In the U.S.
Utah lawmakers have, at least for now, pinched the straw that Southern Nevada water officials had hoped to use to syphon billions of gallons of rural underground water to sustain Las Vegas.
The Utah Legislature on Monday unanimously declared that Utah needs to gather all of the facts before signing away rights to [...]

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East Broadway Run Down - Sonny Rollins
A Man and a Woman - U2
Profile Of Jackie - Charles Mingus
Montana - Phish
Living Space - John Coltrane
Unfunky UFO - Parliament
Funeral Music, 2. Métamorphose - Lutoslawski
Dusk Dawn - John Coltrane
Inner Garden I - King Crimson
Stairway To The Stars - Bill Evans

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For many in the Northeast, it could be a perfect weekend to go sledding. Our kids have been out of school the past three days, and spent quite a bit of time in the back yard sledding down our rather mild slope.
You rarely hear how potentially dangerous sledding can be, particularly with kids who [...]

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R.E.M.:

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Revolting.
Under Armour’s athletic clothing will be the first product advertised among the ivy on the walls of Wrigley Field.
Under Armour and the Chicago Cubs agreed yesterday to place Under Armour’s logo on 7-foot-by-12-foot doors in the ballpark’s right- and left-field brick walls.
The doors had been painted green and were not covered with ivy, which has [...]

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This is what journalism looks like.
After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq — based completely on unnamed sources — at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.
The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his [...]

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I’m convinced.

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John McCain wants to have his cake and deny eating it, too.
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, a staunch supporter of sending more troops to Iraq, will skip a Senate vote on the war Saturday to campaign in Iowa while other candidates rearrange their schedules.
In control of the Senate, Democrats called the rare [...]

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Katrina victims waited months to get a place to stay, now those places are hurting them:
Along the Gulf Coast, in the towns and fishing villages from New Orleans to Mobile, survivors of Hurricane Katrina are suffering from a constellation of similar health problems. They wake up wheezing, coughing and gasping for breath. Their eyes burn; [...]

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PJ Harvey and Bjork in a better rendition than Mick’s:

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Those wacky employees - give ‘em an inch and they might take it. Only their own interests in mind. We can’t have that, now, can we? Dick’s got a private island to buy, for goodness’ sake!
Today, the House Education and Labor Committee begins markup on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which has [...]

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A group of Arizona Republicans wants the word out that McCain is unstable. Go to the full story for a tale of intrigue and revenge at the state level:
McCain’s botched revenge has solidified his reputation in Arizona’s Republican circles as a divisive, untrustworthy and even dangerous figure. Haney hopes the general public meets this [...]

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The most apt phrase in the universe. Krugman (via Truthout to avoid the stupid NYT Select charges) on the high price of insurance racketeering:
The two hospitals accuse UnitedHealth of operating a “rogue business plan” designed to avoid paying clients’ medical bills. For example, the suit alleges that patients were falsely told that Flushing Hospital [...]

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It may not seem like it this week, but the planet is still getting warmer.
It may be cold comfort during a frigid February, but last month was by far the hottest January ever.
The broken record was fueled by a waning El Nino and a gradually warming world, according to U.S. scientists who reported the data [...]

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The DOJ leaks its own talking points to the media.

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Philip Perry, son-in-law of Five-deferment Dick, doing his part to protect the Homeland. When New Jersey responded to federal inaction to protect the nation’s chemical plants by regulating the state’s plants itself, Perry sprung into action.
This was a problem: the only way to stop New Jersey was for the federal government to preempt state law. [...]

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Reading this piece about Republicans speaking out against Iraq was just too satisfying for words:
Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina opened the debate on Wednesday by reading a newspaper clipping from before Mr. Bush was elected. It was 1999, and the topic was a Congressional debate over military escalation in Bosnia, which Republicans sought [...]

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In case there were any remaining skeptics:
The slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year with sales falling in 40 states and median home prices dropping in nearly half the metropolitan areas surveyed.
Formerly red-hot areas were among the hardest hit as the five-year housing boom cooled considerably in 2006.
While some [...]

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All the news that’s fit to fabricate.
The drive by some political and military figures — and pundits — to paint those who oppose the war in Iraq as traitors or at least not supporting the troops has hit another low, with a Washington Times columnist trumpeting an incendiary quote from Abraham Lincoln shown to be [...]

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You’ll want to rubberneck this accident scene.

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Apparently the folks at the Treasury Department haven’t understood consumer attitudes towards new coinage. It’s not the design people don’t like about $1 coins, it’s the idea of carrying a big lug of coins around in the first place. There’s no way I’m getting any of these “presidential” coins on purpose - they [...]

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Now that “surging” is off the board, what vageuely positive but actually meaningless phrase are we going to use to describe the economy? Is the economy “chugging”? Is it “steaming”? Is it “perking”? One thing it ain’t doing is “improving.”
The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits jumped 44,000 last week, the [...]

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I was hoping for some Freedom Vanilla.
The maker of Phish Food, Cherry Garcia and Vermonty Python is adding Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream to its collection of cult figure-inspired ice cream flavors.
Billed as “the sweet taste of liberty in your mouth,” Americone Dream is vanilla ice cream packed with fudge-covered pieces of waffle cone and a [...]

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And it’s still too small, but it’s a start.

The Bush administration plans to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion of a program at a time when this country is facing international pressure to help some of the millions of refugees who have fled [...]

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Brad Mehldau Trio

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Here.

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I mean, besides me?

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A Valentine’s song from “Love, Actually”:

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After all, if we damage the economy, how will be able to buy clean air after we render our atmosphere toxic?
The chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex W. Tillerson, warned Tuesday that governments should not rush into policies that could damage the global economy in order to limit carbon emissions.
In a speech at a major [...]

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He’s just a guy who can’t say no. Here’s why:
It’s too much to say that Al Gore has decided to run for President in 2008.
But it does seem that he wants to preserve the option.
Certainly, the recent buzz about a possible Gore campaign in 2008 doesn’t seem to be spontaneously generated. According to one influential [...]

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