Needlenose

Depressing news, a new world record – there are now 1 billion hungry people in the world, about 1 out of every 7 people.  Lester Brown of the WorldWatch Institute warns how food shortages are leading to failed states and a threat to the overall world order.

Venal senators from the Midwest just don’t get it – they insist on porking out the current energy bill with subsidies for corn farmers, diverting food from the plates of the world poor into the gas tanks of the rich’s SUVs.

Al Franken, aka Stuart Smalley, aka "GOP's Worst Nightmare"

Poor, poor Repugs!  With #59 Arlen Specter firmly in the Dem camp, the GOP’s last hope for obstructing the people’s will through the non-stop reading of phone books on C-SPAN rests on Norm Coleman’s increasingly desperate and ridiculous legal appeals for the Senate seat that is all but Al Franken’s at this point.

Now if only the Dems would do something about that loser Harry Reid…

News item: “The Senate voted on Thursday to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad…,” reports the New York Times.

It would be encouraging to think that this proposed quantum leap in government surveillance (discussed by Green Boy in the nascent days of this weblog) is meeting its just end as an idea that’s too appalling even for Washington, D.C., to accept. But some curmudgeons note that this vote, although unanimous, is far from the final word.

As the latter article hints, in the labyrinthine world of Congressional legislation, this unanimous vote could represent a tactical retreat by the GOP — letting Democrats “kill” the project now in the face of open opposition, but already plotting to resurrect it behind closed doors. This page, of course, will keep you updated on further developments.