The frogs loaded someone’s bag with explosives and sent them on their merry way.

5 ounces or so got put into a random bag at Charles de Gaulle, and didn’t get picked up by the bomb sniffing dogs. The bag got into the regular baggage system, and onto a plane before the folks running the test could find it. The Frenchies have a point that with no detanators, etc, the stuff’s about as hazardous as caulk.

But what would trouble me would be trying to get onto another plane. If the bag ended up at another country’s security, it’s possible that the dogs/machines might pick up the explosives and detain whoever’s bag contained it. That would suck.

The allegations from a signed affadavit originally posted at BradBlog (now overwhelmed) puports the kind of unbelievable fraud that sounds like a Grisham novel. Jeb Bush’s running mate from his first (unsuccesful) Fla. Gvnr bid, Republican Tom Feeney, who is now a Representative on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee supposedly ordered voting fraud software, bragged of black voter suppresion and arranged no-work contracts for the company who created the software.

—reserving the right to upgrade category should more evidence emerge—

Best pre-Christmas purchase ever.

I have always thought testers for Christmas tree lights were shady — a mix of electronics, magic and sham. The several that were purchased over the years performed occasionally, turning the 4 hour job of checking light strings into a 3 1/2 hour job. This year I was wearing my “Consumerist Sucker” t-shirt during the first of several annual trips to the seasonal decoratives section of the local Target, so when I came across the red gun with the “Fix lights with the squeeze of a trigger!” claims and the $20 price tag I threw it in the basket beside the fuses and replacement bulbs despite the pavlovian protestations buried in my psyche. That is what ultimately seperates us from the beasts of the fields, right? The ability to deny instinct and cast headlong into futile endeavors despite environmental conditioning?

Unaware of the assured Coleridge-like epic tragedy that hung around my neck in the form of a plastic red gun, my wife simply assumed that our 4 hours of drudge would be typical. (Of course, luddite that she is, my wife was generally unaware of the disappointing technology of light testers and simply assumed that light stringing was an unavoidable tragedy anyway.)

After several applications of the only obvious workable function the Light Keeper Pro afforded — the 3-way bulb extractor — I decided it was time to set myself up for the final failure. Facing an entire section of 50 unlit bulbs on a 200 count string I pulled a dim bulb and inserted the empty socket into the business end of the gun. Consulting the instructions on the package, “…pull the trigger a few times until the lights turn on. If the lights do not light after 20 pulls…,” I sealed my fate and pulled the trigger once…