YOU'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT ALL THAT OVER DINNER, G.W.?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming to dinner at the White House on January 4.

So, like all good dinner dates, Mr. G. has a clear idea of what he wants to talk about before he goes upstairs for Laura to tuck him in. These topics include:

1. global challenges
2. promoting stability and recontruction in Afghanistan
3. advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace
4. supporting the democratically elected government of Lebanon
5. preventing Iran from developing the capability to make nuclear weapons
6. promoting free trade and further transatlantic economic integration
7. advancing energy security

The Chancellor takes over as president of both the European Union and G-8 on January 1st, so it looks like George gets to treat her to dinner before the Yerpians.

Those seven items look like lengthy topics. But then, George can handle it. He's a man of few words -- and might say things like, "Won't work" -- or "Good idea" -- "Let me run that one by Laura" -- or "Can we come back to that one?"

Maybe something like that. Don't misunderstand me. Neither Quint nor I have ever been to the White House so we really don't know. But my imagination can fill in the blank spots, thank you very much.

###

NO MAIL DELIVERY ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 2

No, it's not an extra holiday tagged onto New Years Day.

It's because of an Executive Order signed by President Bush as a mark of respect for former president Gerald Ford.

Mail delivery will resume on January 3.

Regular mail and retail services are affected.

###

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND JUST WHEN YOU NEEDED IT MOST, HERE'S A  PLATEFUL OF NEW LAWS THAT GO INTO EFFECT ON MONDAY

Registered sex offenders will have to renew their drivers license every 12 months in Illinois. And if a person is supposed to register but didn't, the drivers license can be cancelled. Other more stringent requirements prohibit custody or visitation by a father of a child who is convicted of sex crimes that resulted in the conception of the child.

Illinois inmates who have self-inflicted injuries will have to pay their own medical expenses.

Each and every house and apartment in Illinois will be required to have a carbon monoxide monitor.

A new law will now make it a crime to lie about being a decorated war hero.

Autistic children will now have access to expanded medical treatment. The bill expanding these benefits will now require private insurance plans to pay for treatment of pervasive developmental disorders. Also, 20 additional outpatient visits for speech therapy will now be required for health benefit plans.

Members of the public in Michigan can sign up to get e-mail notification when a registered sex offender moves into their zip code.

New Mexico is setting up a DNA data base. Anyone arrested for a felony will be required to provide a DNA sample to law enforcement officials.

Things are gonna be tougher for lobbyists in North Carolina. Now the lobbyists are going to have to disclose the amount of money they are spending lobbying the legislature. And furthermore, legislators will be able to sign up for a "no gift registry" to let lobbyists know that they don't want any gifts or free lunches. (Boy, I'd like to see that short list. Is that going to be like the free junketing ban up in Maybeville, D.C. and everybody just forgot to fill out the form? That is, until somebody got busted, censured, or defrocked of the Mega-Squat outfit?)

For those of you who live in Alaska, health plans now will be required to cover the costs of colorectal cancer screening and testing procedures if you are considered high-risk or are over 50 years of age.

Social security protection is really tightening in some states.

In Arkansas, it will be illegal to publicly display a person's social security number or to require a social security number on a web site that is not encrypted.

In Maryland, employers will no longer be allowed to print an employees' social security number on their paycheck or any part of the pay stub.

Happy hunting! In New Hampshire, hunters will be allowed to use a dog to track wounded deer, moose or bear -- as long as the dog is on a leash.

Smokers in Texas will start paying $1 more per pack after the first of the year.

New license plates to honor fallen service members will be available in Colorado and Georgia. The Colorado plates will bear the word "fallen" while Georgia plates will have the phrase "Gold star family" on them.

###

Hi, This is Quint, again.

I was reading an article from AFP yesterday, "North Europe to welcome new year with ice-free Baltic Sea". It seems that the Baltic has no ice this year, at least so far. because the water temperature is 1 degree C. As you know, 0 C is freezing.

Tamero Kouts was quoted as saying that that the Estonian coastal water  was warmer by one degree Celius (around three degrees Fahenheit) than at the end of last year.

My complaint is his saying that 1 degree C is "around 3 degrees F". One degree C is exactly 1.8 degrees F, not "around" anything!

Mr. Kouts is supposed to be a senior researcher at the Estonian Marine Institute, as such he most assuredly would know the conversion between the two temperature scales.

Now, either Mr. Kouts doesn't know how to compare the two temperature scales or he was misquoted by the (nameless)reporter  who wrote the article.

Either way the sloppy reporting is poor journalism and is all too common to be acceptable.

Now, I've had my say so I'll close with wishing a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!!

SEE -- THOSE TRAFFIC TICKETS DO SAVE LIVES

Maybe because it's the thought of being inconvenienced by getting a lawyer and going to court --

Or maybe it's the idea of paying out all those fines and the resulting increase in auto insurance --

Don't know. Traffic tickets do make people change their driving habits.

Over the Christmas holiday weekend, Mississippi handed out more than 4,000 tickets, according to the Associated Press.

And there was only one traffic fatality in the entire state!

Apparently there were lots and lots of tickets for people who didn't have their seat belts clicked. Maybe that's the attributing factor to lower traffic fatalities -- making people buckle up.

The point is, even if you don't live in a state with a very serious state police department.

And even if your state police isn't out there in full force to save lives. 

And even if your local state politicians offer wonderful-sounding alibis like "we don't want our citizens to feel harassed."

Big credit goes to Missisippi. They want all the people who were alive on Friday to still be alive on Monday. Especially if they're driving on Mississippi roads.

That's not harassment -- that's serving and protecting.

And the weekend of the Really Big Parties is looming ahead of us. So get yourself a designated driver if you're going to be out there driving from one place to another. Or, better yet -- park it and go to a hotel party.

Quint and I will be at home quietly and safely ringing in our 28th new year.

We hope yours will be the same and that the new year will find you filled with God's richest blessings, joy and continued health.


P.S. -- Check back throughout the day -- I have a couple of other tidbits to share with you that I'll be posting as I go through the day. (Still not 100% from my bout with the flu over Christmas.)

##

REMEMBER MOGADISHU?

If you saw Black Hawk Down, you remember how the lawless Somalians treated the U.N. forces who came to deliver food to a starving nation and about 300,000 people died of starvation because the warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid ambushed the UN troops and stole the food.

I believe I remember that the food rotted in warehouses because Aidid wouldn't allow it to be distributed. (Aidid, incidentally, got his education at UCLA then returned to Somalia to pronounce himself warlord.)

And then the U.S. Marines went over to help out the U.N. troops.

And then our Marines located the little nestegg up on the second floor of a building where the Somalians were having a kind of board meeting -- or cabinet meeting -- to figure out what to do about the Marines.

And then some Somalians shot down one of our helicopters. Not only that, but they killed one of our Marines and tied his body to the back of one of their vehicles and dragged his lifeless body around the streets of Mogadishu.

Then the people in Maybeville said, "Everybody out. Come on back home. Job's over."

That was Mogadishu then. It was 1993.

Now, the Ethiopians have arrived and taken over Mogadishu from the Muslim Somalians. Didn't even fire a shot. Just rode in and said, "Get outta town!"

And that's pretty much what the Islamic Somalians did. Except that as things got twisted around, the Somalian government forces have retrenched and are riding back in. 

So that's what's happening around the Horn of Africa as we speak.

And you know there will more news coming about this situation. It's just starting to heat up.

##

OKAY -- SO YOU ONLY WANT TO BE EXECUTED FOR FOUR OF THE MURDERS?

Sometimes, no matter how much you read something, it still doesn't make sense.

Take, for instance, a story out of Nashville, Tennessee, about a fellow who was convicted of murdering seven fast-food employees. The convict said, "But wait, I was incompetent to stand trail for three of the murders."

In what seems like a gross miscarriage of time spent by lawyers and judges all the way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, Mr. Murderer Paul Reid, still has an execution date set.

The high court was not exactly moved to set aside his convictions.

##

IN BRITAIN, ONE MUST KINDLY KILL THE FOXIES

Boxing day has long been steeped in tradition on the other side of the pond.

True, we Americans are trying to import it as a newly assigned mega-shopping day right after Christmas. That's because we've started giving gift cards instead of presents. $94 billion worth in 2006.

But back in jolly old England, Boxing Day was always the Day of the Hunt. Fox hunt, that is.

Then, along comes the animal rights activists who took the position that those mean old beagles ought not to be able to hurt the little foxies.

Instead, the dogs have to find the fox and chase it out into the open so that the hunters can just, well, you know, kill it.

Now, isn't that a kinder, gentler fox hunt?

Anyone care to ask the fox?

##

IT'S AUNT NANCY, THE MAYOR OF MAYBEVILLE -- NOT UNCLE SAM ANYMORE

It wasn't all that long ago when the Democrats were quoted in an International Herald Tribune article that they vowed to end secretive legislating.

The mega-squats have promised to bring back the textbook version of how bills become laws, daylight debates, serious amendments and minority-party participation.

They also say they want to bring back civility and collegiality. Partisanship apparently has poisoned relationships on both sides of the aisles.

And naturally, since the Democrats are now the Chief Mega-Squats, it's all the fault of the Underling Mega-Squats, the Republicans.

In the land of Maybeville, no one ever has to take responsibility for what they did wrong. And in the land of Maybeville, if a mega-squat is actually caught red-handed, all he (or she) has to do is plead "the devil made me do it."

Shrug, shrug, get a therapist.

What an insult to all the people who are in therapy and working hard to change their lives. But then, they identified areas of their lives they wanted to work on before they committed any high crimes and misdemeanors.

And then Aunt Nancy, the Mayor of Maybeville, said that her new vision of transparency included possible televising house debates live. And then a quick feint to the right, or was it to the left?

No matter. There's not going to be any changes in televising anything.

It would be too disruptive.

It would be too noisy.

It would be too, well, cluttered, to have all those wires going everywhere. Somebody might trip.

Aunt Nancy has spoken. Maybeville is still cloistered.

But in the land of the Way Out West, in Missoula, Montana, live coverage of the Montana legislature will debut in January. Every floor session of the House and Senate will be televised live.

And committee meetings too.

And every other taped proceeding of the 90-day session.

Cable TV was made for glory days like this.

Maybe Maybeville ought to go visit Missoula, Way Out West, to see how the Big Sky Country became Open Sky Country!

Then all would be well in the land.

##

JANE HAS THE FLU

Who would get the flu over Christmas?

Me, that's who.

But I'm in the office thinking/dreaming about tonight when I can put my head back on the pillow and continue my recuperation.

The treat for you, though, is that Quint says he's going to write a blog for you. It won't be anything like the one I'm thinking about -- Mayor Nancy of Maybeville.

But today, I'm too tired to try to be witty. It will have to wait for another day.

Anyway, Quint's blog will be a lot more serious than mine are. I have no doubt that it will give you pause to think.

Over to you, Quint.

WHO GOES TO THE MOVIES OVER CHRISTMAS WEEKEND?

Well, lots of people. And they spent $103,458 to get a seat! And I don't know about you folks, but we usually spend as much for popcorn and soda as we do for tickets, so that's a lot of money at the concession stands too -- even if just half of the moviegoers get the goodies.

Apparently not too many people were interest in the antics of Santa Claus 3 -- it slipped to 13th place, with $1,165,697 million for its 8th week.

Casino Royale grabbed $3,200,000 and slipped to 11th place from its previous week perch of 8th place. It was the 6th week for Casino.

Borat is still hanging in there with $619,066 for its 8th week. It slipped to 14th place. Talk about staying power! It's beginning to look like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Other surprises include The Good German with a box office total of $95,538 for its second week.

Letters from Iwo Jima got a total of $76,500. I think this was its premier weekend.




So the top ten movies for this week are:

Night at the Museum -- $30,433,781

The Pursuit of Happyness -- $15,000,000

Rocky Balboa -- $12,158,168

The Good Shepherd -- $10,034,000

Charlotte's Web -- $7,566,306

Eragon -- $7,006,467

We Are Marshall -- $6,110,000

Happy Feet -- $5,600,000

The Holiday -- $4,900,000

The Nativity Story -- $4,650,000

Hi, this is Quint, Jane is down with the flu so I get to sneak in a blog today.

We have all read about global warming being caused by human activities, such as driving our SUVs and making too much carbon dioxide.

A lot of climatologists find real problems with that theory as the cause of the warming of our climate.

Recently, I read about an interesting experiment conducted by some scientists in Denmark. They bombarded a big box of air with cosmic (gamma rays) radiation. Clouds formed in the box.

Big deal, you say. Well, it is. Cosmic radiation from space strikes our atmosphere all the time. The cosmic radiation hits the air molecules and knocks out electrons. The electrons cause clouds to form, like in the experiment. The sun's magnetic field draws the cosmic radiation like a magnet draws iron filings, the stronger the sun's magnetic field the more the cosmic radiation is drawn to the sun and away from the earth.

The sun's magnetic field is stronger in the last 50 years or so than it was before so the earth's atmosphere is not bombarded as much as it used to be. This  has been measured and monitored for a long time. Also, the amount of clouds is lower than it used to be. The fewer clouds, the more the sunlight can heat things up. So any heating that has been occuring in the last 50 years is due to fewer clouds and therefore more sunlight hitting the earth. These are observed events and are well documented. Again, the experiment in the box was not someone's theory but actually observed and measured.

I just thought I'd throw this out there for your information.

QUINT AND I WISH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

When we sign off this blog for today, we will be done until after Christmas. We have just a few tiny things to get for Christmas before it's a wrap -- so to speak.

Then my focus turns to making a birthday cake -- our son-in-law, Ron, has a birthday on Christmas Day and daughter, Sharon, has a December 27 birthday. So it's cake baking time.

Other-son-in-law, Rick, has a birthday on New Years Eve -- but he's in Sandpoint, Idaho, with daughter Teri. Teri gets to supply his cake to him. Happy birthday, Rick.

And we'll wish Ron and Sharon happy birthday in person on Christmas morning when we go over to share their holiday feast.

In the meantime, if you have not read the Advent Devotionals, you have an opportunity to go all the way back to Day #1 which was December 3rd. Read all the updates that were posted through today's.

And if you have not seen The Nativity, do yourself a really big favor and see the movie over the Christmas season. It's faithful to the Bible story. It brings new empathy to the travel hardships that Mary and Joseph endured, their meager existence as poor, hard-working people in a tiny little village, and the evil king Herod who was being mean to everybody. The massacre of the little babies is also from the Bible passages.

Gabriel was God's messenger during the whole Bible story.

If he were to come to earth with another message from God today, what do you think it would be?

Maybe to find a way to find peace and love for everybody in the world. We are all God's children. And God, our Heavenly Father, wants us all to get along with each other down here.

Love to each of you.

Quint and Jane Reinheimer

##

DOES THIS URANIUM STUFF GET MOVED AROUND MORE THAN THEY'RE TELLING US?

All right -- so call me a worrier. But I thought this stuff wasn't supposed to be trucked from one state to another. Uranium dust, that is. (Oh, I'll bet Quint grabs my computer and writes a P.S. to this piece.)

Anyway, it's a wire story from the Associated Press.

It happened in Benson, North Carolina. A tractor-trailer was hauling 6,000 pounds of low grade uranium.

The truck failed to execute the turn on the ramp coming off I-95. Must have been trying to get onto I-40 and didn't make it.

But there's absolutely no danger, we're told. Even though the I-40 entrance ramp was closed for a few hours.

The low grade uranium -- called packaged fissile -- was in containers. The containers didn't break open when the truck turned over. So all is well. And safe.

The stuff was being moved to Global Nuclear Fuels in Wilmington.

Over to you, Quint.

##

WHO WOULD STEAL ALL THE BABIES OUT OF THE MANAGERS?

There were 32 little managers in the neighborhood. Each one of them used to have a Baby Jesus lying in them.

Then someone actually stole all the babies!

For shame!

But now it gets really weird.

Over the weekend, a woman in the neighborhood found all the Baby Jesuses line up along her front yard fence.

The woman took the little plastic babies to St. Symphorosa Church on Chicago's south side. And from what we have learned, most of the little Jesuses have been claimed by their owners.

So what do the owners have to do to make sure the little baby makes it all the way through the Christmas season -- glue him to the manger?

Some people just have no Christmas spirit.

##

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA HOPES TO GO WIRELESS

Coming across the USA TODAY wires is news that Anchorage may become yet another whole, entire city to go wireless.

That is, if Mayor Mark Begich has anything to do with it.

The mayor says he'd be willing to let the telecommunications companies put up their towers on city easements if they would bear the costs of bringing the systems into Anchorage that would let the locals plug into the internet.

If that's the case, Anchorage would join a growing list of cities around the world that are completely wireless.

Grand Haven, Michigan, was the first city in the United States to offer wireless internet to all its citizens. And that was on August 1, 2004.

Now the list of WI-FI hotspots around the country is growing by leaps and bounds. We've even heard rumors that Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago wants his really big city to go wireless. That would be one big hot spot, let me tell you!

Philadelphia and New York City are also looking at having a blanket of internet availability hovering over their cities. In fact, it looks like all the big cities are looking at the possibilities.

So what's firing up all this interest in wireless internet?

Easy answer -- homeland security.

The police, fire and other emergency services -- including hospitals for sure -- need to be able to communicate with each other instantly.

The internet is the information superhighway that makes that happen seamlessly.

The rest of us can plug into the wireless blanket that hangs over us.

##

THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN

Who said that? Jefferson Davis? Robert E. Lee? No matter. The point of this little story is not obvious at first, but I hope you'll get all the way to the delicious end.

The Census Bureau has released its 2006 population estimates and guest what?

The south picked up 1,531,652 new persons/residents.

That's the area bounded by Texas on the west all the way to the great Atlantic Ocean up to its looks like just under New York.

The west did pretty good. It got 1,016,371 new residents. The west looks like someone just took a knife and sliced off a big chunk of the United States from North Dakota south to the Mexican border. I think Hawaii gets included in this section. We could say that Hawaii is way west.

The midwest only got 281,339 new people. It looks like Kansas and parts east up to the western border of Pennsylvania is this area that I call the Rust Belt -- but people cringe when I say that, so I just whisper it now.

And the northeast grew an anemic 62,061 people. They get everything that's left over.

Now to the point of this not-so-great geographic portrayal of the census numbers. This will really scare you.

It's about the redistricting of Congress for the next elections.

The south got more new voters!!

And the number of representatives in Congress is determined by a state's population. (There are only 2 senators from each state no matter what the population is.)

Don't you think there's going to be some hand wringing in the back halls of Congress when they figure out that the population moved south late one night when they weren't looking?

My oh my. I can just hear it now -- "What are we going to do now?"

##

NOW, GUYS, YOU'RE STARTING TO LOOK LIKE MEGA-SQUATS

You're supposed to by nice little Indians. And when you have your elections out there on the reservation, there will only be one winner.

It's Rapid City, South Dakota.

It's the Ogalala Sioux Indian Tribe.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is recognizing John Yellow Bird as President of the tribe.

But Alex White Plume says the election results are bogus because he was removed from the ballot. A little problem because of his felony conviction.

White Plume wants a new election.

Now it's no secret that my father's people were Cherokee. In fact, my father was full blood. And I've always been proud of my Cherokee blood line.

The election I liked best was the one where a woman won as Chief of the Cherokee nation -- it was 1987. Her name was Wilma Mankiller. No one disuputed her election. In fact, when she ran for re-election in 1991, she got 83% of the votes.

##

HOW DID BORAT MISS THIS ONE?

This story, out of the Across the USA column in today's USA TODAY, is one of those little snippits that's funny only because the person survived to laugh about it.

It seems that in Eugene, Oregon, a worker in a bakery (Franz Bakery was reported) almost died of suffocation when he was trapped face down in a huge, billowy trough of dough that was moving down the conveyor belt.

I could see Borat doing something like this in a sequel. But then, I don't know if my sides could stand a sequal to Borat. I suspect I may have broken a rib laughing so hard in the first Borat movie.

And the bakery? It was fined more than $6,000 for five safety violations.

Let's see -- that would be, #1 -- moving the conveyor belt while a person is on it.

And secondly, maybe making the mountain of dough too tall?

And #3 -- maybe the quick rising yeast was too fast.

Don't know about numbers 4 and 5.

The poor victim is now in therapy. All kidding aside, post traumatic stress syndrome comes into play anytime a person feels endangered to the point where they fear they're gonna die.

Maybe that would cover violations 4 and 5. They should scare people to the point where they need therapy.

Maybe I won't tell Borat after all.

##

IS THIS HOW FISH GET THEIR LEGS?

The U.S. Army wants to gather up all the (they say) neutralized nerve gas that's in Indiana, truck it all the way to New Jersey, then dump it into the Delaware River.

Where are the environmentalists when the fish need them the most?!!

Do you know what all the fallderah is all about?

Not anything to do with the poor fishies. It's about transporting the gas illegally across state lines.

Apparently there's a federal law that bans interstate movement of chemical weapons.

But if it's neutralized -- like they say it is -- how could it still be a weapon?

Wouldn't it just be, well, you know -- gas?

Is this what happened back in the old days when the fishies were supposed to have sprouted legs and walked up on the beaches, never to return to the water's depths again? Without scuba equipment, that is.

Now, I'm not a tree hugger, mind you. But the poor little fishies might not like being gassed.

##

THE RUSSIANS ARE INSPECTING OUR MISSILES!

We have a whole bunch of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) parked at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

So way back in 1994,there was a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and what used to be called the Soviet Union.

Just to make sure we are all playing nice, we send our inspectors over to see what they're holding onto and the Russians do the same thing to us.

Just so you know, in case someone starts screaming, "The Russians are coming."

They aren't our enemies anymore since the cold war thawed out.

##

FOR ALL NEWS SCIENTIFIC, QUINT HAS THE LAST WORD IN OUR HOUSE!

It isn't that I don't understand scientific mumbo jumbo. I took physics, biology, astronomy, even anthropology. And passed with better than flying colors -- just one notch below the aces.

But hey. Jacks around is still a good hand!

Anyway, I rely completely on my analytical chemist husband who gleefully reads such weighty magazines as Nature and Science. Actually, he says they aren't magazines. They're journals. Excuuuuse me.

He's practically sitting out on the front porch every Friday for the mailperson to deliver the weekly issue of Science.

So he tells me that the scientific community is on the brink of some really good news for the weight scale problem of America.

It turns out that, according to an article published in Nature just only today, intestinal microbes may be the culprit.

It took me years to learn that there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

Likewise, apparently there are good microbes and bad microbes in our intestinal tract. And it's the bad microbes living down there that put on the extra pounds. Thin people don't have the bad guys, called fermicutes.

Thin people have more of the good microbes, called bacteroidetes.

The good news is that as fat people lose weight, they increase the number of the good microbes and decrease the bad guys.

The next step is to figure out how to get rid of the bad guys. That will be another research project, you can bet.

Just remember: if you can identify something, you can measure it. And if you can measure it, you can manage it.

So the scientists are at step #1 -- they've identified what may well be the crux of the problem.

So get busy. Dieters are waiting.

##

FOLLOW-UP ON THE GNAWING (ALLEGED) PIT BULL INCIDENT

First the headlines on news websites said four of a little babies toes were gnawed off by the family's pit bull.

Okay, so here's the deal. Where was this baby sleeping? Could the pit bull climb into its crib? And wouldn't you think the poor little baby would have been screaming bloody murder? Why didn't the parents wake up and rescue the baby?

It turns out that it wasn't the pit bull after all.

The mom -- who is still in jail in Benton, Louisiana -- said that it was the pet ferret.

Like that makes a difference!!!

The baby, according to the mom -- Mary Hansche, 22 years old -- was sleeping in a carrier. The carrier was on the floor, next to the mattress on which Mary and her husband were sleeping.

So the baby was only a few feet from their parents' ears and the parents did not hear the baby?

The couple are in jail and booked with child desertion and criminal negligence. Hopefully the baby is still in the hospital being treated for the amputations, and then will be placed with a couple that can be more diligent in parental care.

You would hope!

##

THE CORN POLICE MUST HAVE BEEN PRETTY BUSY IN IOWA THIS PAST YEAR

We only patrolled the cornfields in Illinois and we zipped up and down I-57 on our way to Effingham -- not that the farmers needed our help, mind you.

But we did like to keep an eye on things so we could make a good report to you at harvest time.

Well, in Iowa, I'll have you to know, the state is going to make a record 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol this year.

They processed more than 550 million bushels of corn to make all that fuel! It was an increase of 36% over summer before last.

We won't need to have a bake sale for any hungry beef though. Iowa produces 2.16 billion bushels of corn.

That ought to feed a lot of steaks for the rest of us.

##

CAPTAIN MARMALADE OF IRAN NOW SAYS DEATH TO PHARAOHS

And he says Britain, Israel and the United States are like the pharaohs. We're going to just disappear.

Actually, what he said was that any power that is close to God will survive while the powers who are far from God will disappear like the pharaohs.

Hmmm. Could he be prophetic? Is it possible that the election over there in his sandhill is just about ready to send him to early retirement.

Even a we speak, the United Nations Security Council is debating the issue of imposing sanctions on Captain Marmalade. And now he's finally 'fessing up that Iran is a nuclear power after all.

See, all that talk about the uranium just being for energy efficiency was just bunk.

We knew it all along.

##

THE GRACIOUSNESS OF BEING MARRIED TO A WONDERFUL HUSBAND

Today is about Quint. There's probably no time of year that I appreciate him more than at Christmas.

You see, I'm not married to one of those guys who just go out late in the game and just buy gifts for one person -- the wife.

Nope. Quint and I were standing in line at ToysRUs last weekend for a special gift request that our granddaughter made. The line went all the way around the store into one of those little snakey things that's called a "line monitor."

And while I was seeing patients on Monday and Tuesday, he was out battling the crowds and the lines. "Mission accomplished," he said with pride into his cell phone as he left a store that sells only perfume. "I'm heading back to the office. What would you like for lunch?"

And right now, as I write this, he is wrapping the last batch of fudge that he made last night. This batch is for our daughter and family who live nearby. And he's taking another batch to Brad Stroube and his crew at B & R Transmission in Oak Forest. They do all the repair and service work on our car. They have been especially kind to him this year and it's his way of saying thanks, guys.

Quint makes the best fudge in all the world. Our daughter in Idaho has been known to hide some of the fudge on a closet shelf in the back of other items -- just to make it last longer.

The kiddos were somewhat dismayed when Quint developed Type II diabetes several years ago. They feared that it meant the end of Dad's fudge. Not so. Now it's even more of a labor of love because he can't eat any of it. But he makes it for them still.

So, my point is -- this is for all you guys out there. Lend a hand. You can wrap presents. Maybe not as decoratively as a woman would -- maybe better. Who knows. The point of wrapping a present is to cover it all up so that what's inside is a surprise until it gets opened.

And ladies, listen up. Husbands don't always do things just exactly the way we'd like them to. It doesn't matter. Doing things differently is okay.

If you insist on doing it all because no one else can measure up to your perfection, you get to keep all the stress for yourselves too.

So share the load and be happy. Reducing stress is about reducing expectations. Don't set them so high for yourself or for others. It will bring more joy and smiles to your holidays.

And probably all year long too, if you let other people help you.

Merry Christmas. Again.

##

"I'M STILL ME," he said -- DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?

It's no secret -- U.S.A. Today is my favorite daily newspaper. And I truly enjoy the Across the USA page so I can see what's happening around the country in every state.

So today I noticed a little blurb from my own state of Illinois and it reminded me of something -- so what else is new?

This paragraph is about an Illinois veteran from Chicago -- Bryan Anderson. Anderson lost both legs and one arm in a roadside explosion in Iraq. He's on the cover of the January issue of Esquire. In this article, he talks about his life and says, "You have two options once this happens: Roll over and die or move on."

Then he adds, "I'm still me. I'm just 75 percent off."

What a great testament to human endurance, although he sounds like he'd shrug off that comment with a "Shucks, it was nothing." Don't know. Maybe, in fact, he feels like his injuries were horribly debilitating and his recovery seemed insurmountable at times. No matter. He endured and now says, "I'm still me."

Which brings me to today's moment of zen, as Jon Stewart would say on The Daily Show. Do you know who the "me" is who lives inside you? You might call this person your ego -- or your identity. Doesn't matter what you call it. It's who you are. I personally like to call it identity.

Forming a unique identity is one of the tasks we (hopefully) complete during adolescence. We pick pieces of memories of our favorite relatives. And even some of our heroes that we admire. These heroes can be long departed from this earth, but we should all have heroes. We can incorporate traits that are admired in our heroes into our sense of self.

These get incorporated into an identity-forming-save-for-later little project box that we tuck away in the back of our minds. We might say things like, "When I grow up, I'm going to be just like my grandma. Everybody liked her because she was always so cheerful. I want to be like her." So a hoped-for-cheerfulness piece of the puzzle gets put into the identity project box.

Maybe one of your heroes was Abraham Lincoln, who was admired for his honesty. Maybe you want to be like him and so you put an honesty piece of the puzzle into this little project box.

And we travel through our adolescence pondering all these things. Teenagers are deep ponderers, you know. Don't ever underestimate their abilities to think and feel deeply.

Then somewhere toward late adolescence, one day we pull all these pieces of our identity puzzle out and start to incorporate them into a kind of seamless patchwork quilt that becomes a beautiful work of art.

The teen emerges from adolescence with a unique sense of self and can then say, "Here I am. I am me."

"And a fine job you did," we ought to say as the adults who are standing around watching these young people as they stand on the mental bridge that spans late adolescence and early adulthood.

I might add that we are a work in progress until the day we die. We are always revising and refining our sense of identity to this core sense of ourselves.

The people who come into our lives may give us a strong motivation to change our core sense of self. We see this most profoundly when people meet and fall in love.

##

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it’s rare. In fact, it’s even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can’t find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re going to turn into an eggnog-aholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point to a Christmas party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hellooooo!

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Years. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budget. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’ve never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don’t like mincemeat, have two applies and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all costs. I mean, have SOME standards.

10. One final tip: if you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention. Reread tips. Start over, but hurry. January is just around the corner.

Remember this motto to live by:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, totally worn out and screaming, "Woo hoo, what a ride!"

##

The moderate conservatives are busy winning control of councils in Iran, according to news coming across the wires.

The president of Iran was elected in 2005. But his big-mouthed froth about death to Israel and the United States not having a friend in all the world has apparently gotten him into trouble with the conservative voters who pursed their lips into those familiars little o-shaped puckers and said "no" to his re-election bid.

Not one pro-president candidate has won any of the council seats.

Voter turnout, by the way, was 60%.  But then, there were 233,000 candidates for the more than 113,000 council seats in various cities and villages spread across Iran. I think they're still counting all the returns.

Quint thinks the population of Iran is about 68 million. So that's a lot of votes to count -- at least 60% of the adults.

Have we exported democracy. Didn't we keep any of it for ourselves?

In our country where we make the claim of having practically invented democracy, we ought to be ashamed with our puny, anemic showing of 40%!

##

First he was a senator. Then he was John Kerry's running mate in 2004.

He no longer holds any public office. He doesn't have a war chest.

What he does have is name recognition. And a drop-what-he's-going attitude to take care of home and family and especially his wife, Elizabeth, who learned she had breast cancer just shortly before the Kerry/Edwards team was making its concession speech. Elizabeth Edwards says she delayed telling her husband because she knew he would drop everything to take care of her.

Which is exactly what he did when she did tell him.

Now refreshed and in remission, Elizabeth waits to learn her husband's decision about a 2008 run for the White House. Although I suspect that if they arethatclose, she has his ears as well as fears.

His press photos show a matured, no longer baby-face mug that an unkind media teased him about. And it's not his, either, fault if his hair behaves. The rest of us could only wish.

True -- he doesn't have a bunch of money. But that's what candidates hire fundraisers for -- to make commodities out of them.

John Edwards plans to run on his hallmark platform -- economic inequality. That will do for now. Other big issues can get added on as he plows through the primaries.

Expect a big announcement from New Orleans -- probably before New Years.

The Edwards, as in Mr. and Mrs., have that old-fashioned American spirit of determinism. They're pull-'em-up'by-the-bootstraps feeling good about themselves determinists. 

They've suffered. Truly suffered. They've buried a son. They've survived breast cancer. They're absolutely devoted to each other in a man-woman "I love you" way.  

And the other runners -- Hillary and Osama? They got monies. They got name recognitions. They need to make sure they don't peak too early. That's what happens to election sweethearts when they storm out of the gate too early.

John Edwards could top their best acts. I, for one, would not want to run against anyone who has so much of John Kennedy's bucket of charm and charisma. John Edwards brings a wide appeal to female voters that the Housewife on the Potomac could never reach.

And where did all the Republicans go? You can't win anything by bringing up the rear!

##

The #1 movie this weekend starred Will Smith and his real life son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, in The Pursuit of Happiness. It's based on a true story about a father and son who become homeless. The movie took in $27 million for its premier weekend.

#2 -- Eragon -- $23.5 million

#3 -- Charlotte's Web -- $12 million

#4 -- Happy Feet -- $8.5 million

#5 -- The Holiday -- $8.2 million

#6 -- Apocalypto -- $7.7 million

#7 -- Blood Diamond -- $6.27 million

#8 -- Casino Royald -- #5.7 million

#9 -- The Nativity Story -- $4.7 million

#10 -- Unaccompanied Minors -- $6.67 million

#11 -- Deja Vu -- $3.0 million

#12 -- Deck the Halls -- $2 million

#13 -- Santa Claus 3 -- $1.85 million

#14 -- Borat -- $1.57 million -- looks like this movie has a long shelf life -- Borat the unsexy-I-don't-know-what-sillyman is still beating out Brad the supposed-to-be-beautiful-box-office-magic-sexy-man-of-former-years

#15 -- The Queen -- $685,000

#16 -- Stranger Than Fiction -- $530,000

#17 -- Babel -- $490,000


source: Box Office Mojo

Unless you live in warm, sunny climates, the winter weather brings discomforting thoughts of getting back out there on snow and ice.

AAA offers some time tested recommendations and tips for your winter travels -- whether you're driving around town and going some distance for the holidays.

First of all, keep yourself updated with weather reports. Don't get sidelined or surprised by Mother Nature. And if the forecast looks especially bad, delay travel if at all possible. And hour or two delay is not going to make that much of a difference when it comes to personal safety.

I often think about that when I see people getting hauled out of the medians or ditches. I'll bet they wished they'd waited just a bit for conditions to change. Sometimes it's just a plain old good idea to wait and let the fog burn off, or let the traffic melt some of that snow for you.

This is the time of the year when you want to fill up your gas tank when you're at the halfway point. Okay, so I'm a worrier. I just don't want to get stuck anywhere and run out of gas. If you're stuck in traffic that's moving about twenty feet in fifteen minutes, the last thing you need to have to worry about is running out of gas. So get the tank topped off every chance you get.

Keep your cellphone charged too. If you have a charger that fits into a dash charger, bring all the contraptions you need. There's nothing more frustrating than being stuck out there and not have a cell phone to call for help. It also will let people get ahold of you and find out where you're at. If you're on the interstates, pay attention to mile markers so you could give someone an idea of about where you are.

Keep a box of stuff you might need. If you're traveling, put it in the back seat because you may get stuck and not necessarily be able to get into your trunk.

This emergency box ought to have extra hats, gloves and mittens, shoes and socks (just in case), an extra water supply, breakfast bars for quick nourishment, and blankets.

If you're going to be out on the road for any distance, think about packing a quart of very hot water and some of those instant soups (the kind that are in their own little cups).

I also think it's a good idea to have a couple of big rolls of plastic wrap -- the kind you can put in the kitchen when winter is over if you didn't need to use it. As an old Girl Scout leader, I think it's a good idea to have the plastic wrap because you could wrap your hands and feet if you do get stuck just to keep you from losing body heat.

All the experts tell you that if you do get stuck, stay in your vehicle. It gives you shelter. It's definitely a good idea not to go wandering off especially if you're in an area where you aren't familiar with landmarks.

And stay together if you're traveling with someone. There are stories every year where someone will go out there in the blowing snow and trek off to find help, only to find out that the vehicle gets discovered first and the person who took off is the one who gets into trouble, or just plain lost.

##

It was a stunning discovery from scientists at a Toronto hospital. They say they proof that it's the body's nervous system that helps trigger diabetes. They say this opens a door to a potential near-cure for diabetes.

The doctors injected diabetic mice with a substance that counteracts the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

The mice became healthy overnight!

Dr. Michael Salter, one of the pain experts at the hospital said, "I couldn't believe it. Suddenly, mice that had diabetes don't have it any more."

They're being very cautious about the findings thought. So far, this hasn't been confirmed in people yet. They do hope to have human studies within the next year or so.

An immunologist at the hospital, Dr. Hans Michael Dosch, says this is a unique experience in his career.

source: www.canada.com/nationalpost

There is a huge Christian population in the United States -- about 86% of us.

It is time that we stop standing around letting a very small, loud, vocal group of people tell us that we can't say Merry Christmas because it might offend them. How would that possibly be offensive?

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ!

Are these people trying to say that his birth didn't happen? Or if they admit that it did, that we, as his followers, have no right to celebrate what we believe is one of the greatest moments of mankind?

This holiday is about the birth of Jesus Christ. It isn't about an over-commercialized holiday of buying and buying and buying.

I want to hear Merry Christmas. I don't want Labor Day and the 4th of July and all those other days we celebrate lumped into a "Happy Holidays" greeting.

So Merry Christmas to each and every one of you and God's richest blessings to you all.

##

It all started when a big semi turned over somewhere near Goodland, Kansas, on I-70.

The truck was hauling cartons and cartons of cigarettes.

The fire chief stuffed cartons of cigarettes into his uniform. He got caught.

And his defense? The chief said there was no proof that he intended to keep the cigarettes.

Oh really? Doesn't the 7th Commandment say simply, "Thou shalt not steal."

According to the chief, are we now supposed to define stealing as taking something and meaning to keep it instead of just taking something that doesn't belong to us?

##

Okay -- we've got two whole weeks left. Plenty of time. Quint made his fudge. But I can't take credit for that even if I did help spoon out the marshallow cream into the boiling stuff in the pan.

I'm fine-tuning the Christmas Card list. That's how I get into the spirit of the Christmas season. I'm behind. But then, I always am. Quit feeling guilty about that years ago.

My sister Cookie actually takes a week off from work about mid-November to get her cards out. Her card always arrives on the Friday after Thanksgiving. No one has ever beat her.

Me? I've been known to send out cards all the way until Epiphany on January 6. I figure it's never too late to send anybody a card or to tell them I love them. So there.

We'll get to the stores one of these days. Surely there'll be something that we can find for the people on the list.

Except for Quint. He says he has everything he needs. So do I.

In a case like that, go for things in very small boxes. That works for me.

I did get the Advent devotionals finished. Today was #12 in the series.

##

There's a really big loophole in New Jersey laws that allows anybody over the age of 21 to buy ammunition.

That means anybody. Even if you can't own a gun legally. Like if you're a convicted felon.

Well, it seems that when the state investigators went around to the licensed gun store owners and checked their records, about 3/4 of all the ammo purchases were made by -- you guessed it -- ex-convicts.

I'm always amazed when these loopholes are discovered. It would seem that when the laws were originally enacted, they could have thought of this one.

##

He collapsed in his office. Worst fears were that he'd had a stroke. Turned out not to be a stroke, but rather, an AVM. It's so similar to a stroke that it counts in equal severity.

Except that AVMs (arteriovenous malformation) are congenital. It's like a dark secret hiding in a person's brain from the time of birth. Well, actually, before birth when the baby is still in the womb and the brain is beginning to develop.

Blood vessels get all tangled up. Abnormal connections exist where arteries meet veins.

And then, seemingly without warning, one of the errant vessels will start to leak. The blood flows in the brain. A clot forms. Surgery follows, if possible, to remove the clot. More surgery may be needed to actually repair the abnormal vessels.

Politics needs to be set aside. It's time for prayers for a speedy recovery for Senator Johnson, and for strength in this high angst time for family members.

There is no reason to think, at this point, that this would be a debilitating situation that would prevent him from returning to his full duties in the U.S. Senate.

##

So far there's been about a thousand of them that have died in the remote little town of Oakley, Idaho. The ducks were actually at Land Springs Creek, not quite two hundred miles southeast of Boise.

Experts from the Fish and Game Department -- and Homeland Security -- are taking tissue samples to see if the culprit is avian flu.

There's a lot of other birds out there that aren't dying, according to the Associated Press. Birds like eagles, geese, magpies, crows and other birds don't seem to be getting sick.

So far, nothing is being ruled out, including pesticides from farm run-off.

The creek itself is spring fed and the water stands about 3 - 6 inches deep.

But only the mallards are dying.

Interesting.

UPDATE: December 15 -- Quint tells me that he saw a report late last evening that the mallards had been eating grains that were either spoiled or contaminated with a fungus of some sort. The reason the other birds -- like magpies, eagles and crows -- weren't affected is because they don't eat grains. Those birds are meat eaters mostly.


##

It started when a nine year old wanted to sing Awesome God in a local talent show in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

So what happened? You guessed it. Of course it ended up in court. School officials said it was kind of like preaching.

The judge said the song was private speech because the program was open to the public and wasn't part of the school curriculum.

It's a start, folks.

##

Wouldn't you just like to tell them to pack it up and go away?!!

There's 86% of Americans who claim that they are Christians -- who are devoted to their faith.

So how come the other 14% of the noisemakers are getting away with their claim of being offended?

They don't like Christmas trees. Or Christmas carols.

And now, apparently they don't like the sound of church bells or carillons.

The American Atheists Inc. demanded that the government in Griswold, Connecticut, turn off the church bells. They were too loud, said the atheists. They wanted the bells turned off.

Finally, a local government with lots of backbone, told the local Baptist church that they could leave their church bells on.

For me, there is something incredibly reflective about a carillon in the evening as the day is winding down. It's not unlike hearing taps at a military funeral. It's a time to connect and re-connect with my maker.

And yes, you bet your sweet patutie I'm a Christian.

All the atheists who are offended by me and other Christians can just go buy an island somewhere and live in their sterile, non-offensive environment.

It's "Merry Christmas," folks -- not "Happy Holidays."

##

Remember in the old, old, old, days when the very rich people would donate money to pay for museums and art institutes and aquariums, etc.?

Here in Chicago, we have the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium -- just to name a few. In New York, there's the Guggenheim Art Museum. Los Angeles has The Getty.

These big fancy places are usually named after their benefactors, and we don't mind. After all, they should get something permanent for some really big cashola contributions.

So I've been sitting around for years wondering why all these mega stars who are making mighty millions don't give something back for us lowly folks to enjoy. You know, a place where we can go on Sunday afternoons and get some respite from our rat-race work weeks.

Today, I heard about a $1 million donation from Jada Pinkett Smith to her alma mater, the Baltimore School for the Arts. It's a donation from the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation. The money will be used for renovations and other bigger projects.

It will honor the late Tupac Shakur who was shot and killed in 1996.

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

##

Used to be when the bureaucrats/mega-squats in Washington wanted money for their favorite little projects back home, they just inserted the cost into the budget with their name on it as a sponsor. And pretty soon, all their buddies would hop on the band wagon and co-sponsor their little pet projects.

Then, what with this being America and all, and freedom of the press, the newsies started reporting about all this pork spending going on.

And then, pork started to get a bad name. There were even reports of naming a particular mega-squat each month as the King of Pork.

And then, the voters started not liking all those pork reports. And pork got a bad name. I mean, really bad name. It was stinky. Pork was right up there with "back room politics," and "croneyism," and other bad things that smelled like, well, feed lots, if you know what I mean.

So what's a self-proclaimed "blue ribbon" congress to do when their best trick gets widely known?

Very simple. Change the word "pork" to something that sounds better -- like "earmark."

And change the rules too, while you're at it. Now, when a mega-squat wants to fund a pet project back home, just insert the cost into the budget and don't list yourself as a sponsor. You can claim it later. It'll all get sorted out. Just keep track of how much your project is earmarked for.

No one will ever guess.

Yes, yes. Earmark sounds a lot cleaner. It has a crisp, bookish sound to it.

But then, in the words of old honest Abe, you can't fool all the people all the time. Those fickle voters out there have figured out all about the earmarks.

Son of a gun!

No more smoke and mirrors. We are transparent again. The voters have figured out what we're up to.

So along comes the elections. All honest, self-proclaimed good guy mega-squats ran on finger-pointing campaigns that promised to bring transparency back to government and get rid of earmarks.

That is, in the 110th congress that gets sworn in next year -- not the 109th. The 109th congress -- the lame duckers -- will just have to worry about themselves. The 110th congress are, after all, the newly-elected good guys that are going to get rid of the earmarks.

So the 109th congress mega-squats -- or bureaucrats as I used to call them -- ran around their campaign territories with black eyes from all their earmarked pork projects.

"Ah, how refreshing," I thought when I heard that Rep. David Obey (D-Wis) and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WVa and formerly the King of Pork) announced that there would be no earmarks in this new budget.

See, they listened to voters on election day. All is well in the land.

But then in the very next breath, Obey and Byrd said that lawmakers could re-apply for their pet projects next year when the mega-squats make up the 2008 budget. This would, of course, be after all the reforms of the earmarking process are in place.

So what's the big deal about this anyway?

Well, it's just possible that the people of New Hampshire, for instance, just may not want to write a check to help pay for new sidewalks or a bigger park in Seattle -- no matter how good projects are.

Maybe it's about individual states paying for state projects, or local taxpayers paying for their own projects. Maybe it's not about all those local projects showing up in the federal budget that everybody in the country has to shell out for.

##

When the judge says "immediately," he means now, so I'd pack some winter duds because Minnesota is quite a bit colder than the Florida digs you're used to.

In his rulings, Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that Skilling doesn't really raise any new questions that would most likely reverse the conviction that got him a 24-year sentence for 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading.

He doesn't remember too many details about any of those charges, but maybe time will help refresh his memory.

Let's see, Skilling is 53 years old. In 24 years, he'll be a less-than-dashing 77 year old ex-con.

Go to jail. You cheated and cheated and cheated so many faithful employees out of their pensions they thought they could count on in their old age.

Shame on you and all the other corrupt idiot thieves like you!

source: Associated Press

##

Well, sort of.

The guy who says Iran is going to rain down a second holocaust on the people of Israel is up for election on December 15.

From what I've read in a couple of papers in the region, he's not exactly in step with the people of Iran. Or the religious leaders of Iran either.

Mr. Saladabod Ahmadinejad -- likening himself to be the king of Persia, I guess -- as the country was called in olden days -- might have a surprise for himself on election day.

He says the end of Israel is what God wants. And he also says that it's what the rest of the world wants.

He was hosting what he called a Holocaust conference and supposedly had ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel and anti-Israel Jews and other writers -- ah, the galloping media circus again -- in attendance.

And the newspapers and broadcasters wonder why circulation is dropping and advertisers are running!

As for what God thinks, I really don't think anyone here on earth really knows for sure what God is thinking. But just to be on the safe side, I think we all ought to remember that God has the power to move things around on the globe -- pretty much anytime he wants to.

Remember the tsunami in Indonesia and the island of Sumatra? Well, Sumatra is an island the size of Florida and it moved about 100 meters after the earthquake that caused the tsunami. This is the God who wants us all to behave down here.

It's time to be very, very good.

And so far, the European countries and the USA are roundly condemning his comments.

##

Of course you can believe he's still trying to figure out a way to stay out of jail!

He was supposed to report to federal digs in Waseca, Minnesota, to begin serving his 24-year sentence today.

But, hey, a last minute maneuver by his lawyers in an appeals court in New Orleans got him a delay in the report date. The court down there is considering whether they'll let him post bond and stay out while his appeals is in process.

Poor-baby-Skilling will have to bunk in with three others in a cell that would be crampled even for the two adults it was built for. But hey, jail time is supposed to be a crime deterrent, right?

It's not going to be like the palatial digs he built for himself, wife, and son on the beachfront in Florida. Runs in my mind that the spread featured an 18,000 square foot palatial mansions. Not sure about that, but it seems like I benchmarked it to Michael Jordan's 25,000 square foot house north of Chicago -- made some kind of a mental note that it wasn't as big as Jordan's.

No matter. Jail is jail. And no matter about having a basketball court at your disposal, as Skilling would have.

And it doesn't matter that the Minnesota prison for white collar criminals is on the campus of what used to be an old branch campus of the University of Minnesota.

When you're used to running around to your little heart's content and hopping on a jet to anywhere you want, and probably a private jet at that, prison life is not going to be too much fun. You can't even raid the refrigerator if you want a soda at 11 pm because you're supposed to be in bed with the lights out.

When you are an incarcerated convicted convict, you live with someone else's rules!

Skilling probably won't care anyway. He has such giant memory loss at the Enron trial that he probably can't remember what a nice life he used to have.

##

It's Nevada again.

The voters in Churchill County approved a smoking ban in public places. Just like they did in Clark County (where Las Vegas is).

However, the county officials are holding off enforcing the bans in these two counties because -- get this -- they say the language isn't clear.

Huh?

A judge has granted a 15-day restraining order so that lawyers can argue whether the laws are constitutional. Lawyers love this kind of stuff. Does the term "smoke and mirrors" come to mind? Or, are they just making up stuff to cloud the issue?

So if you're planning on heading out to Las Vegas for the holidays, you'll still be able to smoke in the casinos.

Now that says Christmas to me!

##

All of a sudden there's a huge interest in World War I at the University of Kansas.

In fact, all the seats are filled in a new history class about the first world war. A waiting list awaits the hopefuls who didn't register in time. What a joy it would be to teacher this class -- I'll bet every student gets homework turned in on time and research papers ought to be really interesting. This is a fascinating time period to study -- especially how the war came about in the first place.

The school big-brains think it's probably because of the new World War I Museum that just opened in Kansas City, Missouri.

I, for one, am glad to see renewed interest in anything historical. And World War I -- well, it's a way of honoring all those soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces.

My grandfather, Arthur Stubbe, and Quint's father, Galen Dean Reinheimer, were soldiers. I did not know my grandfather. He was hospitalized before I was born. But Quint's dad says he must have walked across France three times at least. He could still, at the age of 90 years, sing the marching songs that kept them all hustling forward in a cadence.

Quint's father spent one winter with us toward the end of his life. We were overjoyed to have this Coloradan come out and spend some time with us "flatlanders." Our children got to know Grandpa so much better than they had experienced him through brief summer vacations.

When he returned to Colorado, he went into a senior living place. He liked that. By the time he got back out there, he was used to being around a lot of hustle bustle because he had gotten used to kids and their friends running in and out of the house all the time.

So one day, Quint's sisters went to visit Grandpa about three in the afternoon at his new living quarters. They were taken aback when he was nowhere to be found. Didn't like the idea that he could have just -- well, you know -- wandered off.

Where could he be? Was he okay?

Turned out, Grandpa met up with another survivor of World War I and they decided to walk down to the American Legion a block or so away and have a beer.

Each one thought he was the only survivor of the Great War. They were just catching up on their individual histories and experiences in the war.

Born in 1895, Grandpa lived to the ripe old age of 92. He was a joy to know and all of us appreciated so much getting to know this wonderful man.

We just know he's in heaven celebrating Christmas with his wife, Gift, and Quint's brothers, Roger and Dicky. Here's to the Reinheimers.

And to all of you, may you all live in peace. This year and every year of your lives.

##

The much touted Mel Gibson violentoganza Apocalypto, captured 1st place in this weekend's top movies with $14,166,000.

#2 -- The Holiday -- $13,500,000 for its premier weekend

#3 -- Happy Feet -- $12,718,000 (in its 4th week, mind you with total box office so far of $137,738,000. Not bad for a bunch of cute little cartoon character penguins.)

#4 -- Casino Royale -- $8,800,000 (also in its 4th week. With total revenue of $128,894,000, they are considerably behind the penguins.)

#5 -- Blood Diamond -- $8,515,000 (Leonardo couldn't beat the penguins. Hmmmm. What does this mean?)

#6 -- Unaccompanied Minors -- $6,205,000

#7 -- Deja Vu -- $6,070,000 (So far this movie has made $53,046,000. Its budget was $75 million.)

#8 -- The Nativity Story -- $5,575,000

#9 -- Deck the Halls -- $3,925,000

#10 -- Santa Claus 3 -- $3,311,000

#11 -- Borat -- $2,565,000 (Still hanging around in its 6th week)


What's amazing, though, is that Brad Pitt's Babel came in #16 place with this weekend revenue of $458,000. It's in the 7th week of being out there and so far has grossed only $17,607,000.

And Volver is a bit notable too. This is Penolope Cruz's supposed big Oscar role. It ended up in 21st spot for its 6th week with a weekend take of $377,000 and a grand total so far of $2,381,000.

Hope you enjoy the movies as much as Quint and I do. It's a great night out -- followed by great Chicago style pizza, a glass of wine -- what's not to like?

(movie reports from Box Office Mojo)

I've been trying for some time to get my head wrapped around the real definition of just exactly what an earmark is.

Since nobody is giving me a real definition, I've come up with one of my own.

I think earmarks are what we used to call pork. The only problem is, in all the old budgets pork became known as a naughty-naughty. And then Senator Byrd from West Virginia became plunketed as the King of Pork because he was able to get so many mega moochos for his little state.

So, since pork is a bad word, we just have to call it something else. It's the American way.

Now bacon bits are earmarks.

So here's an earmark, I think. It's happening right here in my own state of Illinois. It seems that there's a whole bunch of thievery going on when it comes to anydrous ammonia. Here in the heartland, that's known as fertilizer.

A person who has a meth lab, however, can't get all the anydrous ammonia they need to keep their illegal little "business operations" going because chemical companies now need to report who's buying all that ammonia.

So what's an average ordinary crook supposed to do?

The answer: steal it.

Now, in the average ordinary course, stealing things comes under the scrutiny of state laws. It's not a federal crime, for instance, for a thief to steal fertilizer from 58 different fertilizer suppliers in the middle of the state of Illinois.

However, some lawmaker has earmarked $140,000 in government grants so that these 58 businesses can increase their security. In most businesses, isn't security kind of tucked in there under the heading of "overhead costs?"

Maybe it wasn't a federal congressman who earmarked the grant money. Or it could have been a state mega-squat. It still sounds like pork to me.

To make this truly an earmark, some legislator (mega-squat) would stick the $140,000 figure into the budget and everybody on both sides of the aisle would know that it was "earmarked" for this particular mega-squat to send back home.

Government budgets hemorrhage with earmarked money that's set aside for little pet projects. They get away with it for two reasons: 1) you vote for mine and I'll vote for yours, and 2) there is no line item veto in the entire federal budgetary process.

There ought to be a solution here that would make congress more transparent so that we can see what they're up to.

##

According to the U.S. Treasury, Americans appetite for debt increased at its slowest pace in eight years.

The net worth of Americans is now at $54.1 trillion. That’s up from $53.3 trillion last quarter.

Personal borrowing is down and so is mortgage borrowing.

Mutual fund balances are up and so are pension reserves.

Clinky-clinky-clinky – money in the bank.

##

Campers want to taste the great outdoors, stay overnight, hike awhile and do what you’d call back-to-nature funsies.

Unless, of course, one of those California cougars gets you in its crosshairs and decides you’d make a nice lunch. I, for one, would not like a 90-pound scratchy coming after me while I was communing with nature along a beautiful wilderness path.

Well, the folks out there in Malibu, California, have plans to open some of those rugged Malibu hills. It will be called the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Not everyone is in favor. There are some who say such a plan would actually increase traffic, damage the ecosystem, and maybe even increase fire risks. (Campers aren’t always on top of things when it comes to fire safety. They’ll just throw their old burning cigarettes anywhere.)

If I lived anywhere near the region I’d be more concerned about the sewage generated by all those additional campers. Somewhere in the archives is a blog I wrote a while ago about the sewage problem coming out of the great Santa Monica places. The hoity-toities don’t want sewage systems – their septic systems are just fine, thank you. Except, of course, when the septic fields get a bit bloated with you know what.

Besides, isn’t California one of those places where people run up and down the streets shouting about leaving the wild places alone so that the wild animals can enjoy their peace and quiet without pedestrian traffic invading their furry little spaces?

Just wondering.

##

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more mystifying, now comes the thought – under the general heading of "Well, of course. Why didn’t I think of that?"

Conducting an autopsy on the recent Litvinenko, the Russian spy, is going to be very tricky. He’s the guy who died from a very suspicious looking polonium-210 poisoning. But they’ll need an autopsy to confirm that.

I did not know that polonium-210 is supposed to be about a trillion times more toxic than cyanide. That’s according to John Emsley, a science writer. If you eat or breathe less than a thousandth of a gram, you’ll die in about 20 days. Litvinenko is thought to have been poisoned on November 1^st and he died on November 23^rd.

Okay, so I’ve been watching too many Sherlock Holmes movies. I just wonder how whoever did him in got the Polonium into Litvinenko when his last meal was at a sushi buffet. Supposedly he died from a classic case of food poisoning.

As I said above, Litvinenko’s autopsy is going to be very tricky. Body fluids would still be radioactive, wouldn’t they?

According to my chemist husband, Quint, polonium has a very long half-life – about five years. So it’s possible that the radioactiveness could hang around for quite a little while.

Still no idea of how the polonium-210 got to England or got to Litvinenko for that matter. There were some Russians traveling between Moscow and London at around the time that would have been detrimental to Litvinenko.

British Airways is looking into it. In fact, there were three such flights. They’re still grounded.

In the meantime I’m not reading any more spy novels. My already overactive imagination is just about worked itself into a frenzy. I just wish they’d solve this thing so I could go onto other stories.

##

The budget that was passed by Congress this week allows some 8.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. One of the world's largest, most gigantic oil field is out there in the Gulf of Mexico. It promises to be bigger than the oil fields in the middle east.

Go Shell!

It's a budget mess up there on Capitol Hill.

In what looks like a turnabout to me, Rep. Hoyer is now saying that he was taken too literally at his press conference last week. That was when he said Congress would be meeting Monday through Friday and lawmakers had just better get used to it.

Then there was all that balking and great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now Hoyer says that the lawmakers will have to stay in town on Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday. But isn't that all that they used to work?

Where's the great pre-election promised change here?

So the mega-squats had to work til nearly midnight so that they could pass spending bills.

It's hard to feel sorry for them, though. Seems to me that if they stayed in town more and did the work they were elected to do, they could finish up at a decent hour and wouldn't need to whine about how overworked they are.

Four lawmakers ought to get some kind of super mega-squat award for being completely AWOL during vote sessions. They haven't voted for one single item Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo), Jim Gibbons (R-Nev), John Murtha (D-Pa), and Lane Evans (D-Ill).

Oh, but wait. Gibbons' hired mouth says he was just elected to governorship.

Well, yeah. But there are some other governor-elects who managed, apparently with great hardship, to get back to Washington for votes. They are Ted Strickland of Ohio and C.L. "Butch" Otter of Idaho.

Cubin called in sick. She has the flu and back problems. She says she's actually in Washington but just laid up at home.

I, for one, am going to be watching Nancy Pelosi. She promised to get rid of the earmarks. So we'll just see what she does with the bacon.

An earmark, if I understand it correctly, is when a lawmaker adds money -- say $100 million to build a little bridge in the district back home. It's just an add-on to the spending bill. The lawmaker doesn't have to introduce a separate bill -- doesn't have to run around looking for co-sponsors and thereby build up political cronyism type debt. The $100 million just gets added in and is "earmarked" for the mega-squat's district.

And that explains how come it is that there's a 94% re-election success. Pork means favors for the folks back home.

By the time a spending bill gets passed by the House Ways and Means Committee and goes to the Senate, then back to the House for another vote, it gets really bloated with a whole bunch of little piggies running through the ink on the pages of the spending package.

Your tax dollars at work!

##

It must have been in a galaxy far far away that made people actually want to come to a new frontier with the hallmark idea that they could worship freely without persecution.

So here we are in the way forward new millennium. It's the Christmas season. Except that big shot stores are wishing people Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. The excuses given are that they don't want to offend people who might not be all that into Christmas.

Some stores want to get rid of the red and green Christmas colors. Instead, you're going to see pink and orange combinations. Or blue and green combos.

Boy, that really says Christmas to me! Red and green are too -- well -- traditional. And traditional Christmasses are kind of too Christian. Are you kidding me?

Do those idiots have any clue as to how Christmas got started in the first place?

Remember Jesus Christ?

Christmas is the celebration of his birth on earth!

If stores want to forget that point and just keep the happy holiday cash registers going instead, they can do without my greenbacks.

And if it really bothers you that your town won't allow a nativity scene in the town square, then take one of your snowmen or Santas or those wire reindeer off your lawn and put up your own creche.

Wouldn't it be great if there were nativity scenes all over town?

It isn't much better across the pond. In an article in London's Sun, the garbage collectors won't be allowed to wear Santa hats. Reason given: It's not healthy. The garbage collectors have been wearing Santa hats for years.

And the Salvation Army Band won't be allowed to sing Christmas carols in the hospital wards either. They are restricted to public areas at Torbay Hospital in Devon.

Even though the Salvation Army has been bringing Christmas cheer to hospitalized patients for forty years, this year there's a great fear of getting some kind of infection from the singers.

Hogwash!

I think it's time to get rid of the PC police. There must be something useful they can do somewhere!

##

The House of Representatives passed tax legislation which actually has some favorable items for us lowly taxpayers.

Things like being able to deduct state sales tax. This is a new provision that says you can either deduct your state and local income tax or state and local sales tax -- whichever is higher.

There's an allowance for deducting tuition -- up to a maximum of $4,000 for persons with an adjusted gross income of $65,000 or less ($130,000 for married couples). You get to deduct $2,000 if your adjusted gross is $80,000 or less ($160,000 for marrieds).

The mega-squats must have been feeling really generous! They'll continue to allow the underpaid, overworked school teachers in this country to deduct up to $250 in out-of-pocket expenses.

This is the most outrageous part of the whole package to me. These fat cat politicians have fund raisers that often charge that much per plate to their fund raisers.

In a country where Barry Bonds can squeeze out a new contract for $16 million a year, we are going to just let the teachers who are humiliatingly embarrassingly stingily underpaid deduct up to a maximum of $250 on their income tax.

For shame!

In the first place, teachers are paid a pittance that doesn't compare with the likes of celebrity types that make millions and millions.

And finally, persons who did not have the 20% down for a mortgage and were required to take out a mortgage insurance policy (not to be confused with homeowners insurance), can now deduct the premium -- starting in 2007 -- from their income tax. That is, if your income isn't higher than $110,000.

I guess the fat cats figure if you're making more than that, you can afford to put 20% down on a mortgage.

So the vote was 367-45. It will now go to the Senate. Rumor has it that the Senators are not happy with this package. There'll be a lot of kicking it around the Senate floor like a little football. The Senators don't like the oil exploration proviso out in the Gulf of Mexico.

By the time the Senators add all their little "earmarks" (that's a "nice" way of saying piggy-piggy-pork), the $40 billion price tag for the tax cuts in this tax bill will blow up like a big fat balloon.

Then it has to go back to the House for another vote.

And it goes on and on and on and on.

Such is the life of D.C. piggies.

##

I got an e-mail from Carol in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about attention deficit. Hope this answers your questions, Carol.

I was about halfway through grad school when the thought hit me like a ton of bricks. I have a mild form of attention deficit disorder.

When this thought hit me, I was reading something for a report I had to write. When I had to re-read the same paragraph for the fourth time, I realized something was wrong in there between my ears. 

I had to really dig in and consciously concentrate on what I was reading when I realized what I thought was going on.

Over the years I have worked with a number of children (and adults, alike) who have attention deficit disorder. When I explain it to parents, I liken it to awakening in the morning and being able to remember a vivid dream. Then, for no reason, the memory of the dream just evaporates.

It must go somewhere else in my head because no matter how hard a person concentrate, the dream is gone. Poof!

Attention deficit can be frustratingly like that.

And for sure, if it's a mild case, which mine apparently is, I can say to myself, "Self: I'm only going to re-read this one more time, so pay attention." Almost always, that works.

For people who are not so lucky and who have a more severe case of attention deficit, medication is a big help.

For all the parents out there who don't want to get their kids on drugs, you need to understand what is happening the brain that makes attention deficit happen in the first place.

It's about processing speed. Part of the brain is processing information at a too-slow speed and the other part is processing at a much higher speed. The high rate of speed is what we'd consider "normal" since brain messages travel along neural pathways at a rate of 200 miles an hour.

Rationally speaking, you would think that there ought to be a medication that would slow some of that thinking down. Not so. The goal is to get the slower processing up to speed.

That's what the medications for attention deficit and its cousin, the hyperactive variety, do.

A great number of youngsters will "outgrow" this, but for some, unfortunately, there is an adult form of attention deficit.

But it's not a fatal flaw. If you believe you have some form of attention deficit and you're not a kid anymore, check with your physician and get an evaluation.

Is there an absolutely definitive test to make sure? You bet. It's called a PET scan -- for positron emission topography. Your doctor is probably going to look at your behaviors that appear to be attention deficit rather than running you in for a PET scan.

So if you or one of your kiddos appear to have attention deficit (ADD) or ADD with hyperactivity (ADHD), just keep in mind that it's not a fatal flaw.

Each one of us is genetically flawed in one way or another. Or, if you're like me, you will have a whole bunch of genetic flaws.

I have no idea which limb of the family tree has the ADD marker on it that's flawed.

I have arthritis too but I don't really believe that my grandmother, or her ancestors before her, did this on purpose.

My genetic flaws are the big fat nuisance varieties. They aren't fatal flaws. I can work around the nuisances and train myself to pay better attention and learn new ways to learn.

The arthritis I can't do much about. It makes a pretty good weather predictor though.

If any of you have any specific mental health type questions, e-mail them to me at jane@janereinheimer.com. Sorry, I can't do any diagnostics over the web, though.

Not only is it not ethical, but it could be dangerous as well. 


##

In all of Sandpoint, Idaho --

and apparently in all of Bonner County, Idaho --

former County Prosecutor Phil Robinson couldn't quite get around to finding an accountant to help him file his income tax returns for eight years.

His big defense is that he had to dissolve his law practice when he was elected to the prosecutor's office in 1996.

The Idaho Tax Commission is now asking him to ante up.

Hope he has to pay penalties for all those years he didn't file.

And he owes a big fat apology to the taxpayers of Idaho.

##

My sister, Anna Mae, was married to John just a few days shy of sixteen years. In fact, they had selected Pearl Harbor Day for their wedding 16 years ago.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer on September 11, 2006, and he died last Sunday evening. Today he was buried. It's Pearl Harbor Day.

John served in Viet Nam. He was a medic.

The American Legion did itself proud. They arranged for honor guards. They arranged for a wonderul bagpipe player to provide the haunting Amazing Grace and other music at the interment.

My sister proudly received the flag of the United States from the honor guard that saluted her because she is John's widow.

Today I again saw a part of the United States Armed Forces that always serves itself proudly. It honors its fallen with great pride.

I am glad to be an American.

##

I'm so sorry that my sister, Anna Mae's, husband died last Sunday night. I will be out for John's funeral on Thursday morning.

My plan is to be back in the office on Thursday and post a new blog prior to seeing patients in the afternoon.

Thanks for understanding -- Jane

It's as if politicians live in a divine-right-of-kings black hole of entitlement.

But, hey there's great news a'coming. Starting on January 4th in the new year, the House of Representatives will be gonged into attendance from Monday all the way til Friday. Every workday in January.

Well, they do get to take off in the early afternoon on Fridays.

Guess they need a couple of hours to hurry home and get their prom dresses on, or their little penguin suits.

That's a long way from their usual "work week" which used to begin late Tuesday -- whatever time that is -- and ended on Thursdays -- probably early.

But it isn't quite all day Mondays. The new House Majority Leader -- Steny Hoyer from Maryland -- says they are expected to be in the Capitol and ready to vote by 6:30 p.m. on Mondays and they aren't supposed to leave until Friday at 2 p.m.

Do you realize that Congress only worked 103 days last year?!!

That's pretty lame. I do not think it's any way to treat us bosses -- the taxpayers.

So after they get used to working an almost full work week, maybe then they can get used to the idea that the world does not enjoy a month-long time off period in August.

Wouldn't that be nice?

And they get a two-week recess in April.

Wouldn't that be nice?

And they get weeks off in February, March and July.

Wouldn't that be really really nice?

Oh goodie. Hoyer says they are going to meet enough so that the committees can do their jobs on behalf of the American people.

Oh, yeah. Those people. That's right. The congresspersons don't actually do the work. They just hire lots of people to do the work of the congressional committees.

But if they were never around, how did they know that the work was actually being done?

You know -- cat's away and all.

So we'll just have to wait and see whether or not any good old work gets done or if, as Rep. Elton Gallegly from California says, "maybe it's just a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors hoopla."

In the meantime, there's some wailing and gnashing of teeth in paradise. The complaining has already started. Rep. Mike Thompson of California says he'll have to leave his home at 3 a.m. on Sundays to catch a flight to Washington in time for work on Mondays. He said to Lyndsey Layton at the Washington Post, "I didn't come here to turn around and go back home."

Keep it up, Mr. Thompson. You just might gripe your way out of office.

Now, I have another suggestion for the congresspersons. Do something about social security. In fact, get rid of your extra-special gold-plated retirement package and enjoy the same social security package that you expect your constituents/bosses to live with.

That would be okay for starters.

##

WOW!

That must be a sight to behold.

And I thought I was doing good to decorate just one Christmas tree. But then, I'll bet the Bush duo has White House staff who do a full-time job of just hauling all those decorations out of the attic and putting them on trees.

But then, I don't have a grand ballroom either. So I really wouldn't have a place to put 17 trees. My great room has a TV and a couple of comfy chairs in it. Not enough room there either.

They probably even have a little mini-cherry picker so they reach all the way up to the top of the tree to put the good ornaments up there.

And those little dogs -- Barney and Miss Beazley -- have been memorialized into cookies that look just like them.

Even the ivy topiary out there in the front hallway have Scottish terriers likenesses.

And the cat? What about the cat, for goodness sake!

Yes, yes. First cat Willie is out there among the greenery too. Willie is a topiary too. But not a cookie.

The score at this point is Dogs --  2; Cat -- 1.

##

Final Vote Results for the Legislative Line-Item Veto Act  (Republicans in plain text; Democrats in italics; Independents underlined)   ---- AYES    247 --- Akin Alexander Andrews Bachus Baker Barrett (SC) Barrow Bartlett (MD) Barton (TX) Bass Bean Beauprez Biggert Bilbray Bilirakis Bishop (UT) Blackburn Blunt Boehlert Boehner Bonilla Bonner Bono Boozman Boren Boustany Boyd Bradley (NH) Brady (TX) Brown (OH) Brown (SC) Brown-Waite, Ginny Burgess Burton (IN) Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Capito Cardoza Carter Case Castle Chabot Chandler Chocola Coble Cole (OK) Conaway Cooper Costa Crenshaw Cubin Cuellar Culberson Davis (KY) Davis (TN) Davis, Jo Ann Davis, Tom Deal (GA) DeFazio Delahunt Dent Diaz-Balart, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Doolittle Drake Dreier Duncan Edwards Ehlers English (PA) Everett Feeney Ferguson Fitzpatrick (PA) Flake Foley Forbes Ford Fortenberry Fossella   Foxx Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gallegly Garrett (NJ) Gerlach Gibbons Gilchrest Gillmor Gingrey Gohmert Goode Goodlatte Gordon Granger Graves Green (WI) Gutknecht Hall Harris Hart Hastert Hastings (WA) Hayes Hayworth Hefley Hensarling Herger Herseth Hoekstra Hooley Hostettler Hulshof Hunter Hyde Inglis (SC) Inslee Issa Istook Jenkins Jindal Johnson (CT) Johnson (IL) Keller Kelly Kennedy (MN) King (IA) King (NY) Kingston Kirk Kline Knollenberg Kolbe Kuhl (NY) LaHood Langevin Latham LaTourette Leach Lewis (KY) Linder LoBiondo Lucas Lungren, Daniel E. Mack Maloney Manzullo Marchant Marshall Matheson McCaul (TX) McCotter McCrery McHenry McHugh McIntyre McKeon McMorris Melancon Mica Miller (FL) Miller (MI) Miller, Gary   Moran (KS) Murphy Musgrave Myrick Neugebauer Ney Norwood Nunes Nussle Osborne Pearce Pence Peterson (PA) Petri Pickering Platts Poe Pombo Porter Price (GA) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Ramstad Regula Rehberg Reichert Renzi Reynolds Rogers (MI) Rohrabacher Ros-Lehtinen Ross Royce Ryan (WI) Ryun (KS) Saxton Schiff Schmidt Schwarz (MI) Sensenbrenner Sessions Shadegg Shaw Sherwood Shimkus Shuster Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Sodrel Souder Stearns Strickland Sullivan Tancredo Tanner Taylor (MS) Taylor (NC) Terry Thomas Thornberry Tiahrt Tiberi Turner Udall (CO) Upton Walden (OR) Wamp Weldon (FL) Weldon (PA) Weller Westmoreland Whitfield Wicker Wilson (NM) Wilson (SC) Wolf Wynn Young (AK) Young (FL)   ---- NOES    172 --- Abercrombie Ackerman Aderholt Allen Baca Baird Baldwin Becerra Berry Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Blumenauer Boswell Boucher Brady (PA) Brown, Corrine Butterfield Buyer Capps Capuano Cardin Carnahan Carson Clay Cleaver Clyburn Conyers Costello Cramer Crowley Cummings Davis (AL) Davis (CA) Davis (IL) DeGette DeLauro Dicks Dingell Doyle Emanuel Emerson Engel Eshoo Etheridge Farr Fattah Filner Frank (MA) Gonzalez Green, Al Green, Gene Grijalva Gutierrez Harman Hastings (FL) Higgins Hinchey Hinojosa   Hobson Holden Holt Honda Hoyer Israel Jackson (IL) Jackson-Lee (TX) Johnson, E. B. Jones (NC) Jones (OH) Kanjorski Kaptur Kennedy (RI) Kildee Kilpatrick (MI) Kind Kucinich Lantos Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lee Levin Lewis (CA) Lewis (GA) Lipinski Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Lynch Markey Matsui McCarthy McCollum (MN) McDermott McGovern McKinney McNulty Meehan Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Michaud Millender-McDonald Miller (NC) Mollohan Moore (KS) Moore (WI) Moran (VA) Murtha Nadler Napolitano Neal (MA) Northup Oberstar Obey Olver Ortiz Otter Pallone   Pascrell Pastor Paul Payne Pelosi Peterson (MN) Pomeroy Price (NC) Rahall Rangel Reyes Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rothman Roybal-Allard Ruppersberger Rush Ryan (OH) Sabo Salazar Sánchez, Linda T. Sanchez, Loretta Sanders Schakowsky Schwartz (PA) Scott (GA) Scott (VA) Sherman Simmons Simpson Skelton Slaughter Snyder Solis Spratt Stark Stupak Sweeney Tauscher Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Tierney Towns Udall (NM) Van Hollen Velázquez Visclosky Walsh Wasserman Schultz Watson Watt Waxman Weiner Wexler Woolsey Wu ---- NOT VOTING    14 --- Berkley Berman Davis (FL) Doggett Evans   Jefferson Johnson, Sam Miller, George Owens Oxley   Pitts Serrano Shays Waters source: Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Actually the restaurant is in Sheffield.

Hard to believe that not too long ago a couple of good old buddies were just sitting there talking about some kind of murder list. And to their big fat surprise, they were both on the list.

Imagine that!

And of all places, they were sitting in a place called The Polonium Restaurant.

The owner didn't name the restaurant for the deadly little chemical element. Nope. It has more to do with his national heritage. He's polish. Polonium was discovered by Madame Curie. She was polish. In fact, Curie was one of Poland's national treasures. She got the Nobel prize for chemisty -- no small feat.

The Polonium started out as the name for the owner's band 30 years ago. Let's see now, would that be Five Guys Named Polo?

You'd think that when the word got out that these two former wise guy spies had been sitting in there just before they came down with polo overdose, that the restaurant would change its name to something tamer. Then he could tell everybody that The Polonium moved over a couple of streets.

No need to do that.

There's been a huge pick-up in business.

So for all you hungry people out there, unless you're guilty of consonant overdose, you're perfectly safe if you head on over to the Polonium for a good plate of sushi off the buffet.

##

Who in the world would not want to break Jay Leno's claim to greatness?

Letterman says he's good through 2010. He doesn't really have an heir apparent.

Jay, on the other hand, is outa here in 2009. He says he's turning the show over to Conan O'Brien. But the real question is whether O'Brien can hold the market share again The Letterman.

Emmy likes Letterman. Letterman has nine on his mantel out of a total of 54 nominations.

It's good that he's staying on at CBS. He says that learning a new commute would be tough.

##

Answer me this: as a nation, have we become addicted to politico news?

I mean, don't ya think it's just a tad bit early to start the 2008 presidential campaign?

Gee, it seems only yesterday that Hillary was running around absolutely disclaiming with any certainty that she'd be running. After all, she said, she was still the senator from New York.

That's right, Miss Hillary. And you ran for senator. And you won. So what does you tell the voters in New York who re-elected you? You changed your mind? You miss living in the White House?

I dunno.

Then there's the story about former senator Edwards hiring former representative David Bonior to head up his campaign. The formerly formers are getting together.

Well, Edwards hasn't really really decided IF he's going to run, but if he does, Bonior is his guy. What is that all about? Maybe it's a hands off maneuver. He's making it known that you'd better not pirate away his guy.

Bonior hails from Detroit where he served in congress for 26 years. Then he decided to run for governor of Michigan and lost. Since his big loss, he's been teaching at Detroit's Wayne State University. His big thing is promoting employees' rights to form unions.

And then Borack Obama met with Mucho Billionesos Soros. Don't know what went on behind those closed doors. They'll both probably deny having ever had a meeting.

It's too early to tell.

Besides, I thought Soros said he was going to stay away from politics.

Guess he didn't mean it.

##

Bad news for students too.

Intel says it will no longer reimburse employees for courses unless they are going to business and engineering schools that have blue-ribbon accreditation.

The University of Phoenix -- a school that allows online participation, als well as campus instruction.

Intel says that the employees who don't go to top-notch programs are losing out on promotions and new jobs.

The giant chipmaker says that this change is not an indictment of for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix. (The school relies heavily on reimbursement programs for its revenue.)

Intel was one of its largest corporate customers.

This ought to raise a red flag for students everywhere about the schools they are getting degrees from. Having a diploma from a university needs to translate into more money -- either by becoming more employable or promotionable.

All those thousands of dollars that students pay to get those degrees are wasted if the schools can't help you get jobs.

How in the world would you ever find that stuff out?

If you ask the schools -- any of the "distance learning" schools that offer web-based curricula -- you're apt to get all kinds of assurances that the school is going to help you get a job.

Of course. But can you talk to some of their former graduates just to check out the story?

Highly doubtful. Schools hold those records pretty close to their academic chests.

You might get in touch with someone in the human resource department at a company like the one you want to work at and see if they recognize a web-based university.

Or -- and here's the kicker -- do they give preferential treatment to the traditional, brick and mortar schools? You know the schools. They actually require students to come to class, listen to a professor lecture, take notes, and take tests.

##

Her fans aren't taking Princess Paltrow's assessment of Americans all that well.

I was never a fan of the Princess but I can tell you, for sure, that I will not spend another dime on anything she has touched -- whether it's a movie or a video or whatever.

I don't doubt, though, that dinner conversation among the Hollywood types is most likely dull and boring and money-linked back to their own good fortune -- I mean, they spend $1,200 for a pair of high heels, and about $5,000 for a single handbag that looks like something the rest of us could get at a Goodwill Shoppe.

Over there, people don't talk about money, according to the enlightened one.. So how is it, Princess Paltrow that you headlined your interview with the Portguguese newspaper Diario de Noticias talking about your not-so-favorite subject?

"Oh," you said, "the streets of London were dirty."

"Oh," you said, "the weather over there was cold and depressing."

"Oh," you said, "customer service was just rubbish." -- Whatever that is. I guess you're trying to sound so hoity-toity like you're speaking another language.

And don't forget Madonna. Princess Paltrow says she's like an older sister. "Lots of good advice about how to take care of myself."

I sure hope it isn't marriage advice she's giving you. Madonna just announced that she and her most truly beloved will be looking for a marriage counselor. Their perfecto union is straining at the seams.

Not to take such things lightly. If they need marriage counseling, I hope it will work for them. But counseling is a whole bunch of work.

So is building a marriage that will last.

##

Now you've done it! Russian spies are no longer allowed to drop dead of polonium 210 poisoning. The Brits are going to Russia to investigate, I'll have you to know!

Scotland Yard is sending its best, according to an Associated Press account of what's going on. So you guys, in Russia, just better mind your p's and q's -- and I do not mean pints and quarts.

That's where that term comes from, you know. I read that on one of those e-mails that makes its way around Jupiter and back to earth a dozen times or so every year.

Not only that, but Scotland Yard is being assisted by the US' FBI. So you know it's a really big story -- not just gossip.

They've even found traces of the radioactive element in the sushi bar where former spy Litvinento and Scaramella had lunch. They met at the sushi bar to talk about the prospect of being murdered.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had promised to absolutely cooperate with all phases of the investigation.

Natch.

##

I did not know that the evangelicals were moving away from naming churches after the denominations they belong to.

When did that start?

While reading my favorite Across the USA column in today's USA Today, I learned that the First Baptist Church in Concord, New Hampshire, renamed itself the Centerpoint Church.

For 188 years, it was okay for the church to be called the First Baptist Church.

The reason the church officiates changed the name, they said, was because of a trend toward moving away from denominational titles.

Well, all right, then. But what are the Baptists going to do when they visit your town and want to find a local Baptist church to worship in?

They're going to be real surprised if they get a former Lutheran church that has renamed itself to the Gospel of Glory Church, or something like that.

Just getting up and down ten times during the service will make them wonder where they are. They may think they've joined a fitness center or something.

No, sorry pastor. I did not mean that.

##

But I'd like to say to the Pentagon -- what took you so long?

Clinton Sharp, an octagenarian, finally received his Bronze Star.

It comes to him 62 years after serving on the front-line as a medic in the Pacific Theater during WWII.

He was a member of the Army's 43rd (Winged Victory) Division that fought on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, New Georgia, and on Luzon in the Philippines.

And I might remind our readers of just how important -- and dangerous -- the jobs of these medics were.

For instance, the Japanese were so fluent in English on Iwo Jima that they would scream out in the middle of the night, "Medic!" We lost I don't know how many medics to this dirty little trick.

To you, Officer Clinton Sharp, we all say thank you. And we're glad you got back home safe and sound.

##

All the whole world loves a storybook love story.

That couldn't be more true -- at least for me -- than for Prince William and his lady love -- Kate Middleton.

Gee -- someday she'll be Queen Kate.

And HRH Cammie goes to the rear. All the way back to there.

Oh all that speculation. Will she or won't she. Will he or won't he!

They say there are two groups of people who absolutely know what's going on amongs the Royals -- the palace staffers and the bookmakers.

So now everytime Q2 Kate has a dress fitting of any sort, the rumor mongers start wagging theirs.

Not only that, but Q2 has received a first-time-ever-that-a-commoner-has-been-invited Invitation to Q1's Christmas festivities -- including a rather royal pahteeee at The Ritz in London. So why in the world would the Queen be holding a party?

To announce The Engagement, of course. Ever the protocol present, and since Kate is a commoner and all, we couldn't have all these goings on going on at The Palace, now could we?

Or, it could be just an intimate little celebration of the queen and her prince on the occasion of their 59th wedding anniversary.

And then on Wednesday, Prince William and his ladylove, Katie, will have a party of their own on Wednesday night.

'Tis the season -- ho ho ho!

But the press will always be want to find something to prick royal images. And this is just as true for Kate as it was for Diana.

For Kate, it's about her going on up to the Queen's castle -- Sandringham House -- for a shoot. And that's not a photo shoot either.

Let's see -- what do they shoot over there? Elk maybe?

And now there's all that tah-tah-tah about whether Kate will be the first ever commoner to get an invite to the Queen's Christmas Day bash. I'll bet she does. For more than a few reasons.

First of all, the Queen can undo a lot of the hogwash criticism that the monarchy is made out of ground up pieces of concrete. That's why they're so resistant to change.

So she can make a really big change and then smile and say, "See! We can make little changes in our protocol, here and there."

And secondly, if Prince Wills and Miss Kate do become engaged before Christmas, what's the harm? They'd already be a royal couple. That kind of makes her the new envy of her commoner girlfriends, of which she now leaps a country mile ahead.

And finally, you just know the Queen wants to see another wedding in the house while she's still on her throne.

So will somebody just do something. The suspense is killing me!

##

1.  Happy Feet -- $17,045,000

2.  Casino Royale -- $15,100,000

3.  Deja Vu -- $11,032,000

4.  The Nativity Story -- $8,025,100

5.  Deck the Halls -- $6,650,000

6.  Santa Claus 3 -- $5,006,000

7.  Borat (in week #5) -- $4,825,000

8.  Turistas -- $3,540,000

9.  Stranger than Fiction -- $3,400,000

10.  National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj -- $2,295,000

We like to go to movies, don't we?

See, and you thought football was the great American fun time!

(go to www.BoxOfficeMoJo.com  for more details and a listing of the top 17 movies, and other details about the movies above, like the movie budgets, how many theaters, etc.)

And they are legion!

The House of Blues chain is in the big middle of negotiating the construction of a giant $120 million entertainment center complex in the Washington D.C. area new the Convention Center.

See -- now you have yet another good reason to head over to Washington, D.C.

##

Paltrow was being interviewed by the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias for an article in the magazine supplement.

She got a chance to compare Americans and British.

She thinks the Brits are so much more civilized and interesting than Americans.

Oh yeah?

But she probably likes all that dull and boring American money that we use to go see her movies.

Or at least I used to go see her movies.

Now she's on the list of movie stars who aren't getting another nickel of my money.

So sorry to have bored you, Little Miss Puffin Stuff.

I remember Julie Andrews saying something like that years and years ago. After her negative comments about Americans, she could hardly get a movie star role and when she did make a movie, it hardly sold a box office.

How's that for being dull and boring? That's how we respond to arrogant, potato headettes who think they are some kind of intellectual genius.

All you're doing, Paltrow, is reciting lines that someone else wrote. That doesn't take intellectual genius.

##

Wal-Mart faces some fierce competition from Target. Target has even said that its corporate goal is to replace Wal-Mart.

So Wal-Mart has retaliated with some new strategies of its own. These include more price cuts, even $4 prescriptions that now will travel across the country, apparently.

Wal-Mart sales now comes to $312 billion, annually. It has 6,000 stores and 1.3 million employees.

Gee whiz. If it were all in one place, it could be a country.

So what are the new strategies that Wal-Mart wants to use to get us in there?

Well, Wal-Mart wants to be its own urban fashion plate. Huh? Somehow I don't think adding more stretch fabrics and knit outfits that still look like gym ware is going to qualify for dressing up for a night out at a fancy schmancy restaurant.

Wal-Mart thought it could introduce its own designer line. They named it Metro7 and tried it in 600 big city area stores.

Guess what? It diedn't work.

Talk about a marketing department that didn't do its homework. Wal-Mart's customers live mostly in the suburbs. They are just over five feet tall and wear a size 14. The designer line needed skinny people to wear the hotsy totsy tight-fitting skinny jeans.

Who would buy dressy clothes at Wal-Mart, you ask? Apparently nobody. November sales crashed.

Nordies doesn't have much to worry about here, believe me.

The other thing they vow to do is renovate 1,800 stores. Wider aisles would help, that's for sure. Just, please, don't pile those tables with a mile high mountain of merchandise out there in the middle of those new, nice-sized aisles.

What's the point, then?

They also announced that from now on, Wal-Mart would have no more layaway programs. Not sure that's a good idea. Not everyone has credit cards. And not everyone has the money to buy everything they need all at once. Layaway helps low-income customers manage their struggles. Not sure it's a good idea to remove that program.

K-Mart is now getting Wal-Mart's layaway customers.

Imposing wage caps on Wal-Mart workers is one sure way to head the workers toward unionizing.

Just wondering -- does the Teamsters have a retail cashiers section?

So what's left then, for Wal-Mart?

Average, ordinary everyday stuff like soap, socks and (at least in some stores) shotguns. Now, that's a merchandise mix.

Well, maybe it's a bit more than a mishap.

Mr. Mario Scaramella had lunch with the late Alexander Litvinenko one day not too long ago -- November 1st.

Scaramella says he wanted to warn Litvinenko about a supposed death list that they were both on. Turns out that Mario also has been hit with a dose of what more than suspiciously looks like a whole bunch of polonium 210.

Scaramella is a professor. Don't know if that has much to do with anything. He is, however, an Italian nuclear security expert. Whatever that is. Now he's in the hospital now being treated for radiation poisoning.

The professor had met the supposed former spy for lunch at a Piccadilly Circus sushi place -- although fish is not a known source of polonium 210. Scaramelle didn't eat anything -- just drank water.

This is just too, too much for my overactive imagination.

Polonium 210 is a metal. How could someone who just drank water get a dose of the poison? Enough poison that would put him in the hospital!

And now, Litvinenko's wife shows up with polonium 210 in her body. What's that all about?

And how about that other person -- the journalist who is now also dead? Anna Politkovskaya. What really happened to her?

Quint says polonium 210 is really really rare.

And another thing -- the president of Belarus -- Alexander Milinkevich --  was arrested after he met with President Bush in Latvia when Bush was there for a NATO summit.

Milinkevich ran against former president Alexander Lukashenko last March. He beat him fair and square.

Then, along comes President B. of the good old USA and says that Lukashenko's government "offends the conscience" of Europe and the United States.

Next thing you know, Milinkevich is in the pokey for allegedly forging a passport.

I would like to know when the butler is going to show up.

But then, maybe I've been reading too many John Grisham novels.

If a Russian MiG doesn't fly through my office window this weekend, I may try to find more clues.

##

First of all, biochemists at the University of Arizona say that the body makes 10 or the 20 amino acids we need every day.

If we're missing even one of the 10 essential amino acids, the ones we can't make, then what happens is a degradation of the body's proteins -- like muscles.

It's true -- the body stores fats and starches in the body. This is just in case there's a famine going on.

If you look around you when you're out and about, you'll quickly notice that there doesn't seem to be a famine going on in the United States.

But the amino acids have to be in the foods we eat every day -- because our body doesn't store them.

Now, bear with me for just a bit.

I'm going to give you the list of all 20 amino acids before I go any further. They are: alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucne, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine.

All by ourselves, we make these ten: alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine.

We have to rummage around in our food supply to make sure we get the other ten amino acids in our diets.

My concern is that neurotransmitters are made up of amines.

Hormones are made up of amines.

Histamines are made up of amines.

I am suspicious that something might cause an increased need for more amines -- like when prepubescent children are busy at that time of their lives when hormones start galloping. Is it possible that an increased need for hormones when children are going into pubery might just cause a deficit in the manufacture of neurotransmitters.

Particular neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamines go a long way toward protecting our mental health. We don't want those chemicals to get out of balance.

Or what about allergies. Is it possible that an overload in the manufacture of either histamines or antihistamines might cause a deficit.

And what if our diets are missing the twenty amines.

What's the harm in a teensy tiny little deficit? Does it matter all that much?

I'm not going to go through all ten of the amines that we have to scrounge around for. At least not today.

My knowledge of biochemistry is next to nil. But I do like to learn new things. So maybe I'll do one at a time.

Like arginine.

I hit pay dirt with this one as the first choice. It's found in chocolate. I have nothing to worry about.
Of course, it's also found in wheat flour and oatmeal, dairy products, poultry, beef, pork and nuts.

Since I like to put English walnuts in both my oatmeal and my evening dish of ice cream, I'm probably not deficient in arginine.

That's good, because a deficiency here produces symptoms of muscle weakness, impairs insulin production, glucose production, and liver lipid metabolism.

Not in any particular order, but only because we just finished Turkey Day, I'll talk about trytophan. Thanksgiving is a day when we generally get plenty of this amine. It's the chemical that helps us regulate our appetite, sleep better and believe it or not, elevate our mood.

Here's just a few things that may indicate we're deficient in tryptophan: depression, anxiety, irritability, impatience, impulsiveness, inability to concentrate, weight gain or unexplained weight loss, overeating and/or carbohydrate cravings, poor dream recall and insomnia.

Tryptophan can be found in red meat, dairy products, nuts, seeds, bananas, soy products, tuna, shellfish and turkey.

Other sources include summer squash, baked potatoes (with skin on), brown rice, tomatoes, low fat yogurt, raw onions, green peas, red bell peppers, raw celery, green beans, brussel sprouts, lentils, cucumbers, navy beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, romaine lettuce, and broccoli -- to name a few.

So far so good. I'll just put some chocolate chips into my butter pecan ice cream with the English walnuts, continue eating turkey sandwiches on whole wheat bread for lunch, yogurt with English walnuts for breakfast, and a Caesar salad for dinner. And with the other green things I eat, I ought to have enough tryptophan coming into my system to tide me over.

But then, a steak now and then sounds good too. Can I have some cucumber slices and fresh tomato slices with that Caesar salad?

Now I'm really cooking!

##

If you were a giant drugstore that makes millions of dollars a year, wouldn't one of your first concerns be patient confidentiality!!?

Why would a drugstore -- any drugstore -- throw old patient pill bottles in the trash out back?

Or customer refill lists.

Or prescription labels.

And yet, in an investigation launched by the Indianapolis, IN TV station WTHR, some 300 trash bins were picked through in the back of big name drug stores -- Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid stores -- in lots of cities from Boston to Louisville to Phoenix.

This big fiasco came to light when a grandma in Indiana said a guy showed up on her doorstep and claimed to be an employee of the drugstore where she got her prescription for a painkiller filled. He was actually an average, ordinary, garden variety punk thief who came to rob her. He'd found her address in a trash bin behind a drugstore.

As a result of the investigation, Walgreens says it now requires all outdoor trash bins to be locked.
CVS now requires all trash generated in its pharmacies -- there are 6,200 of them -- to be put in special bags which are sent back to warehouses to be destroyed. 

Rite Aid Corp. is not making any changes to its procedures. Their current procedures require that all patient information, such as prescription labels, be shredded. If a store is not set up to do that, then the information has to be sent back to the pharmacy warehouse to be destroyed.

I, for one, am going to talk to the pharmacist at the Walgreens where I get my prescriptions filled. How about you?

Remember when all the excitement about patient confidentiality was supposedly protected by new HIPAA regulations? There's a blue tape line at my pharmacy window. If someone is getting a prescription, I am not supposed to go past that line.

"Patient confidentiality" -- I was told.

But this same drug store chain is just tossing out old prescription bottles for all the thieves to find!


##

Today is December 1, 2006.

You need to know that, starting this very day, your boss is required to keep track of all e-mails and other electronic documents that you generate.

Don't even think about suing. This one has already gone to the Supreme Court -- way back in April. And today's the day the Supreme Court says the law can go into effect.

E-mails and other electronically stored information are now part of documents that may be required in the discovery part of trials. That's when both sides have to show what they've got by way of evidence.

So if you don't want to have to explain your e-mails, don't use your boss' computer at work. 

And, hey bosses: if you think you can just not store all that stuff, think again. This is also addressed in the law. Not saving your electronic files onto a backup tape is the equivalent of "virtual shredding."

I'll just betcha, though, that there will be some company size that will be a kind of threshold -- like a big company of 50 employees or more.

Big companies tend to have a bigger burden in these kind of requirements.

Stay tuned. You just know this new law is going to be fine-tuned as we go along.

##