One of my work colleagues lives in another part of the country and travels here for part of the week. When here, we often “do lunch.” She’s been watch in fascination while I knit on a project or two, so I offered to teach her how to knit.

Last weekend she went to a LYS in her home town and picked up some lovely blue worsted-weight yarn and a pair of plastic needles.

Plastic needles that, she tells me, were so flexible that they could easily bend and then spring right back.

I never got to actually see these needles because they were confiscated by airport security. Despite the listing of knitting needles TSA list of permitted items as OK in both carry on and checked luggage. Despite her helpful demonstration of the flexibility of the needles that rendered them almost completely unsuitable as stabbing weapons.

Knitting lessons have been postponed until replacements can be obtained. I’m thinking bamboo and plastic circs, which won’t show up on xray.

I feel so safe now, knowing that some over-zealous TSA employee has kept the skies safe from attack by a needle-wielding knitting neophyte.

I think the TSA should encourage knitters to travel often with large pointy sharp needles in hand. We’d make a terrific backup security team, donchathink? Even though most knitters are actually quite peaceful people. Heck… they should pay us to fly with needles!

So apparently there was a dearth of qualified women and minorities available and Shrub was forced to come up with a white guy for his nomination.

I never dared hope he’d pick someone who leaned toward the center, but I did sort of wish that he’d pick someone who would stand out a bit more amongst the white male faces.

There’s a special report on the TV right now that Sandra Day O’Connor has retired from the Supreme Court effective as soon as her replacement is named.

This could be a very interesting fight coming up.

Bush will be speaking some time after 8:00 AM PDT.

It’s odd to think that nearly 1/2 of the people now living in the USA had not been born yet when the office of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex was burglarized. Makes me feel old.

Last night #1 Son asked me about Watergate. I was a freshman in college when the scandal broke, which also makes me feel old.

What I chiefly remember is how riveted the entire country was by what was happening. I sat for hours watching testimony during the Senate investigation, and wondering how the heck our country fell into the hands of such disreputable people. And wondering, of course, who Deep Throat was. Well… that mystery has at least been solved, since Mark Felt has admitted his involvement.

My mother and I had a duck dinner bet on whether Nixon would be impeached or not — I said yes, mama said no. The SOB resigned, thus ending our bet in a draw.

Nearly 1/2 of the people living in the USA had not yet been born when the Watergate scandal broke. Maybe that’s why our country is where it is today. Can’t we remember our history and stop repeating it?

I can only assume that there must be millions of families out there in Television Land who have TVs with broken power buttons.

Today from the Washington Post:

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a dramatic increase in fines for indecent programming, rejecting criticism the penalties will stifle free speech and homogenize radio and TV broadcasts.

Supporters said stiffer penalties are needed to give deep-pocketed broadcasters more incentive to clean up their programs and to help assure parents that their children won’t be exposed to inappropriate material.

The measure — H.R.310, titled the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 — passed The House 389-38. It increases the maximum fine for “indecent programming” from $32,500 to $500,000 for a company and from $11,000 to $500,000 for an individual entertainer. The fine applies when a

violator is determined by the Commission under paragraph (1) to have uttered obscene, indecent, or profane material.

Although The House did not stoop to actually defining “obscene, indecent, or profane,” they did strongly suggest that reimplementing a “family viewing hour” would be a desirable thing.

“This is a penalty that makes broadcasters sit up and take notice,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee that sent the bill to the full House. “This legislation makes great strides in making it safe for families to come back into their living room.”

The reason that I’m assuming that there are so many broken TVs out there in America that can’t be turned off is that hitting the power switch is such a simple and effective way of making sure that your family is “safe” from whatever it is you don’t want them to watch. Many TVs and cable services also come complete with parental control features that make it possible to block certain types of programming. While they may not have blocked a split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson’s pastie-covered nipple, I’ve always found parental constrols to be pretty darn effective (just ask # 1 son).

Voting with my pocketbook — i.e. turning the damn thing off — has always seemed a lot more effective to me than having some bozo in Congress tell me what I can and can’t watch. And it seems “safer” besides.

We can only hope that either (1) The House and Senate cannot agree on a combined bill (as last year) or (2) it will be struck down as too broad anyway.

Heard on the radio this morning: US pharmaceutical companies are not happy with online Canadian pharmacies that cater to US citizens by selling them drugs at reduced prices. Said pharmaceuticals are in the process of “cracking down” on our neighbors to the north. Merc has already stated that it will no longer sell drugs to any online pharmacy that sells across the border.

Now, we’ve heard all kinds of reasons for this in the past, mostly having to do with safety issues. When these drugs cross a border — any border — they suddenly become unsafe for Americans to consume.

When I was little, I had an aunt who was convinced that “night air” was harmful. After the sun went down, she made sure to go around her house and close up all the windows. And don’t dare sleep with a window open! Oh, no! That harmful night air will get you every time. But, aunty I would protest, its exactly the same atmosphere I breathe all day. I was unable to ever convince her it was safe.

I like to think of the “unsafe drugs” theory as the night air of the pharmaceutical industry.

But this time I think we hit a little closer to the truth: According to the radio piece I heard, he pharmaceutical companies are unhappy about the loss of revenue caused by the mass exodus across the border to the land overflowing with cheaper medication. Oh. Darn. I feel so sorry for them.

It will be interesting to see the Bush Administration take on this, given his supposed adherence to good, old-fashion supply-side Reaganomics. Cutting off the supply of the Canadian pharmacies pretty well flies in the face of the trickle-down effect.