It’s utterly appropriate that Ashcroft would head to the poster child for everything wrong with privatization to make sure it complies with some kind of ethics.

Yep, the rubes got rolled again.

In case you hadn’t heard, Richard Shelby (R-AL) has shut down the government because he wants fat, greasy pork projects for Alabama — including his own personal $45 million earmark. Odd. I thought earmarks and pork were the root of all our problems.

Not content with cornering the market on racial prejudice, now the South Carolina GOP “schmears” the Jews.

The Blue Dogs, who pitch themselves as the Enemies of Pork, have their snouts buried deeply in the Federal trough. So what is it that they’re really against? (Hint: They don’t seem to mind pork if it goes to white people.)

It’s back! Remember the 50 billion the world’s greatest zombie-feeding station debate club wanted to give away to those nice folks who just can’t keep their nuclear waste to themselves? Remember how the nuclear pork had mutated into a part of the stimulus bill, and how the House/Senate conferees excised the whole thing in February?

Sarah Palin spent the week preparing for the ABC interview by being briefed by the McCain campaign on Sarah Palin. Perhaps Senator McCain should have sat in.

99 Poems about Ted Stevens! 63 on Tuesday, 36 on Wednesday. And although Ted hasn’t been surfacing in the news today like he was earlier in the week, the sun doesn’t set in the North this time of the year, until very late.

Ted did call me though. It was a robo-call. I was really hoping that he’d call, or that somebody from his staff would call back, accepting my offer inviting somebody in his Alaska office to help judge this contest over the weekend. But, no, just another damn GOP robo-call. Here’s my favorite part of Ted’s call:

Hi! This is Senator Ted Stevens. Sorry to miss you today. I’ve called to invite you to a town hall meeting – BY TELEPHONE! I’m reaching out to you with this new technology….

Today the House passed the Farm Bill by a veto-proof margin. Tonight or tomorrow the Senate may do the same. That’s bad news.

The Farm Bill that passed the House does contains a badly needed $10.4 billion increase in food assistance and a few other good policies (including increased support for organic ag, produce farmers, African American farmers, and beginning farmers; disaster relief for salmon fishermen who lost their catch to irrigation pumps; elimination of disincentives to fruit and veggie production; and around a 10% cut – but not removal – in subsidies for corn-based ethanol). Tragically, these nuggets bob in a lagoon of waste and eco-devastation big enough to make a CAFO owner blush. The Farm Bill the House passed even slashes the miserly amount the US spends on international food aid, surely a thoughtful act when our neighbors across the Caribbean must resort to dirt sandwiches.

Why do they hate us?

From the Associated Press today: “The $6 billion reading program at the center of President Bush’s signature education law has failed to make a difference in how well children understand what they read, according to a study by the program’s own champion — the U.S. Department of Education. The program, Reading First, was designed to help boost student performance in low-income elementary schools, but failed to improve reading comprehension, says the study.”