A woman who exhumes her lover’s ashes for spite clearly has issues. But what kind of person buries himself with beer and cigarettes to begin with?

Some guy at Blogs For Bush notes that U.S. life expectancy hit a record in 2003.
The logical conclusion?

Guess what? If we’re living longer it means that life is getting better. Got that? Better. Things are better than they were before – “before”, in this case, being before President Bush took office.

Amazing, isn’t it? After two short years President Bush was able to not only (1) decrease heart disease, cancer, and stroke fatalities, but he also (2) made everyone’s life “better” than it was in 2000.
Sometimes I just don’t give that guy enough credit.

Tim Grieve:

When George Bush sat down with Vladimir Putin in Bratislava last week to deliver his long-awaited lecture on civil liberties and freedom of the press, Newsweek says Putin shot back with an attack of his own: “We didn’t criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS.”
Bush was apparently slack-jawed, and senior White House aides were angry. “Putin thought we’d fired Dan Rather,” one administration official told Time. “It was like something out of ‘1984.’”
Newsweek, rising to the defense of freedom of the press in these United States, says it’s “all too clear” that Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media as being “just like his own.” Presumably, that means that Putin thinks Bush controls the U.S. media in the same way that he controls the Russian media. We can’t imagine where he got that idea.

Apparently Putin looked deep into the soul of the American news media machine, and it looks somewhat familiar to his own.

Lately I’ve noticed the TV news stations are starting to consult “the bloggers” for news analysis. They’re now getting special segments, and it’s changing the way the networks report a story.
For instance, say the powers that be in Nauru decide to switch their currency from the Australian dollar to the Papua New Guinea kina, triggering a currency crisis in Oceania. In the good old days the newsies would consult a local journalist (if there was on in Naurau) or more likely pay an academic (“a Naurau currency analyst”) to explain to the audience the significance of the Naurauian bombshell.
With our new media, you might get a journalist (if one exists) and you might get the Naurau currency analyst. But now you’ll also get bonus blogoshere coverage. The anchors will either call in a (1) blogger/self-appointed blog expert, or (2) their paid Internet web surfers, and ask the question every American wants to know: What are the bloggers saying about the Naurauian currency fiasco?
[Financial aside: I’m guessing these “what are the blogs saying” segments don’t cost as much as it does to bring in that traditional “expert” commentary.]
I’m not sure how the network blog readers go about selecting the blogs they feature on TV, but if any of you happen by this site, just drop me an e-mail and I’ll crank out some “expert” blog analysis on virtually any subject you want. Heh.

Per Slashdot, here’s an article on Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s effort to challenge secret federal laws requiring travelers to present identification papers at airports.
The case raises an interesting question: Does a system allowing the government to track our whereabouts really make us safer? You can read more about it here.
It’s healthy for our society that people like Mr. Gilmore are willing to fight rules which most people simply don’t bother to question. Since 9/11, the government has been doing a lot of things that have not been subject to adequate public scrutiny. We need people to force the issue of why.