• Henry Hyde is dead. I actually lived in Hyde's district for a large portion of my childhood. It was a place where mothers of three stayed slim and tan, children could safely play in the streets, and rain might as well be illegal. It was also a place where girls got institutionalized for an "eating disorder" because they came down to dinner late, where ten-year-old boys come to school talking about fingering their girlfriends the night before, where teens hit heights of drug-fueled depravity I have never seen or heard of before or since (from people of any age group), and where they have to put up street signs discouraging domestic violence. I'm not blaming Henry Hyde for this, of course. However, I do see him as a product of the repressive, sweep-anything-unpleasant-under-the-rug, denial-based branch of conservatism that yielded such a fucked up place. The world will be a better place when the legacy of Hyde and his ilk is a cautionary tale for more sensible generations to come.
  
  
• I don't have words for how big of a jackass Rudy Giuliani is. I mean . . . it's . . . ugh. HE'S TALKING ABOUT ENERGY CONSERVATION AT A FUCKING NASCAR RACE. WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE? HOW HAS OUR COUNTRY SUNK THIS LOW?
  
  
• David Obey is pretty awesome.
  
  
• "Bernie, stop helping."
  
  
• For as much as I've followed the primaries up to this point, I really could've been doing something else with my time. Because as people really start paying attention, there's no telling what the hell is going to happen, and all the speculation about someone having the election in the bag is probably going to turn out to be a load of crap. This is when politics gets fun.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture shot 87,000 coyotes from planes last year. Expect some PETA protests when former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns starts holding rallies for his Senate campaign. This is the guy we're getting to replace Chuck Hagel?
  
  
• The government is bloated and unwieldy and corrupt and we should dismantle as much of it as possible. Unfortunately, we don't yet have some key pieces which we really need, which are going to be bloated and unwieldy and corrupt and as Wonkette explains, absolutely necessary.
  
  
• I look forward to when this gets blamed on four guys who spent the 70's smoking pot and listening to Jethro Tull, a la WM3.
  

A conversation between me and Wyl from yesterday:
Wyl: Fred Thompson is still running for president?
Tim: Apparently.
Wyl: Someone should tell him.
Tim: Nah, he's cranky when you wake him up.
And if you want to know why he's so cranky when you wake him up, it's because he's polling at 2.8% in Hew Hampshire. What makes it even better is looking at the actual polling graph and seeing at the little blip on the screen that is the Fred Thompson line. It goes up for a little bit and then drops just as fast. I just don't think that'll ever stop being funny. This is one of those moments that reinvigorates your faith in democracy.