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Sports: From the New Bern (NC) Sun-Journal, a sensible reaction to the ACC expansion debacle. I remember the Pac-8:

Why not put a relatively low cap on the number of schools allowed in a conference? Eight’s a nice number. It makes for even brackets in a postseason tournament in any sport, and in football it allows teams the opportunity to schedule five compelling non-conference games that can generate just as much revenue.”

Sports: From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, A list of traitors and backstabbers:

I can almost see Mike Tranghese grabbing Frank Beamer at the next Big East coaches luncheon, planting a big wet one on his cheek and saying, ‘I knew it was you Frank. You broke my heart!’ Or, to paraphrase another Roman who was stabbed in the back, ‘Et tu, Hokie?’

US: In an NYT article, Lance Hoffman of GWU comments on how the Federal Government must balance homeland security issues with civil rights as network monitoring increases:

In the short-term drive to improve [homeland]security, we want to make sure that whatever we do is consistent with a long-term balancing point of preserving civil rights … You want those kinds of decisions to have been considered and thought through.

Austin: From Molly Ivins: repeat after me, there is no such thing as global warming… at least for Bush 43 and friends.

Iraq: From Alternet, Frida Berrigan comments on weapons of mass deception:

… these grim forecasts were wrong. Despite the advance hype, Hussein’s dreaded arsenal was not the biggest threat to Americans on the battlefield in Iraq. In fact, it was no threat at all.

The real threat – not only to U.S. troops but to Iraqis as well – may prove to be a weapon scarcely mentioned before, during or after the war: depleted uranium.