Sherry Chandler

Distressing stuff I haven’t been thinking about for a week

— from the Washington Post on Wednesday (link via BagNews):

President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone “hostile to U.S. interests.”

…

“Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power,” the policy asserts in its introduction.

National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said in written comments that an update was needed to “reflect the fact that space has become an even more important component of U.S. economic, national and homeland security.”

Then there’s John Cheves’ series The McConnell Machine in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Of particular interest to me is the description of how McConnell worked with the pharmaceutical companies to scotch universal prescription drug coverage for senior citizens:

WASHINGTON - The pharmaceutical industry needed a friendly senator in 1999, and it was willing to talk money.

Senate Democrats were pushing universal prescription drug coverage for senior citizens — including a provision to let Medicare negotiate for cheaper prices. Drug companies wanted to stop them.

Barry Caldwell, lobbyist at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA), sent his boss a memo explaining that they would sit down with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. McConnell had the ear of other GOP senators as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), their fund-raising machine, Caldwell said.

And I knew about the silly fence in Texas, but not about this Fire on the Water:

When the Coast Guard decided it wanted to practice firing its new machine guns on the Great Lakes, it posted an item in the Federal Register — not exactly household reading. Now that the public has caught up, there is an uproar all around the lakes — in Canada as well as the United States — and a belated decision to hold public hearings.

[Added note: Or maybe I should just suggest that you get really depressed and read Harper's Weekly Review.  Though I sort of like this one:

Canadian troops in Afghanistan were finding it difficult to destroy forests of ten-foot-tall marijuana plants where the Taliban hide. “That damn marijuana,” said one soldier.[

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