, before he was for him. He was against the christian right, or in his words the "agents of intolerance", before he was for them. The flip flops by the "straight talk maverick" seem to have assured the flip flopper-in-chief that his policies will get a third term if his former adversary is in charge. But enough about the imminent runner up, let's get back to other news.

Legalize drugs... for sports stars (and everybody else for that matter). Not that I care too much about overpaid pitchers shooting up performance enhancers, like many of my musical heroes did. I just think there may be more important things for the US Congress to be holding hearings on, like maybe holding someone accountable for the mess that Our Country's in. Or how about hearings on the "buried by the Army" Unclassified report by the RAND Corp. that showed how Bad bushco.'s planning for the war in Iraq was.

And finally in Good News, the Writers' Strike is over. Members of the Writers' Guild of America voted to agree to the terms of a "three-year contract, granting annual pay raises of 3%-3.5% and historic gains in residuals for new-media content" with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Finally, I can watch Conan again, without feeling guilty about it. The writers' solidarity, and the solidarity shown by their acting comrades, who refused to act without them or attend events like the Oscars, worked! I'm Proud to be a Union Man!

Possible topics for next time, if I can stop talking about the Democratic primary:

• Why can't oil companies, making the largest profits in US business history, lower gas prices?
• How do former war of choice architects, propagandists, and disgraced world bank presidents still get lucrative work in and out of Our government?
• Where in the world is osama bin laden?