Dubya says he authorized the spying order, and is mucho pisso-d at those who spilled the beans to the New York Times.

Freshly washed hardwood floors are slippery and dangerous. Hardwood floors that go long periods without seeing a mop are not.

Draw your own conclusions.

This NYT editorial argues that U.S. troops and national security agents need moral clarity, not weasel words.

Douglas Bandow, a senior scholar at the Cato Institute and a columnist for the Copley News Service, has resigned after it became public he took money from Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for stories favourable to Abramoff's clients.

According to an email I got earlier this week, D.H. Lawrence once said this about his fellow Englishmen:

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today.  ... God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wishwash. Exterminate them, slime.

Actually, the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover and other books of renown walked the walk. He spent most of his life as an expat, dying in 1930 at age 45.

With the death of singer Kirsty MacColl, the legendary Irish punk-traditionalists The Pogues were looking for a new guest singer.

In this story for The Independent, accordionist James Fearnley puts us at the scene (H/T to Kevin).

The spirit of the season descends over a bank ATM lineup.