Yesterday, during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, John McCain stated his political aspirations. No, not for the presidency. McCain- like George W. before him (video)- wants to be a dictator: 
MCCAIN: I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. Its just not acceptable. […] This is just a not acceptable situation. I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little …

From the American Library Association website:
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW’s 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).
While perhaps not the most festive week of the year, BBW is certainly one of the most important:
As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas v. Johnson, said most eloquently:
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying …

You can count me among the many that are looking forward to the Biden-Palin debate with a sort of perverse glee. Sarah Palin is bound to perform above expectations since the bar is set so low for her right now that she’d only have to show up and state her name to be excelling. But Jed Lewison has put together some clips from her 2006 run for governor that show that she might not be as awful as everyone’s hoping predicting:
 
Has her accent gotten thicker in the past two years …

Barack Obama is leading in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida according to polls conducted by Quinnipiac University (one of Nate Silver’s preferred pollsters so they’re good enough for me). The gains are due to independents moving toward Obama after the debate, the economy turning overall voting confidences to him and Sarah Palin’s declining favorability. I’ll be honest and say I started laughing when I saw that she had a negative favorability rating in Florida and Pennsylvania and is just breaking even in Ohio. I really want to see the change in those …

Besides having an absolutely endearing name (I love the contradictions there), I thought that The Dainty Squid over at cut + paste might solve my perenial camera bag-deficit.  Then I realized that while my favorite bag of theirs might actually feature a camera on it, but that’s hardly their only function.  12 designs total, they measure at different sizes.

camera pouch, 5.5″ x 4″ at $12.50