vinism

I didn't want to talk about Johnny Damon. I really didn't. But after yesterday's pathetic Red Sox press conference -- were they sitting around a kitchen table (and does anyone know where I can find a picture to post, it's absolutely hilarious?)? -- on how they lost Johnny Damon, I had to say something. The Red Sox said they would "keep the light on" for Theo Epstein. And they left the "door ajar" for Johnny Damon. Does the Red Sox front office think they're running a bad Motel 6? Or are they just hoping to be robbed, which is what usually happens when you leave the light on, keep the door ajar and there's no one home? Blogger's note: For the record, I am a Mets fan, not a Red Sox fan. I just happen to live in Red Sox nation -- sigh.

Judge James Robertson's resignation from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court raises an interesting question, just how many warrants have been issued based on illegally obtained information. According to the Washington Post story, these worries were central to Robertson's decision to quit and prompted FISA court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (who had been briefed on this in 2004) to insist that the Justice Department certify no evidence gained without warrant would be presented to the FISA court. No word in the story on whether the Justice Department has actually certified this or not.

Credit AP for pulling together a great investigative piece on how Tom Delay has parlayed political fundraising into Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

The destinations for DeLay or his political team include a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jamaica; the Prince Hotel in Hapuna Beach, Hawaii; the Michelangelo Hotel in New York; the Wyndham El Conquistador Resort & Golden Door Spa in Fajardo, Puerto Rico; and the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., built by Charles Keating before he became the most public face of the savings and loan scandal in the early 1990s.

There's also the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., offering "dazzling views of the Gulf of Mexico, warm golden sunsets and three miles of pristine beach" plus golf, a spa, goose-down comforters, marble bathrooms and private, ocean-view balconies. Rooms run from about $389 to more than $3,000 a night in December, the month DeLay's PAC spent $4,570 on lodging there in 2004.

Oh wait, it gets better.

"He liked to talk to people," said Pedro Muriel, a waiter at Puerto Rico's El Conquistador Resort. Muriel recalled DeLay staying in an enclave of privately owned red tile-roofed villas.

The villas have up to three bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms and French doors that open onto terraces or balconies facing the Caribbean. A moon-shape pool hugs the edge of a steep cliff, its waters spilling over and appearing to blend into the sea. Villa prices average about $1,300 a night.

And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. In a sense, you have to admire the Hammer's hutzpah. Ethics, laws and American values be damned, he's going to do whatever he thinks is necessary to keep the GOP in the money and in power.But as we've seen with President Bush, that's no way to run a country -- or a world.

One of the nice things about the NHL package is I'm not stuck watching the Bruins on a nightly basis. Last night, I took in two games -- Columbus vs. Detroit and Ottawa vs. Montreal -- that both ended in shootouts. And I was a happy camper. I love shootouts. The strategy, pressure and excitement that they generate is unbelievable. Players on all teams were standing on the bench. The crowds were on their feet and roaring. And not a soul had left the barns. What great atmospheres. Detroit hadn't played a shootout all season, so it was interesting to see who they sent out (Datsyuk, Williams and Zetterberg). Datsyuk and Williams scored. And Osgood stoned former Wing Sergei Fedorov to seal the victory as the Joe roared its approval. In the other game, Kovalev just pantsed (technical term) Hasek to seal Montreal's victory. For those of you still on the fence about shootouts, consider the fact that while I was at a D.C. area sports bar a month ago, the entire bar stopped watching Monday Night Football so they could see an out of town shootout. Everyone one was cheering and hollering. It was great. We can only hope that the NHL appreciates what they have and that the shootout is here to stay.

If you learn any one lesson from DGF (Degenerate Gambling Friend) Poker Grub, it's look down at the casino seat before you actually sit on it. Why? Because it might be filled with urine. And Poker Grub has accomplished this feat twice. In classic Grubby fashion, he briefly toyed with the idea of finishing out his club card before deciding to get up, clean himself off in the restroom and head home for a shower and change of clothes. And as hilarious as this is, it's not my favorite Poker Grub casino moment. We were sitting together at a Mandalay Bay blackjack table, sipping cokes and winning moderate amounts of money. Then Poker Grub loses a series of bad hands just as his coke runs out. A cocktail waitress stops buy to refresh our drinks and Grubby asks what the most expensive drink he can order. Waitress ponders the question for moment, and answers "Red Bull and Vodka." Grubby says "give me one of those and keep them coming." He then turns to me and says if "I'm going to lose, I want to cause the casino some pain too." Classic Grubby.

We found out today that DHL lost and then found an ABN Ambro Mortgage data tape that contained the personal data of about 2 million customers. Now there are all sorts of things that could be written about this, but the anonymous IT manager who is quoted at the bottom of this story beats us to the punch:

President Bush and the New York Times have a lot of 'splainin to do.' I can't tell whose behavior in the growing domestic spying scandal is more reprehensible. President Bush for blatantly disregarding the law and making up his own rules as he goes along, or the New York Times for sitting on the story until their hand was forced by their own reporter, who has written a book that's ready to be published. Let's examines Bush's role first and wonder why he didn't learn any lessons about spying from his dad.

Bush has asserted he has every right to spy domestically because he's the president, and it's his job to protect the U.S. But president's are not kings. They can't make up rules as the go along. They're expected to (and swear to) uphold the laws and Constitution of the United States of America. And as Newsweek's Jonathan Alter notes, this is where he's failed miserably.

It was nice of the Times to report this tidbit, seeing they waited a year (a year!) to disclose the fact that the NSA was keeping tabs of international calls and communications made by U.S. citizens. And not only did they wait a year, they did so for absolutely no reason. Presumably, the same national security concerns -- which we've already shown to be groundless -- that existed last year still exist now. So what's changed? Well, their reporter is about to publish a book with this information. There's no election to influence. And Judith Miller is no longer on staff -- actually, that last one has nothing to do with anything. Just wanted to point it out. But the reality is their reporter was going public with a story they've had for a year, and they had to do something. And if we take the Times at their word and say they didn't publish it for national security reasons, then they should be expected to tell us what's changed and why they're publishing it now. It doesn't take a year to sort out these types of details. We can and should hold their feet to the fire on this. It's shoddy journalism. And it's unacceptable.

---BEGIN RANT--- On Saturday, the New England Patriots found their Super Bowl winning form with an impressive 28-0 win over Tampa. On Sunday, the Chargers ended the Colts bid for an undefeated season with a 26-17 victory. And what do I here when I flip over to local sports radio giant WEEI? Nomar signed with the Dodgers! While the rest of the nation excitedly discusses the weekend that was in football, Boston talks about the Red Sox. What are they going to do with Graffanino? What's going on with Johnny Damon? Uggh. They did take the time to interrupt their idle baseball talk with their weekly interview of Tom Brady. And to their credit, the discussion was interesting. But the fact that Brady was my only football dose during a 70-minute commute is ridiculous. And why I'm listening 890 (ESPN radio) -- except when their reception was bad as was the case today. ---END RANT---

Storage and networking problems have managed to do what the Republicans (GOP), Democrats (dems) and Mainstream Media (MSM) have been trying for the last few years -- silence the blogosphere. OK, not the entire blogoshpere, because you're obviously reading this post. But many of our fellow bloggers are unable to post today because TypePad has crashed. The popular blogging service announced today that during routine maintenance of their network and storage systems, they experienced "an issue" with the primary disk that stores published blogs. They're currently troubleshooting and blogs have reverted to back to their Dec. 11 state. Not good news considering the problems they had in October that forced them to offer 45 days of free service as compensation. Among the blogs that have gone dark are Scott Adams Dilbert blog, USATODAY.com's blogs and fellow DGF blog Two Crabs.

The next time you're travelling through No. Virginia, don't worry about paying toll on the Dulles Toll Road. You see, the EZ Pass lanes don't have any cameras monitoring them. People can, and do, drive right through them without paying a toll. Sure, a large bell rings and blinking lights go off when someone does it, but without video surveillance to capture the license plate number, there's nothing the state can do to issue a ticket or collect the toll money. It's been like this since they first put electronic tolls on the road in 1996. By the way, the Virginia Department of Transportation is aware of the problem, but they don't plan on installing video surveillance until the fall of 2006. All together....Now that's stupid.

As most of my degenerate gambling friends (DGF) -- and I say that with love -- would attest to, I'm not averse to dropping a bet or two or three on anything. Usually, our betting is confined to casino games, poker games and pools (NCAA, who will die next, first goal in a hockey game, Oscars, etc.) The latest bet arose from an e-mail string debating just how bad the Washington Capitals suck, despite the heroics of Alexander Ovechkin. Blushing Whale, a D.C. original who moved to the left coast to write and produce movies, argues that the Caps are a young, inexperienced team with tons of talent in the system and that all they need is some time for development and seasoning. Once that happens, they'll return to the playoffs. I begged to differ, saying the Caps don't have enough talent to compete in the new NHL, where skill, skating and mobility is more important than being a plucky grinder. Blushing Whale responded by offering the following bet:


Mr. Blushing Whale, the Puck Pundit accepts your bet.

If the Bush administration wants to figure why the rest of the world dislikes the U.S., they needn't go farther than the boneheaded decision to keep Cuba from playing in the first World Baseball Classic. What public good, other than keeping more Cuban baseball players from defecting (wait, we want that don't we?), does this serve? The people of Cuba aren't going to band together and topple Castro to see their beloved baseball heroes play in the tournament. They're going rally around Castro and wonder why the big, bad USA won't give their baseball team a chance to see their heroes play. Talk about great press. And from a purely sports standpoint, they're right. One of the great mysteries in international baseball has always been how a team of Cuban professional players would fare against the best players from rest of the world. Well, here's our chance to find out and try a little ping-pong diplomacy at the same time. Let's hope someone in the Bush administration (come on Condi, we know you're a sports fan) is paying attention and reverses this decision.

It apparently doesn't take much to spoof those new fingerprint readers that are being used to "improve" security these days. A Clarkson Univeristy engineer has found a combination of play-doh and dental materials can be used to create a finger that will fool the scanner 90% of the time. No word on just how plain old play-doh works.

The Detroit Free Press notes that Barry Sanders was not the first Lions running back to leave the team in his prime. That honor belongs to Doak Walker. That's right. The same Doak Walker that the award for best college running back is named after. Walker left the Lions and football at the age of 28. Walker led the Lions to the NFL championships in 1952 and 1953. The were runners up in 1954. And in 1955, when Walker retired, they failed to make the championship game. Walker briefly toyed with a comeback in 1957, and played in Lions training camp. But he was uncomfortable with his role on the team, and left the squad. So let's see, Doak plays or is in training camp and the Lions win. No Doak, no titles. Curses anyone?

It's good to be back. After an eventful year where I traded the cozy confines of D.C. for the rainy (almost built an ark this spring and summer) and snowy climes of New England, watched my new apartment complex burn down, moved into a new house and started living with the wifey for the first time, things have settled down somewhat, I can return to blogging the worlds of sports, news, entertainment and anything else that strikes my fancy. So sit back, enjoy the ride and throw in a comment or two or three as we explore this weird, scary wacky world of ours.