This may sound like something out of a “Snopes entry”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/arts/pbs.asp, but it looks like the House is actually looking to “cut all funding for NPR and PBS”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060902283.html over the next two years.
If that angers you as much as it does me, then consider signing the “MoveOn petition telling Congress to save NPR and PBS”:http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a “fantastic explanation of the Bush administration’s ‘solution’ to the Social Security ‘crisis’”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_01.php#005638. In short, both the ‘crisis’ (reduced benefits starting in 2041) and the ‘solution’ (reduced benefits starting in 2012) are the same.
The CBPP has kindly provided the “numbers to back that up”:http://www.cbpp.org/5-10-05socsec.htm, showing that the President’s plans don’t even solve the solvency problem they claim to solve. Instead, they create trillions of dollars in new debt for no reason at all.
In a depressingly unsuprising move, the State of Florida successfully sued to “prevent a pregnant 13-year-old ward of the state from having an abortion”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4500245.stm on the grounds that she’s too immature to make the decision. The irony of this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sickening. Fortunately “Fafblog can be witty”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/old-beyond-her-years-florida-has-no.html in ways that I can’t. For further discussion, see “Gibbon’s Decline & Fall”:http://mysteriousgalaxy.booksense.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=showproduct&isbn=0553573985, once thought to be science fiction.
The blogosphere is (justifiably) all a-twitter because Ross Mayfield was told that “air passengers are only allowed a maximum of two books on flights”:http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/books_banned_on.html starting April 14.
The problem isn’t a matter of 2 (or 4) books, of course. That’s just one silly example. The real issue is this note on the “Transportation Security Administration”:http://www.tsa.gov/public/interapp/editorial/editorial_1012.xml site:
_To ensure everyone’s security the screener may determine that an item not on this chart is prohibited._
Note that there’s no mention of how to challenge (or even report) a mistaken declaration, either at the time or after the fact. So, if the _ahem_ well-trained and capable TSA staff decide that your knitting needles or eyeglass screwdriver are _verboten_ (which they “aren’t”:http://www.tsa.gov/public/interweb/assetlibrary/Prohibited_English_4-1-2005_v2.pdf), then you have no recourse but to give them up. (Chant with me, everyone: “unreasonable… searches… and seizures…”:http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/)
Have we really become so paranoid? Is the official government response to a foreign visitor asking to see the President to “knock him down, blow up his luggage, and charge him with resisting arrest”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4930070,00.html? I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but it still makes me sad.