Of all the liberals to come down against a filibuster to disrupt Judge Alito’s confirmation hearings,

Prospects for a filibuster to try to derail Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court all but died yesterday when a key swing Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, came out against it.

I’ll bet that a lot of sighs of relief were audible on the left side of the aisle when Dianne made that statement — the last thing most of that crowd wanted was a filibuster - nuke option showdown they would have lost, further damaging their already feeble chance of winning any more seats in November.

Feline to the rescue!

Police aren’t sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat’s owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.

“I know it sounds kind of weird,” Officer Patrick Daugherty said, unsuccessfully searching for some other explanation.

I can’t say I disbelieve this story, as unlikely as it sounds, as I once had an experience where a couple of friends were away for a week and they asked me to feed their three cats while they were gone.

The food came in envelopes they stored in a very high cabinet above their kitchen sink. One day I was a couple of hours late getting over there, and I found the cabinet open, the box laying on the sink counter and three envelopes ripped open near the cats’ three bowls.

Scary.

Even though I’m not a cat person, it just may be that them thar critters’re a mite smarter than most folks’d give ‘em credit fer, if not downright sayyy-tanic…

Theresa Heinz-Kerry has some things to say regarding the Bush response to the anti-Israel ravings of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Teresa Heinz Kerry says she is “outraged” that President Bush didn’t react more forcefully to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent recommendation that Israel be “wiped off the map,” saying that the way to deal with Iranian threats is by issuing “the strongest possible condemnations.”

Ain’t that the modern Democrat way, verbally condemn the SOBs, that’ll fix ‘em! It’ll show ‘em we mean business and they’ll humble themselves post-haste, prostrating themselves before the oracle of sheer goodness. Right.

“The only way to prevent the virus from surviving and spreading,” the former Mrs. Heinz advises, “is to attack, killing it with the strongest possible condemnations before it has a chance to mutate and spread.”

Take that - Ahmadinejad!

Sometimes, the only way to promote more peaceful output from people like Ahmadinejad is to go over there and kick their beheinz!

Thank God this was a non-meltdown kind of accident.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — An explosion ripped through a smelter at a nuclear power plant outside the northern city of St. Petersburg, badly injuring three people, Russia’s nuclear agency said Friday.

Rosenergoatom said radiation levels were not affected as the reactor in that part of the Leningrad nuclear plant was undergoing repairs and not in operation at the time.

This may be considered by some to be in poor taste, but it reminded me of a joke Yakov Smirnoff told when I saw him at Harrah’s Reno about fifteen years ago:

“Here in America, you have all these wonderful medical advances, but we have them in Soviet Union, too.
There, they have invented a way to X-ray whole population at once, is called Chernobel.”

I quite enjoyed reading The DaVinci Code, a book which spurred massive controversy in global religious circles by its premise that Jesus and Mary Magdeline married and their line has survived into modern times.

It’s a novel, people, wake up! You know, a work of fiction provided for readers’ entertainment! There are far more serious events occurring in the world today than a mere novel, for God’s sake, all this profound discourse and controversy at the highest levels of the religious establishment is absurd. If you don’t like it, don’t read it!

That said, I thought it was a great read and, while I’m not at all enamored by today’s films, actors and actresses, I definitely look forward to seeing how the Hollywood crowd treats it. The movie company seems to be dedicated to the story line, a rarity for Hollywood, as they actually went to the trouble of convincing the French government to allow them to do some location filming inside the Louvre. That in itself had to be a great personal sacrifice, since having to deal with those socialist weasels would be a putrid experience at the best of times, but then again, our movie industry is a liberal socialist enclave{albeit rich socialists, go figure} whose denizens scream that we should model our government after those like France’s, so maybe they were happy as the proverbial clams, dealing with their idols and all.

Now, it seems that a couple of people are suing Random House, The DaVinci Code’s publisher, claiming that the novel plagiarized a nonfiction book they published back in 1982 called Holy Blood, Holy Grail that put forth the theory on which Dan Brown’s novel is based.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing publisher Random House, claiming that Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” lifts ideas from their 1982 nonfiction book, “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail.” Their work explores theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that their blood line continues to the present day.

A similar theme is explored in Brown’s novel, which has sold some 25 million copies around the world and is being made into a Hollywood movie starring Tom Hanks.

I, for one, fervently hope Doubleday and Brown are able to prove that this was not the case, as I had attributed the novel to Dan Brown’s imagination and a lot of in-depth research with a view to weaving realism into the story as most good novelists do.

Time will tell, I suppose, but I sure am rooting for Doubleday in this instance.

Just wondering about gas prices, and how high they should be instead of how high they really are.

Are we looking at oil companies taking major advantage of their customers?

Remember the early 1970s, when gas prices were high for the times, the oil companies screaming of a shortage, when people had to drive up to long lines at the pumps on alternate days, depending upon whether their license plate numbers were odd or even, and meanwhile entire fleets of fully laden oil tankers sat calmly offshore, out of visual range?

Hmmmm.

So what, exactly, is happening now?

We’re reading here that Exxon Mobile has made a 75% profit due mainly to the “increase in gas prices” resulting from the hurricanes that banged up their offshore rigs and some of their refineries. It stands to reason, therefore, that had they merely raised their prices to reflect the situation, they would balance out at about the same profit margin they did before prices “went up.” Instead, they’re collecting exponential profits, which means that if the price of gas, based on the per-barrel price, goes up 80 cents, they’ll charge a dollar and a half, or somewhere thereabouts.

Yup, no question about it, I love the way Mobile Chevron and others demonstrate their patriotism by profiteering on natural disasters.