A public service announcment from the late Mr. Bill Hicks.

C-Span, thankfully, is still offering their interview with Jon Stewart. This is not only a must-see but a must-see over and over again. In fact, I demand you watch this at least once a year (and it’s been over a year now since it aired). Oh, and feel free to wash it down with the NPR interview as well. Helps the digestion.

C-span is offering a fascinating interview with former President Jimmy Carter where he discusses his new book, Our Endangered Values : America’s Moral Crisis (also available as an audio book).

Listen to the podcast or head over to c-span and subscribe to this or any other of their podcasts…

Bill O’Reilly may be a disingenuous jackass but sometimes he can be as entertaining to watch as his jackass brethren. Case in point… in response to those upset about him essentially wishing a terrorist attack on San Francisco, he replied:

“I’m glad the smear sites made a big deal out of it. Now we can all know who was with the anti-military internet crowd. We’ll post the names of all who support the smear merchants on billoreilly.com. So check with us.”

Now that’s just good clean fun… or perhaps McCarthyism.

Project 7th Grade is a program that issues parents free at-home drug test kits to use on their children. Testing is targeted at 7th graders in the hopes of preventing drug use rather than treating it. The website lists the benefits of the kits including: “Having a kit in your home fosters two-way communication between a parent and child”.

Debbie Moak, founder of notmykid.org, outlined the program when recently on the MSNBC show The Situation, hosted by Tucker “The Dick” Carlson. The interview is available as a podcast.

Interestingly, the Journal of School Health published a study on drug testing in schools [pdf] that reported the following in their conclusion: “The two forms of drug testing that are generally assumed to be most promising for reducing student drug use—random testing applied to all students (and, therefore, also likely applied to those in any extracurricular activities, which may come close to encompassing all students), and testing of athletes—did not produce encouraging results.”.

Clearly, somebody here is high…

For the first time ever, I’m proud to live in California. For anyone that knows me, that will come as a shock. I’m also proud of some of my “peeps” back in the midwest (especially the Secret State).

As I look over this map, it becomes even more clear to me that I’m out of touch with the majority of my country. Fair enough. From now on, some of you people are dead to me… you know who you are… (hint: most of you live in a state that is NOT blue).

I’d like to think that the little white dots represent folks running scared into Canada and Mexico or just jumping into the nearest ocean…

Go vote your conscience or shut it…

Project Vote Smart is one of the best sites I’ve found during my ongoing investigation and education of the political system. It offers information on our elected officials and candidates as well as an excellent overview of our government and it’s history.

In an ironic twist yesterday, the senate passed a bill on mammography and agreed to Res 295, which congratulated the New England Patriots on their victory in Super Bowl XXXVIII. Maybe Football and boobs just go hand in hand…

It’s been a long time since my last History class. I recently found myself unsure of some basic knowledge in regards to our government. See how you fare with the following questions:

• How may Senators does your state have?
• How may Representatives does your state have?
• Who are your State’s Senators and Representatives?

If you found those easy (smarty pants), here’s one for extra credit:

• What is a Delegate and/or Resident Commissioner?

Well, as it turns out, each state has two Senators as well as one Representative for every 30k people living in the state. In California, our Senators are Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. I am represented in congress by Anna Eshoo, which is designated by my address.

Delegates and Resident Commissioners are members of congress that represent their constituents in the same way other Representatives do. They debate and serve on comities but they are not allowed to vote on legislation. There is currently a Delegate for the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam and America Samoa; as well as a resident commissioner from Puerto Rico.

If you know all this and are having a hard time believing that others don’t, why don’t you have a web site with this information? You could have saved me some time…