A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

PUTTING SOME BLACKTOP BETWEEN ALEX AND ME: I know I'm supposed to keep disagreement to the comments, but I think it's worth a full post to point out that Alex's screed against Norm Mineta is a complete load of crap. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Alex is on the attack again against the only moderate (and the only Democrat) left in Bush's cabinet, but this is just another typical example of the anti-California conspiracy between this administration, its arch-conservative supporters, and the Italian Communists ("what's yours is mine; what's mine is mine") in the midwest. Yes, Californians, other than oddball pockets in places like Laguna Beach and Shasta, have consistently voted Democrat since Pete Wilson's ill-advised War on Brown People. We also pay more taxes than any other state and receive, in return and in contravention of Section 9, Clause 4 of the Constitution, the smallest per-capita governmental benefit of any state. The fact is that Norm Mineta is the only thing standing in the way of reducing the return on California's tax investment to a subsidy for the production of a little pro-torture polemic called 24 and as much spent fuel rods as we can bury above the Stanislaus Aquifer. So, basically, leave my quiet Asian moderate bureaucrat off your hit list.