Friday Update - Basketball?

(Hey, where did all these basketball fans come from?  From out of the woodwork of the NCAA Tournament in San Jose, California, that's where.  Normally, in our family, the term "March Madness" usually is used in reference to a furniture sale at some local emporium, or perhaps the emotion surrounding yet another forecast of heavy rain for tomorrow.  But there's something about our U of O Ducks basketball team this year.  They're not only good, they're winning. Mind you, I'm not a big basketball fan.  I'm more of a 100-yard, 4-down man.  But we all love our Ducks of any persuasion around here, and when they're winning we especially love to ride on the wagon.  First they got our attention by winning the Pac12 Championship. So I'm almost obligated to assume you're interested in all this, and tell you where The (Mighty) Duck Basketball Team stands at this point in the NCAA Tournament:  Seeded 12th, The Ducks beat #5 Oklahoma State yesterday, 68-55, at the opening game of the tournament.  Saturday they play #4 Saint Louis.  Maybe it's just because there's no football being played at the moment, or it's because the Duck hoopsters are so much fun to watch, or maybe a little of both:  I'm hooked.  Go Ducks!  But I digress ...)

• If Bad Hat had a Person-of-the-Week Award it would go to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who so far in her young career has made a name for herself as a brazen tell-it-like-it-is equal opportunity questioner.  David Bernstein says Warren "has an independence and authority that frees her to be outspoken without getting alienated."  Check out Bernstein's article and rejoice the fact we have someone on the hill who's on our side.
• We passed a milestone the other day.  The tenth anniversary of the night of "Shock and Awe," the beginning of the war in Iraq.  This little skirmish that Rummy told us was going to last "six days .. six weeks," and would cost us no more than $60 billion (estimated cost to date: approaching $2 trillion), has mainly been swept under the media rug, something most of us would rather not talk about anymore.  Even though this unnecessary tragedy will never be over for hundreds of thousand of veterans and their families, including those in the ranks of the daily suicide rate (more Iraq Vets have committed suicide than were killed in combat), for some reason the Iraq War has become what Jon Lee Anderson calls " the Great American Unmentionable, the fiasco that was."  From The New Yorker, How We Forgot Iraq.
• Apparently Bill O'Reilly hasn't been institutionalized as yet, because he's still saying ridiculous things on television and radio.  This latest one, I love.  O'Reilly usually uses the cold winter months to rail against the evil-doers attempting to get rid of Christmas (i.e. The War On Christmas).  This year he's after those of us on the Left who are trying to destroy the Easter Bunny.  That's right, Bill thinks that "secular progressives" are trying to do away with the beloved Easter Bunny so that abortion will be legalized in America, just like it is in China and, gasp, Canada!  If that makes sense to you I sincerely hope I don't strike up a conversation with you at some party this summer.  Read this and see if you can understand O'Reilly:  The Left Is Trying to Destroy the Easter Bunny So That Everyone Can Do Drugs and Have Abortions. 
• Taking a plane trip next week during Spring Break?  Get ready to be humiliated and/or assaulted by TSA agents at the airport.  Here's an article that does more than any recent one on the subject to explain why I don't fly anymore, as it tells of TSA agents ordering a wheel-chair bound double amputee Marine Vet to put his new prosthetic legs on and "walk" through the scanner.  It also lists other insanities of the TSA and their perceived "threats" such as 18-month-old babies, 84-year-old grandmothers, and dangerous cupcake frosting.  To their credit, the TSA did pat-down suspected war criminal Henry Kissinger, so they can't be all bad ... 
• And speaking of war criminals, one more time, with authority:   Said Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."  To which I add:  The fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney are still walking around without formally being charged with war crimes is one of the great shames of our times.