Below The Beltway

As expected, the Republicans have succeeded in invoking cloture and stopping the attempted filibuster of the Alito nomination. The next step is the actual vote on the nomination, which will take place, as expected, at 11:00am tomorrow.
The final vote was an absolutely amazing 72-25. Since it appears as of now that Alito will get about [...]

Or at least they should be, with the news that ExxonMobil made U.S. corporate history last year by posting $ 36.13 billion in profits.
Exxon Mobil Corp. reported today that its 2005 earnings totaled $36.13 billion, the largest annual profit ever for a U.S. company.
The company’s annual profit was up 43 percent from the year before.
Exxon [...]

At least that’s the conclusion reached by psychologists and social scientists and reported on today in the Washington Post.
The field of social psychology has long been focused on how social environments affect the way people behave. But social psychologists are people, too, and as the United States has become increasingly politically polarized, they have grown [...]

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist reflects on his involvement in the Terry Schivavo fiasco and admits that the majority of Americans want the government to butt the heck out of the kind of life and death decisions that were involved in that case.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who took a leading role in [...]

This weekend’s movie review will be short and sweet.
Last night, Kellie and I watched the movie that brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together —- Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Funny, entertaining ? Maybe. It apparently didn’t hold my interest since I fell asleep before it was over. Yet another movie I’m happy I didn’t spend [...]

You would think that with the Virginia General Assembly firmly in Republican hands, we would not see the same kind of economic stupidity eminating from Richmond that we have recently seen from Annapolis, Maryland. You might think that, but you would be wrong. Today’s Washington Post reports that the Republican controlled legislature will consider, and [...]

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a piece cataloging the ways in which teachers unions in Florida and Wisconsin are acting to prevent any efforts to reform education in a way that will actually help students.
First in Wisconsin:

Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, enacted with bipartisan support in 1990, provides private school vouchers to students from families at [...]

It appears that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be joining in the quixotic filibuster attempt being led by John Kerry againt the Alito nomination; a cause championed by the moonbats over at DailyKos.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday announced she’ll join potential 2008 presidential rival John Kerry in voting to filibuster against Supreme Court [...]

It seems like yesterday, but it was twenty years ago today that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts, including New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first civilian to orbit the Earth.
When I first heard the news, I was walking out of a high [...]

I wrote earlier this month, here and here, about a new Firefox extension called Performancing For Firefox which allows you to create blog posts from directly within Firefox. I have been using it almost exclusively since then and have come to like it alot. There has been some flakiness here and there with its [...]