Today's Wall Street Journal asks, in a subheadline on page one, if we are looking at "The End of Retirement?"

There are dual stories in the paper on the sorry state of retirement benefits from some of the largest American corporations, including today's announcement that GM has decided to "substantially alter pension benefits" for salaried workers (no details on how), and to cap health care benefits for salaried employees and their families at the 2006 levels.

The phrase?  "Crocodile tears."

Meaning -- Fake tears.

Origin -- Crocodiles sometimes secrete a fluid from their eyes when they kill prey.

And my, but aren't the airwaves FILLED with the sound of weeping crocodiles today.

Who wins in the Muhammed cartoon debacle?  No one.

The "scandalous" is from Arlen Specter.  "Disappointed" and "surprised" come from Olympia Snowe.  The details come from the Guardian's story on congressional reaction to the details of the President's proposed 2007 budget.

Just when you think you've identified the most absurd conservative in the world...for instance, when you first read David Brooks...along comes another one to make your face contort into positions it should never hold.

From one Dr. Vincent G. Gioia, writing for New Media Journal

What would happen to all our "investors", China included, if the US developed the cajones in time of crisis to simply declare a bank holiday or nullify all foreign debt by law or decree? Sure, we would be disliked and more on the world stage, but so what? After all, business is business.

Scientists the world over are hailing the news published today in the Online Edition of "The Independent."

KBR wins a new government contract.  To make detention centers in the U.S.

It would be much easier to tolerate the concept of "multiculturalism" if we didn't have to deal with people whose values are, well... "different" from ours.

Thankfully, it seems that many American opinion-shapers are coming to the same conclusion

I missed the morning session of the hearing, but saw most of the afternoon one.  Not completely disheartening, and certainly not wildly hopeful.  At least the majority of the Committee members eventually made the point that the importance of the program to defending against attacks is completely beside the point; it's the need for oversight to keep the program from getting turned inward on the admin's political enemies that's crucial.

If anyone else caught the hearings, I'd be interested in their impression.

Now I watched the C-SPAN coverage of Alberto Gonzalez's speech at Georgetown a while back, and stayed alert for the panel discussion that followed it.  Which is to say, I actually saw the four panelists take a shot at either excoriating Bush and his NSA spying program or praising Bush for his NSA spying program.

Bill O'Reilly it seems did not bother to watch this, though it certainly did not stop him from devoting a segment of his show to how unfair the whole thing was to David Rivkin who, of course, was O'Reilly's guest.

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