But strangely a-political

Fundrace has got a bunch of cool tools, such as a donation database searchable by zip code and name; and an analysis of the candidates.

Interestingly, GWB scored second on the grassroots index (Behind Dean; Kerry was sixth, in front of only Lieberman and Edwards), and first on the “Fat Cats” index (Kerry was third, after Lieberman). GWB also got donations from about three times as many zip codes than Kerry. Kerry contributors also have over $5K more average income than Bush donors.

Which candidate is driven by special interests and rich folks again?

Heh. From Australia

“For most people running around the street carrying swords there is absolutely no reason for them to be carrying those weapons,” he said yesterday.

From July, anyone found possessing or selling a sword without a permit will face up to six months’ jail and fines of up to $12,000.

Barney Frank. While I don’t necessarily agree with his proposed solution, I do think that the “jobless recovery” is worth talking about. Why is it happening? Is it a good or bad thing? How should it be addressed?

We’re all gonna be obliterated by an asteroid.

100 foot diamater, which means it’s overall pretty small, but 26,500 miles is inside of geosynchronous orbit, which is about 27,000 miles (The earth has a diamater of about 4K miles).

Play the Logo Game by guessing the company that goes with each logo.

than all that political BS –

Andy Katz on ESPN Motion is predicting UTEP to to be the first 13 seed to uspset a #4 seed. I’d dig it.

BTW – The UT System has three schools in the round of 64 (Austin, El Paso, and San Antonio). Texas Tech is there, too, making four schools from the Lone Star State. But UConn’s going all the way this year, baby (Just kidding – I grabbed OK State to win.)

Last item – Pontiac’s advertising for the Tournament features clips of great NBA tourney performances by Lew Alcindor (Soon to become Kareem Abdul-Jabar, all time great super-super star), Patrick Ewing, and others. No mention of Pontiac until the very end of the commercial. Cool, cool, cool. I’m hoping they’ve got Bird/Magic as well. (And did I mention the Cheerleader Challenge?). They’re running a promo for “The Natural”, too –

The next two weeks are the finest in American sport, IMO – NCAA’s leading through the opening day of Baseball. When I’m president, today and tomorrow will be national holidays. And Dickie Vital will be the patron saint.

File this one under “he appoints bigots”. Scott Bloch, who was appointed to the OSC in January, has decided that federal employees can be discriminated against for being gay.

This is new Special Counsel Scott Bloch’s initial reading of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions taken against them for reasons unrelated to their job performance. In his interpretation, Bloch is making a distinction between one’s conduct as a gay or lesbian and one’s status as a gay or lesbian.

“People confuse conduct and sexual orientation as the same thing, and I don’t think they are,” Bloch said in a March 10 interview with Federal Times. …

Bloch earned his law degree from the University of Kansas and was a partner in a Kansas law firm, where he specialized in civil rights law, employment law and legal ethics, according to the White House. Before he was nominated as special counsel, Bloch was deputy director of the Justice Department’s Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

It’s this last paragraph that really gets my goat. Bush decided that the best appointee for OSC — a department dedicated to ensuring fairness in the government workspace — is a man who thinks giving out church welfare is a good idea. I guess Ashcroft is not the only close-minded lawyer in a prominent position making an ass of himself.

Sen. John Kerry owes Karl Rove an apology.

Way back last summer, Kerry demanded that the Department of the Interior’s Inspector General (DOIIG) look into allegations that a water-rights decision in the Kalmath basin was swayed by Karl Rove to support re-electing Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR).

The DOIIG has come out with its report, and DOIIG Devaney (a Clinton appointee ) found that the DOI properly followed procedures, and that Rove in no way, shape, or form, influenced the decision that went for farmers, and against environmentalists and fishermen.

So, on this, Kerry owes Rove an apology.

Patrick Healy, pool reporter for the Boston Globe, Pulitzer nominee and former Chronster says he misquoted Kerry on the foreign leaders thing.

Since articles from Salon keep popping up, here’s a gem from NRO

(Y)ou should entertain the possibility that we already have all the laws we need, and that the republic would probably get along just fine if no new laws were passed for a few years. Twenty years ago we had several hundred less federal laws than we have now. I suppose that in some ways we were worse off in 1984; but things weren’t bad.

This slayed me this morning.

(Thanks, Mr. Adams )

Yesterday’s volley of mud from both sides is recorded in the Sacramento Bee

My beef today is Kerry’s continued insistience that “our men and women in uniform fight on almost alone”, as if the continued support from Britain, Australia, Japan, Turkey, etc, so on, and so forth (not to mention a new push by the Pakistanis in penitance for their dealing nuke secrets to Iran) constitutes “alone”. Do we really want a president whose concept of the rest of the world does not extend beyond Brussels, Paris, and Berlin?