Well, not that far beyond… crude oil prices spiked to close at a record $61 and change today, part of the pot pourri of events that included the death of Saudi King Fahd, concerns over refinery capacity and fears about Iran’s nuclear program. Given the President’s close ties with the House of Saud, and of course, the oil industry, one might think that the policies which have continued to drive oil prices higher– the Iraq war helping keep the world’s second largest reserves unavailable to world markets, an America committed to wasting ever more energy, and no efforts whatsoever to...

This week’s visit to our comrades at Pravda gives us this sober, but accurate view of the American decision to ground future space shuttle missions (the earliest being the Atlantis, which could have been ready to launch in around a month). It means at some point very soon, NASA must make a decision as to whether it wants to risk the current crew of seven astronauts in a reentry of the Discovery, which suffered damage to its heat shields during lift-off, pretty much the same problem blamed for the deaths of seven astronauts in the Columbia disaster, or does NASA...

“It” is China’s currency, at times referred to as the yuan, and at others, the renmindi or “RMB”… China abruptly announced that it was going to permit some measure of “free-floating” in response to market conditions of its long-pegged currency. Well, well. China (unlike, say… the United States…) has come to the conclusion that it is attached to the rest of the world, and in the end, sucking up all of the world’s reserve currency… might pose as much risk to China as to everyone else (what good is owning all the money if you can’t buy anything with it?)...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed “CAFTA”, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, by a face-saving 217-215 margin; a few Republicans from protectionist favoring districts (meaning contributors in the textile industry) were “permitted” to vote against the measure. House Dems actually held pretty firm against the measure. Why? Becuase Democrats are idiots, that’s why. The fact of the matter is, as the Grey Lady piece notes, the combined economies of the six nations (five in Central American plus the Dominical Republic) total barely the size of Greater Tampa’s economy (or Connecticut’s)… around 1% of the American economy, if that, combined....

One suspects that this has to be Karl Rove’s idea. Jane Fonda has announced plans for a nation-wide bus tour to protest the Iraq War. There’s just no other explanation for this. None.

From the poetic justice files comes this Wapo piece detailing the rather deliberate efforts underway in S.Ct. Justice David Souter’s hometown to arrange for the local municipality to seize the good jurist’s home for either a hotel, or a park project, in a most unveiled reaction to the outrageous decision reached by the Supreme Court in Kelo v. New London, to wit, that any well-connected developer can get any local government to seize any private property it wants, as long as the takee is less politically influential. Again, I tend to consider the Kelo case a bit of anomolous for...

It seems like just yesterday that Judge John Roberts, Jr. had his nomination to the nation’s highest profile intermediate appellate court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, tied up for nearly two years amidst political wrangling. Well, Judge Roberts, who was part of that crack legal team that successfully wrested victory in the 2000 election on behalf of the Bush-Cheney team (and away from those irritating voters) now gets his justest recompense (at least, if you’re him): an all-expense paid invitation to be the President’s nominee for the current opening on the United States...

Many thanks to Steve, a/k/a the Linkmeister for pointing out that I seem to have left my comments off, in the face of what I considered a personal attack so inappropriate as to warrant serious consideration of ending comments altogether. Well… hopefully, comments are back now… so give it a shot… Anyway, quick note, care of the Jerusalem Post on the love-fest associated with new Iraqi PM Ibrahim Jaafari’s visit to our good buddies in… Tehran… As the article notes, Iran is largely responsible for an awful lot of terrorism and sabotage within Iraq these days, so… well, I guess...

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond is about to take up the case of “unlawful combatant” and dirty bomber suspect Jose Padilla, with a hearing on Tuesday. You will recall our interview with one of Padilla’s attorney’s, Donna Newman, a few months back… There’s not too much I can say about this case: the President contends he has the unilateral authority to detain any citizen on his sole say-so without judicial review or other oversight of any kind. I call that sort of thing “dictatorship”. To be honest, this case, involving a U.S. citizen picked up in the...