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Pause before you start filling your tank the next time and think of the 15 people who died in Texas this week while refining the fuel you’re putting in your tank.

It isn’t much, but it is more than they will get from the oilman, former Texas governor, and current resident of Texas who sits in the White House.

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A lot of people would say that Stephen King is America’s king of horror for the novels he writes. They would be wrong, because Steve King is a lot scarier: he writes laws.

On the Saturday edition of All Things Considered, March 26, 2005, Debbie Elliott interviews Representative Steve King [R-Iowa] in a segment called: “Congressional Republicans Target ‘Activist’ Judiciary”.

In spite of his lack of any particular credentials, Mr. King sits on the House Judiciary Committee and he discussed various options for making “un-elected judges accountable”. Among the ideas were eliminating all of the courts except the Constitutionally mandated Supreme Court, not funding the Federal courts, adjustments like that.

Go and listen to the man, it starts at about 1:15 into the segment. I don’t guess he’s heard or seen the polls about what American voters think about Congressional action.

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There have been numerous complaints received regarding the services provided under the current regime and we would like to take time to respond to these complaints and to help those of you in the outlying areas understand the true situation.

It has been noted that several individuals purporting to be the “Easter Bunny” do not seem to be authentic. Of course they’re not authentic. We don’t do personal appearances or take requests. As the anthropomorphic personification of a blended holiday we are entirely too involved in attempting to fulfill the unreasoning expectations of various groups. Besides which, we noticed that many of the requests came from people with French surnames, and I don’t think it is necessary to remind people what happens to rabbits in France. Remember: in Britain bunnies are found in children books; in France in cookbooks.

We had what we thought was an excellent solution, but then discovered that due to his existence as a pookah, Harvey was not visible to major segments of the population and, to be honest, he had a problem staying away from tipple for any major block of time.

As for the quality of the costumes, we are certainly not going to recommend anyone “donate” their pelt so these obvious frauds can have “genuine rabbit fur” costumes.

There have been other complaints following the change from solid to hollow chocolate statuary. The Chocolate Cartel has been jacking up prices for years, and while we agree that problems like the disruptions in the Ivory Coast have had a negative impact on the pricing of the raw materials, we suspect the price increases have more to do with avarice than insurrections.

We had to choose between offering smaller, solid figures, or larger, hollow figures. Research showed us that the target audience, small children, only actually ate the ears and nibbled a bit from the toes. The majority of the figure was consumed by parents: “to prevent the kids from getting sick from all that candy.” Our thinking was the kids would be impressed with the initial size of the figure, and the parents needed to lose weight anyway.

Hollowing the figures took more time and you have to keep in mind that the staff is already pretty weird from the massive doses of sugar, gelatin, and dyes they have to ingest to produce jelly beans. Nonetheless, the illusion is preserved.

Regarding the “grass” and “baskets”: hey, wake up and smell the polypropyl vinyl! The days of people having a basket out back and grass around the house are gone. We ask for baskets and find the concept apparently doesn’t translate well as the suppliers move further to the East. But the grass? Grass is grass all over the world. It’s green, it is almost always the definition of green in every language. So we ask for grass and we get shredded plastic in almost every color except green. We know it’s wrong. We complain every year and every year we are told that this is “the new green”.

So, suck it up and get out there and deliver.

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Update: Easter Bunny Gets Pummeled by Boy at Mall – Be careful out there.

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Back on the 7^th of this month I ranted about Bush failing to acknowledge the pain of other people when he didn’t make a public statement of condolences to Italy after US forces killed an Italian security official.

He’s done it again, waiting until after the media starting running stories about his failure to mention the deaths at the Red Lake reservation, to make a telephone call. He promised them Federal aid, as if he was doing them a favor.

Somebody tell Dubya that it is a Federal issue. Murders on reservations are Federal crimes, tried in Federal courts. He isn’t doing them any favors; it’s his job.

The cretin can spend taxpayer dollars to fly back to Washington to sign hastily passed bills to interfere in matters that have been the province of the states since the Constitution was signed, but can’t rouse himself to offer his obviously faked sympathy in a matter that is a Federal concern.

In his discussion of Adam Nagourney’s paean to Jeb Bush, James Wolcott notes Mr. Nagourney’s comparison of the Bush family to the Adams family. I believe that this has to be a spelling error. Surely Mr. Nagourney meant the Addams family.

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