One of those days

I came home early from class today, not feeling well, and decided to use the unexpected free time to update the blog. Then I discovered that during a computer home network fiasco that kept me up far too late last night, I had apparently lost my "notepad" list of a dozen or so good links I wanted to blog! (Maybe this would be the perfect time to try Blogger's audio blog feature and put a nice long "scream" here?)

So I'm trying to reconstruct a small part of the list from memory, but I'm coming up way short:

The first thing I wanted to point to was this really nice story about an illiterate, unemployed Brazilian man who has turned his home into a free library for the poor community in which he lives.

I recall that I also wanted to toast the feast of corruption and scandal we're being treated to by BushCo this month: DeLay's indictments, Larry Franklin's guilty plea, the indictment of the former chief procurement officer and Abramoff accomplice David Safavian, and the rumors of up to 22 indictments in the Valerie Plame leak case - the tendrils of which may reach as high as the president and vice president (on that matter, Rove has suddenly agreed to testify to the grand jury again, but under no guarantee that he won't still be prosecuted). A lot of us have said, ever since the first year of the first term of this administration, that historians would one day show it to be the most corrupt ever. But we thought they were diabolical enough to pull it off largely undetected in the short term. Who among us dared hope that the great unraveling would take place while Bush was still in office!

I also remember that I was going to comment about watching the few torturous minutes that I could bear of Bush's press conference yesterday, and that I couldn't take my eyes off his strange repetitive jaw thrust. It reminded me of the threat expression made by monkeys I used to take care of, except that Bush's jaw kept jutting sideways. Anyway, I wasn't alone in my fascination.

I remember that I was going to point to two very useful posts about Harriet Miers, Bush's mystifying nominee to the Supreme Court. Of course, a leaked George Will column, and very vocal conservative opposition (even Dobson is now giving himself wiggle room for backing off his early endorsement), is making this all very messy for Mr. Bush. Which probably explains the aforementioned jaw-thrusts. At least, in part. (I'm only going to indulge myself this once, because it's very catty and backward of me, but can someone please help Ms. Miers with her eyeliner?)

There's a very good article here about the lack of congressional oversight during these Bush years.

I confess that I haven't been paying much attention to the whole pandemic flu thing, but now that Commander-in-Chief Hubris is talking about invoking martial law to contain outbreaks, I suspect we'd better get ourselves up to speed.

Here is a great cartoon my friend CW spotted.

...and also a smart column on the Dover, PA evolution trial: "It is clear to me that what is on display this week in Harrisburg is not evolution. What is on display is America's spectacular failure to produce citizens with the ability to reason." (Thanks, BB.)

A Toledo Blade reporter with ties to the state Republicans appears to have deliberately delayed breaking the Coingate story -- enough to throw the election? (That's a Salon link; you'll have to sit through a short ad, unless you're a subscriber.)

Ugh. Fleet Week in San Francisco.* What a wise and important use of dwindling fuel supplies.

(*Update: Link fixed.) (Also, I just noticed that this makes about a dozen items. Maybe I reconstructed the missing list afterall?)