All power to the crabgrass revolution

Immediately after Canada announced its decision not to participate in the US’s Star Wars program, the American ambassador said that the US would fire its missiles over Canada without permission, and that Canada’s decision therefore amounted to giving up its sovereignty. Sovereignty consists, and evidently solely consists, of voluntarily choosing to do what we tell you to do and giving us permission to do what we’re going to do whether we have permission or not.

The Russian Duma has voted to imprison anyone who sings the national anthem disrespectfully.

With an election coming up, Tony Blair has announced an increase in the minimum wage; at the press conference to announce this, some reporter asked him if he would wipe someone’s bottom for £5 an hour. He did not answer. I’m taping the event off C-SPAN even as I write, for later viewing. I want to see if the reporter was wearing pants at the time; just from the transcript you can’t be sure the question was just hypothetical. Possibly the questioner was Jeff Gannon.

Putin says he and Bush had a “very useful, very substantive discussion.” You know how you can tell this is a lie? Because no one has ever had a useful, much less a substantive discussion with George W. Bush.

While in Slovakia, Bush, in a rhetorical ploy, compared the elections just held in Iraq to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. “For the Iraqi people, this is their 1989, and they will always remember who stood with them in their quest for freedom.” He went on to use a phrase I think we’ll be very sick of very soon, dubbing those elections-under-occupation a “Purple Revolution,” like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Kyrgyzstan’s opposition, by the way, is talking about a “tulip revolution” there. I believe “crabgrass revolution” is still available.

After 1,300 suicides from the Golden Gate bridge, the authorities have decided that maybe a barrier of some kind would be a good idea.