Note to self

• Reminder: you're not supposed to trust people in power. Seriously, that's not how the Constitution was designed. In his own backasswards way, Richard Nixon was a patriot.* Exhibit A: A 63-year-old woman with a police boot on her head as DEA officials raid her house for six pounds of marijuana that she didn't have. Exhibit B: Police coming to some poor (sober) teenage girl's house at 4 a.m., without a warrant, to give her a breathalyzer because she had left a party where there was alcohol being served, and left her purse there.
  
  
• Reminder: every Democratic politician in Illinois must pay his respects to The Machine, even our most favored son, our golden child, Barack Obama.
  
  
• Reminder: Do-Not-Call List expires on Sunday. Byron Dorgan is trying to prevent it.
  
  
• Reminder: The Constitution does still sometimes apply to American citizens.
  
  
• Reminder: campaign emails get funnier by the hour. Ron Paul: "Whenever I face a hit piece on tv, or a smear in a newspaper column, I remember my secret weapon: you." Never forget that Ron Paul heads up an elite unit of paramilitary robots intent on liberating the world from the shackles of the United States Department of Education. He writes them love-letters, asking them for money.
  
  
• Reminder: For all the collective frustration among the base that we're still in Iraq, and for all of the strategic bungling of laying the responsibility where it belongs, there are good reasons why the Democrats have been unwilling or unable to withdraw troops.

*Kidding!