Evites have gone out for my birthday party. It should be as big a deal as last year’s if my plans don’t fall through, but I’m keeping the details hush-hush until I have it all settled. If I missed anyone who’s interested in coming, send me an email and I’ll put you on the list.

I do wonder if I should try to compete with the shot luge — or even if I can — and maybe this picture from my sister will give me a chance to 1-up it.

Honey, I have some bad news. I’ve found heaven on earth and am extending my trip indefinetly.

During the local pledge drive banter this morning on KUT, Austin’s NPR station, they were having an informal contest of who had made more pledges: judges or professors.

…he’s thinking about tools and veggies?

I haven’t photo-blogged in a while so these pics are sub-par and the narrative continues past the photos — I got so caught up in manual labor I forgot to keep taking pictures — but I wanted to keep my camera busy trying to justify the $$ I spent on it.

Becky and I traveled out to our favorite Farmer’s Market for the first time this year, and just in time to catch the Sustain-a-Ball addition. We followed that journey up with a day of bed preparation despite the tomato-vendors telling us it’s too early to plant our tomatoes.

Is there anyone else who after today’s trial thinks that Moussaoui is a complete whack job?

…Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

If he does believe this, he’s obviously delusional. More likely is that he hasn’t been involved in any of al-Qaida’s mechanations and we’ve been pouring a fortune in prosecuting a nut job. …much like the fortune we’ve poured into a war on a country that was completely uninvolved in 9/11.

In a similar discussion area:

Is this true? Are 90% of our soldiers acting on the completely fabricated belief that Saddam was involved in 9/11?

It’s making the rounds more and more lately, but I first caught this quote in Playboy:

…when the president does it that means that it is not illegal…If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law.

That’s Richard Nixon defending his belief that the pesident and his ‘employees’ are above the law in any action they undertake in the name of national security. I always wondered why the White House media mouthpiece made such a big deal about Nixon and McCarthy being portrayed in a negative light. It makes sense now that Bush tweaked the Patriot Act before he reauthorized it.

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act’s expanded police powers.

For those of you who don’t dabble in the liberal blogosphere, here’s a rundown of this week in the further decay of the free press.

Tuesday, March 21st — The Washington Post, in the interest of providing balance to left-leaning journalist Dan Froomkin’s White House Briefing blog, launches Red America, written by 24-year-old Ben Domenech. Domenech is a former writer for National Review Online, founder of Redstate.com, “the youngest political appointee of President George W. Bush”, and son of Doug Domenech, Bush’s liasion to the Department of the Interior.

Liberal blog outrage immediately focuses on Ben Domenech’s past writings, particularly that time he called Coretta Scott King a communist, and his assertion that the Supreme Court was “worse than the KKK.” He also called Michael Moore “Fatty Fat Fat Fat.”

In his defense, he did say Pat Robertson is a “Whacked Out Loon.”

Thursday, March 23 — Blue-chip Liberal blogs Eschaton and Daily Kos link evidence that college-Domenech plagiarized P.J. O’Rourke.

Over the next several hours, the bloggers uncover a flood of other examples, from college and National Review Online writings, of Domenech plagiarizing word for word from other sources, including the Washington Post.

Friday, March 24, 1:17 PM EST — The Post reports that Domenech has resigned

Yeah, yeah. I know it seems that all I can do is post political schtick all the time…

..but isn’t that much more entretaining than hearing about how great it is that my wife hasn’t run off on me after four years, post-ring-implantation, or that I ordered a cool new phone.

Maybe I just missed it because I only get my “major media outlet news” from NPR and John Stewart, but the article about multiple transcripts from Saddam Hussein’s staff meetings seems like it slipped away without enough attention.

… in 1996, Hussein wondered whether U.N. inspectors would “roam Iraq for 50 years” in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. “When is this going to end?” he asked… Repeatedly in the transcripts, Hussein and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon

Especially considering today’s tirade by the president where he says he doesn’t regret the invasion of a soverign nation but finishing the job is not his responsibility, this should be frontpage.

I also like the fact that a GOP Congressman is to thank for furthering the cause of truth, despite his actual goal of finding a foundation for the Right Wing media’s deceptions:

Scores of Iraqi documents, seized after the 2003 invasion, are being released at the request of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who has suggested that evidence might turn up that the Iraqis hid their weapons or sent them to neighboring Syria. No such evidence has emerged.

Today’s big international news item:

North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States…“Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”

And in fashion news Kim Jong Il has a shiny new pair of parachute pants.

The Libertarian in me really likes the intro and consideration for this article although I still struggle with the idea that the topic should be taboo.

…Michael Phillips and I wanted to publish information on how to commit suicide. Hiding such information is a vicious taboo, we opined in high libertarian dudgeon. Richard Baker…who sees a lot of disturbed people remarked drily, “If the information were generally available, a fellow I talked with last week would be dead now. He wouldn’t do it this week I think. The information that people need to know is how not to commit suicide. They think if they take an overdose of sleeping pills they’ll just go to sleep and never wake up. Instead they wake up choking on their own vomit, and there’s the emergency room and stomach pumping and brain damage, and it’s the opposite of relief for their suffering. People try all sorts of things that don’t work, all horrible.”

With a lot of concerted effort last year I eliminated two of the four credit cards I had. (I don’t count my Best Buy or Sears card in that since I only use those to get 0% purchases.) Since the current Republican-dominated government has made it clear that more debt is the new standard to live by, I think I’ll get those cads back now and fill them up again.

Oops, I’m a little late for Pi Day but here’s the Pi search engine, which lets you locate your favorite series of numbers within Pi.

Fascinatingly, my birthday (03171973) is immediately preceded by my age this year (33). This means something!

We got us some plantin’ to do this weekend.

It’s been a while since I complained about you, but I’ll let Ed Fitzgerald — who’ll let Michael Berube quote the New York Times — do the talking (blogging really is kind of ridiculous).

Bud Lite salutes you, Mr. Ralph Nader Voter.