That's it--

--I'm appropriating Mattie.

Sexy kitten!

Mattie is getting all big. But look how sexy she is, spread-eagle with her tongue sticking out.


I have this same picture from when she was tiny, but for some reason my phone wouldn't let me e-mail it to the computer. Anyway she was in the same exact position but with one eye a little closed. Now she's all big with both eyes open.

I'd post more photos of Ryder, but Liza takes millions and then never uploads them.

In other news, when the old man in my building saw that I have a rental car and found out my car was totaled, he thought for a second and said, "You have really bad luck, don't you?"

Seriously? He's a lonely old man who gets out twice a month for his diabetes doctor appointments and has a coke-addict son. And from where he stands, *I'm* the one with bad luck?

More quotes of the day to come

I'll start by saying I feel completely gypped by the promised find-out-first veep text coming five hours after the Secret Service landed in Delaware.

But I'll put that behind me for now, because I think Biden is going to make for a Very Entertaining VP candidate.

A Politico story referred to a primary debate last year -- one of the send-in-your-YouTube-questions debates:

Via a video clip, a man identifying himself as Jered Townsend from Clio, Mich., said: “To all the candidates, tell me your position on gun control, as myself and other Americans really want to know if our babies are safe.”

Then Townsend picked up what appeared to be a semiautomatic assault rifle. “This is my baby, purchased under the 1994 gun ban,” he said. “Please tell me your views. Thank you.”

So Bill Richardson answered first, talking about instant background checks and attacking poverty rather than Second Amendment rights, etc., etc., etc.

And then Biden was asked the same question:

“I’ll tell you what, if that is his baby, he needs help,” Biden said. “I don’t know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun.”

Biden went on to say that he was “the guy who originally wrote the assault weapons ban” and “we should be working with law enforcement, right now, to make sure that we protect people against people who are not capable of knowing what to do with a gun because they’re either mentally imbalanced and/or because they have a criminal record.”

Then Biden added sardonically: “I hope he doesn’t come looking for me.”

Yeah. This is going to be fun.

Oh, and just for good measure, yawning Mattie...

Quotes of the day

1) The first is from Joe Biden, whose house is being staked out by the press. You can click on the Politico story for the context, but I prefer it out of context so:
"A successful dump!" Biden proclaimed when asked if he had anything to report. ... "I got a second load. Anybody that wants to help me and load, let me know."
And credit Fox News (did I just say that?) for a phenomenal headline. "Potential No. 2 has 'successful dump'"

2) I'm newly obsessed with Jim Oliphant's new blog, Writ Large. Oliphant is the Supreme Court reporter at the Chicago Tribune and my new favorite with Linda Greenhouse gone, but he starts mornings with a non-courts post -- a random dialogue between him and Jim Tankersley. That's the background. Here's the quote:

I’m done waiting for Obama to make his veep choice. I’m sitting around, time on my hands, not sure what to do with myself. Last night, I cleaned my place! Cleaned it. At night! I even cleaned out my refrigerator. You know what my refrigerator has become? Gitmo for vegetables. It’s where awful things happen to vegetables in small chambers.

*Tap*tap* -- is this thing still on?

So I was giving the car insurance company a recorded statement Saturday regarding my totaled car (short version: Rich Bad Driver In A Beamer t-boned me in a parking lot and didn't own up to the fault, so the insurance company had to investigate before determining it 100 percent his fault).

They turned on the recorder and I started telling them about the crash, and about halfway through my statement I heard A.M. making that loud yelling noise cats make when they're either a) in the bath, or b) trapped somewhere. So I followed the sound and found A.M. Standing next to my bed with a tissue box stuck over her head.

So my statement went something like this:

"I was driving down the main thoroughfare when Mr. Hou came out of one of those secondary lanes with all the parking spaces and slammed into-- ohmigod my cat has a tissue box stuck on her head. Hold on one sec. A.M. A.M.! COME HERE! Let me get it off you! A.M. seriously calm down. Oooh. OK. There. Good girl. Aww, are you OK? OK. ... I'm sorry, are you still there? Sorry, my cat had a tissue box stuck on her head."

Adjuster : "That's funny."

Me: "Yeah. She's OK. So I was driving straight and Mr. Hou..............."

So yeah. That's on the record.

In other news, Rich Bad Driver In A Beamer's insurance company assumed full liability today and my car is totaled. So I will be buying a new car (A.K.A. probably a slightly newer version of my old car) with whatever settlement money I get. Poor Hessy Honda...

"With all due respect..."

Asked Saturday night which existing Supreme Court justices he wouldn't have nominated, McCain's response was:

"With all due respect, Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, Justice Souter and Justice Stevens."

In other words, McCain wouldn't nominate anyone he disagrees with. Who knew?

Obama, meanwhile, is taking flak from conservative groups for his answer, which actually included some reasoning other than saying activist judges are bad (Brown v. Board of Ed was the product of so-called activist judges, but we like to disregard that):

"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he…was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution. I would not nominate Justice Scalia, although I don't think there's any doubt about his intellectual brilliance because he and I just disagree, you know. He taught at University of Chicago as did I in the law school."

From the Legal Times blog:

"It was clear last night that Obama’s criteria for selecting Supreme Court Justices are fuzzy, lack intellectual coherence, and are subject to his own whims," said Wendy Long, a former Thomas clerk and counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network.

Right. Because McCain clearly based his answer on qualifications and experience.

I'm not saying the Souter/Stevens/Breyer/Ginsburg set is superior to the Alito/Roberts/Thomas/Scalia set or vice-versa. What I am saying is let's stop lying to ourselves and acknowledge that presidents appoint justices who agree with their Constitutional views. PR flaks can spout as much BS as they'd like about how the other candidate would try to impose his own agenda through his nominations -- but, um, yeah... so would your candidate. Glass houses, dude.

Sunday night on NJ Transit

Returning from the city Sunday night, we somehow picked a train car with the following passengers (actually, they picked us... none of them were sitting there when we got on):

=

There was Jazzy Jeff from the Fresh Prince.

And there was the guy with the bandanna over his nose and mouth. I didn't realize I was going to be part of the picture, but the look on my face entertains me. So Shruti tried again for a close-up, and...


Bandanna Boy walked onto the train with his two friends and ever-so-considerately began playing his bass-heavy cell phone music for everyone on the train car to hear. Meanwhile, his friends chatted loudly about pussies and such. We could only assume that Bandanna Boy was immuno-suppressed (Unless you can think of some other reason for the trusty germ-stopping fabric draped over his nose and mouth?). And his friends were quite obviously talking about their cats. Such nice boys.

Should have gotten the six-pack

A Chicago woman has been accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death because he was drinking her beer.

The 55-year-old woman was in the car with her 77-year-old boyfriend Wednesday when she became angry that he was drinking her beer. So she stabbed him repeatedly, got out of the car, called for his nephew ("You better come get your uncle—I just killed him," according to the police report), got back in the car and finished the beer.

No word on how she managed to keep the beer from spilling while she was stabbing the guy.

Two-faced kitten

I'm sure you've all heard of Chase No Face, the cat who lost her face and eyelids in an accident when she was 4 weeks old.

Now an Ohio kitten was born with two faces -- or, more specifically, four eyes, two noses and one mouth.Weird.

First Amendment vs. Sixth Amendment

I know I made a sort of pledge not long ago that I would try to be more entertaining on this thing, but I'm actually interested in what You People think of this, so...

A judge in Kansas declared a mistrial in a rape case after the local paper reported that the suspect had been convicted of fondling a 13-year-old girl in another county and would be facing child pornography charges in both counties.

The outcome of that trial had been already reported in the other county's paper, but the issue was with the local paper because the jurors would be more likely to see the story. But the judge had already ordered the jury not to read the local paper, and the defense lawyer said in the local paper behind all this:

“The problem we had was (the headline) was in bold face, and if (jurors) were even innocently looking through the paper, and it caught their attention, we have a compromised jury.”

The headline on the original A5 story was "Man sentenced to 11 years in sex case."
The one-column subhead was “Same man accused of raping Salina girl, other sex charges.”

So I'm torn. The original story was a matter of public record and the paper had every right to print it. But the suspect is obviously entitled to a fair trial. But the judge did order the jury not to read the paper, so for him to assume they didn't follow those orders (without asking, at that) is strange, right? And the girl who was raped already testified for three hours, and now she's going to have to do it again.

So what do you guys think?

Denver, the DNC, and poop

In anticipation of the DNC, the Denver City Council has passed an ordinance barring people from carrying poop in public for "nefarious purposes."

Seriously.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a "feces bomb."

Police have to prove that people carrying such items intend to use them to block public access or emergency equipment or to thwart crowd control measures.

The ordinance was passed unanimously by the City Council on Monday.

This came despite three protest groups signing a treaty that called for "a moratorium on the public throwing, spraying, smearing, hosing or inducing of excrement," according to the Denver Post.

Because the MVC is living in 1995?

I understand the reasoning behind trying to add color to otherwise-bureaucratic Web sites, but the New Jersey MVC (its version of the DMV, for you California people) crosses the line into circa-1995-AOL-member-pages with its registration renewal. While you're waiting for your online renewal to process, you see this:

In fact, they have the smoke chugging out of the tailpipe (see the animation here). Why do I get the feeling someone at the MVC googled "free clip art" and came up with this image?

Tiger dogs

OK, not really, but this golden retriever has begun nursing three white tiger cubs at the Safari Zoological Park in Kansas.


AP story here.

Apparently this has happened before. In May 2007, a dog at the Jinan Paomaling Wild Animal World in China nursed her puppy along with three tigers cubs who were rejected by their mother.

And now *you're* under investigation for clicking here

The New Jersey Office of Legislative Services has placed filters on all legislative computers since finding kiddie porn on Assemblyman Neil Cohen's office computer last week.

The result?

That's a screenshot from a statehouse computer. Now anyone in the statehouse trying to read about Cohen can't -- the new filters block out any Web site with the keyword "porn."

Yum.

The water at Santa Monica beaches is filled with fecal bacteria, according to a new study. L.A. County beaches have the highest level of fecal bacteria in the state, and Santa Monica has some of the highest levels in the county, according to the study. The part of the beach by the pier exceeds state standards by 52 percent. Other Santa Monica beaches range from 4 percent (by Strand Street) up to 39 percent (Santa Monica Canyon).

From the L.A. Times:

Samples were taken from nearly three-quarters of California's public beaches from April through October 2007. Monitors collected most samples from ankle-deep water at least once a week at sites near storm drains or other contamination sources. Across California, these contained unhealthful levels of enterococcus, total coliform and fecal coliform bacteria -- found in human and animal waste -- 7% of the time, down from 12% the previous year.

Just thought you should know.

Maybe he thought it was Obama in the next stall

An Obama campaign button that was intended to show Obama alongside Larry LaRocco, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Idaho, mistakenly used a photo of Larry Craig instead. (AP story here)

They were apparently produced by a commercial firm that makes campaign memorabilia, and not the campaign.

But still. I want.

Keep reading...

I've been trying to figure out how to begin this post without driving away everyone who reads this besides Lisa. As you might have guessed, I didn't come up with any good ideas. But do me a favor and stick with it beyond the opening sentence you're about to see -- despite the requisite explanatory opener, you should be amused.

A prominent education policy blogger who calls herself Eduwonkette sent a public records request to the press guy for the New York Education Department. Eduwonkette is well-respected within the education policy world and also known for being a bit of a nudge.

So the press guy, David Cantor, responded to her request with this:

I've thought about it and decided i don't want to give out information to someone asking anonymously.

I'm sure you'll have no difficulty finding what you need.

In response, another education blogger, posted a public public records request. The dude's actually pretty funny.

I understand the concern you expressed to Eduwonkette, the inimitable - if anonymous - education blogger, regarding the data’s availability. After all, we can’t be sure that Ms. Eduwonkette is an American citizen [and thus a member of the “public”], let alone a New York State resident.

You need not worry about my identity or my citizenship.

And whereas I appreciate such earnest gatekeeping, undoubtedly in the interests of our State’s security and well-being ........ click for the post in its entirety.

A few more Mattie pictures

So Mattie's favorite spot to hang out is on the shelf under the coffee table. I think she likes it because it's relatively cool under there (especially since the AC has been broken)...

Sometimes she hangs out all the way under the table...

On this day she tired herself out playing and I looked down to see her completely wrapped around the leg of the table.
Look closely and you'll see her tongue is sticking out...
Apparently slightly disturbed by all the picture-taking...
Chasing after the shoelace...

Maybe if I lick at it?

Must... get... the shoelace....

So close!

This, by the way, is my absolute favorite.
And, success.

So that's Mattie. She's pretty great. She still hasn't learned that her tail is attached to her body and one day I saw attack her back leg because she'd apparently forgotten that she was using it to scratch her ear. She gets confused easily.

We was taught good

I do what I can

I spent all day yesterday trying to track down information about this bank robbery, and eventually hit a brick wall. Got hung up on repeatedly by the police, who eventually stopped answering the phone when I called. Got brushed off by the FBI. And got ignored by the U.S. Marshal.

So I wrote this:

The U.S. Marshals Service didn't have more specific details about Monday's robbery and referred those questions to the Edison Police Department. Edison police referred questions to the FBI, who referred questions back to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Fun.