Sigh

Senator Wellstone, a democrat from Minnesota just died in a plane crash. He was a good guy, a flaming liberal, and a courageous voice in the Senate. He's even more liberal than me, and I disagreed with him on some issues, but it was damn reassuring to know he was there.

It's hard to lose a still active leader. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one to assassination. One more reason to be glad I'm alive now and was not born several decades earlier.

In other news... Easy political predictions.

1) Those Chechens who think they can blackmail Russia, they're gonna die. All of them. Once the first hostage dies the balances shifts to anger. Opposing the war in Chechnya is a good cause and from what I've seen the lack of outrage in Russia in response to the to this atrocity. If no one had died, this may have gone differently.

2) Just saw a report that we aren't closely cooperating with the German police any more in their crackdown on Al Qeada. I understand why our government is pissed at the German leadership, but this will bite us in the ass.

One other thing

Is it just me, or does the msn butterfly logo look a hell of a lot like a multicolor version of Arthur from the Tick. An ad is visible if you scroll down on http://www.nytimes.com/