(Map source)
Above are the states I have been in. Many of them were just quick drive throughs.
It’s been a while since I got out and explored America. California is the only new state I’ve added in the past decade.
But I assume someday I’ll get out there again. Which state will be the next to fall? If I had the extra coin today and the opportunity to escape for a couple weeks, I’d load up the Madone and test my metal on some of the big mountains in Colorado (here or here) or Montana (here or here). In that event, “nearby” Utah or Idaho are strong contenders. On the other hand, New England is shorter trip. If the history bug strikes again I can kill four birds with one short stone’s throw.
Time will tell.

Through the back door:

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.
The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days.
. . .
[S]ix I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.
Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a “back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.”

If the executive branch refuses to enforce the law, it won’t be enforced, will it?

William Bennett, on CNN yesterday: “Not to be flip, but give war a chance.”

The self-proclaimed “America’s Anchorman” on embryonic stem cell research:

I’m telling you, and I have from the get-go, who is behind this — is the — the militant pro-abortion crowd, because you need abortions to get these.

Uh, fertility clinics perform an abortion as part of the in vitro fertilization process? I wasn’t aware of that. That would defeat the whole purpose, wouldn’t it?
If that wasn’t comical enough, he then added this:

This — the — I think we need to re-examine this whole term “scientist.” You know, there are certain things in our culture that are never questioned. They have instant credibility. If a scientist says anything, [gasp] it’s gotta be true. Scientists have this aura.
. . .
Science is not politics — well, it’s absolutely BS. Science is all about politics, and science has been so wrong about so many things.

Yes, in offering brilliant insights like the one above, Limbaugh demonstrates that we should drop “scientists” all together and get our information from those holding Ph.D.s in radio punditry. Because clearly they don’t have a political agenda.

As they stand up, we’ll stand down run for cover:

U.S. officials have long claimed that as America trains more Iraqi forces the violence in the country will subside. Actually, the exact opposite has happened, veteran Iraq correspondent Tom Lasseter (formerly with Knight Ridder, now with McClatchy after the sale) calculates today.
“Despite the addition of almost 100,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi troops in the past year, American efforts to pacify central Iraq and the capital appear to be failing, challenging a central assumption behind the U.S. strategy in Iraq: that training more Iraqi security forces will allow American troops to start going home,” he observes.
Of course, one problem has been that some of these newly-trained forces are joining in the sectarian carnage. Uniformed officers or official police vehicles are often spotted the scene of killings.
The raw numbers: the number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police grew from an estimated 168,670 in June 2005 to some 264,600 this June. “Yet Baghdad’s morgue is receiving nearly twice as many dead Iraqis each day as it did last year,” Lasseter notes. “The number of bombings causing multiple fatalities has risen steadily. Attacks on American and Iraqi troops last month grew 44 percent from June 2005.”

Maybe it’s time to head back to the drawing board again.
Funny how history repeats itself. I predict that just as in Afghanistan, we will sooner or later be fighting some (many?) of the same people we are currently training in Iraq.