oh what a beeyouteefull morning! oh what a beeyouteefull day!

A sleep to end all sleeps last night is allowing me to actually enjoy being at work without copious amounts of caffeine. Thankfully, I didn't need copious amounts of caffeine to fuel my day as I forgot my travel mug for the 2nd time in two weeks. This weekend is shaping up to be a fun-filled social fest: tonight is dinner with the Dekkinga/Kapteyn's and possibly a film at the UICA. (Does that movie look straight up my alley or what?!) and tomorrow night Greensky Bluegrass
is playing at the Sandbar. It appears as though virtually everyone I know is going to make an appearance including various family members. I think we're going to get there at 11am just to ensure the best seats. And it'd be kinda pathetically neat-o to consume at least 2 meals there.

David Ignatius has some really interesting things to say about the failed ports deal in the Washington Post. I had a very difficult time figuring out what the heck Congress was all up in arms about and yet relished the smackdown Bush received as a result of his position. The death of this deal really does have so much more do to with American's distrust of Arab culture than an actual security risk. This is the sum up at the end of the editorial:

"President Bush tried to do the right thing on the Dubai ports deal, but he got rolled by a runaway Congress. The collapse of the deal was a measure of Bush's political weakness -- but even more, of America's traumatized post-Sept. 11 politics. The ironic fact is that the UAE is precisely the kind of Arab ally the United States needs most now. But that clearly didn't matter to an election-year Congress, which responded to the Dubai deal with a frenzy of Muslim-bashing disguised as concern about terrorism. And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn't like us."

Rumsfeld says nothing new while testifying at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on additional funding for the war. I wonder how they expect the Iraqi security forces to handle a civil war situation on their own. And in yet another example of the Democrats not seizing an opportunity: they failed to hit Rumsfeld hard with substantial questions though Byrd did give it a go. Bush's approval ratings are back around the 38% mark. Now is the time to seize some political capital and nailing Rumsfeld and Rice would have been an excellent opportunity to do just that. Slate's got a decent editorial about this very thing.

In a small victory for the White House, Bush renews the Patriot Act with a few insignificant changes. The most notable?

"These new civil liberties protections for the first time say explicitly that people who receive subpoenas granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for library, medical, computer and other records can challenge a gag order in court."

How nice of Congress and the White House to allow people the right to due process! I love that these "new civil liberties protections" are called just that as opposed to something akin to these"Constitutional Rights guaranteed by the 5th-8th Amendments."