AP snippet in the Kansas City Star:

Firecrackers caused the most injuries, but sparklers accounted for almost half the injuries to children younger than 5 last year.

I prefer the big up-in-the-sky displays myself . . . and who in their right mind would hand a sparkler to a 4-year-old, anyway?

Yes, you read that right.  It does get hot in North Dakota--hot enough that Interstate 29 in Fargo has buckled under the heat, as the Fargo Forum reports (registration required):

Sweltering heat Friday caused two small sections of Interstate 29 near Fargo to buckle, forcing maintenance crews to make emergency repairs during rush-hour traffic.

A 10-foot section of northbound I-29 near the 19th Avenue North overpass buckled about 5:30 p.m., causing traffic to bottle up for 1½ miles, said Bob Walton, Fargo district engineer for the North Dakota Department of Transportation.

An AP report via Yahoo News:

Coke and Mentos have embraced the phenomenon. Mentos, a subsidiary of Perfetti Van Melle USA, Inc., features the video on its Web site, and a Coca-Cola Co. spokeswoman said the Atlanta company is pleased that people are having fun with it.

"You never can tell what's going to capture people's imagination," said Susan McDermott, the spokeswoman. For the record, she noted, people won't suffer harm from chomping Mentos and washing it down with Diet Coke.

See the magic here.

Sometimes it's a problem that the press (and the public) have the attention span of a May-fly.

The U.S. military testifes before a Congressional Committee that chemical weapons FOUND IN IRAQ qualify as "weapons of mass destruction."

What's that, you say? Chemical weapons found in Iraq? But, but, but . . . Bush Lied! We know it's true, because the Democrat fever-dream left said so!

Sorry, Kos Kidz, you were wrong, AGAIN:

Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official Says By Samantha L. Quigley American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today. "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee. The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997. The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal. "Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs. The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added. While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s. This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic. "Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic, and if you were exposed to it long enough, lethal." Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone." "I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons." The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform. Maples added searches are ongoing for chemical weapons beyond those being conducted solely for force protection. There has been a call for a complete declassification of the National Ground Intelligence Center's report on WMD in Iraq. Maples said he believes the director of national intelligence is still considering this option, and has asked Maples to look into producing an unclassified paper addressing the subject matter in the center's report. Much of the classified matter was slated for discussion in a closed forum after the open hearings this morning.

Biography:
Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, USA

Related Sites:
Defense Intelligence Agency
National Ground Intelligence Center

Hat tip: The American Thinker

I'll confess, I don't seem to have the same outrage that many on the right have about the N.Y. Times continuing to expose classified programs designed to gather intelligence on Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations.  What I feel is more of a weary recognition that the Times and others in the media simply don't understand the consequences of their actions. 

Patterico points this out quite clearly as he deconstructs the Times' latest attempt (registration required) at explaining why they committed treason (Patterico's comments in italic, quotes from the NYT editorial double-indented, emphasis Patterico's):

Finally, the fun part of the editorial, in which the editors write something so patently laughable that you can appreciate it even without my bitter mocking:

It is certainly unlikely that anyone who wanted to hurt the Bush administration politically would try to do so by writing about the government’s extensive efforts to make it difficult for terrorists to wire large sums of money.

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

Let me translate the bolded sentences for you:

Nobody could possibly think we’re trying to get the Bush Administration by revealing the Swift program. After all, the Swift program shows Bush is fighting terrorists, so it’s not as though the Swift program reflects badly on the Bush Administration.

But Good Lord, the Swift program sure does reflect badly on the Bush Administration!

This is the funniest thing I have read in the New York Times in, like, ever. You guys crack me up!

The funniest part is that you’re really trying to be serious.

Yes, the editors of the New York Times really do appear to be that stupid.

(Hat tip:  Power Line)

One of the daytime talk shows inadvertently showed up on my TV, and before I was able to change the channel, I overheard a distraught woman ask someone (who looked a little like psychic Sylvia Brown, but who can tell?) "I want to know, is he in peace."  Sylvia (?) of course, answered, "Yes, yes he is."

Has anyone ever heard a "psychic" answer this question with "Oh Lord no, sweetie, he's burning in hell."

Me neither.

Coming soon, to a theater near you the Taranto Consensus!

Well, no, not exactly.  But the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal "Best of the Web" editor James Taranto gets it right:

No doubt you are dying to know where this column stands on the flag-desecration amendment. The answer is, we are against it. Our view is that the Supreme Court got it right in 1989: Insofar as desecrating the flag is an act of political expression, it is protected by the First Amendment. (The objection that it isn't "speech" is overly literal. What we're doing now--causing pixels to form meaningful patterns on thousands of computer screens--isn't exactly speech either, but we like to think the First Amendment protects it from government interference.)

Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots.

Can't add much to that.  Instapundit ("To heck with blogging!  I wanna DANCE!") awoke from his usual "heh . . . indeed . . . read the whole thing" utterances to opine:

"I notice it and just think ugh, they're doing that again." Indeed. On the other hand, people who are more upset about a ban on flagburning than about McCain-Feingold are on shaky free-speech ground.

OK, Papa Glenn did slip an "indeed" in there . . .

Article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

In 1956 the first portion of Interstate 29 was completed, but it wasn't until 1983 that the state opened the last 22 miles to make South Dakota only the sixth state to boast a border-to-border system.

For cities such as Sioux Falls, Watertown and Rapid City, it bolstered the economy and tourism.

"There is no better economic development tool than the interstate," Judith Payne, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Transportation, said Monday during a celebration of the system's 50th anniversary in Sioux Falls.

Almost all of the economic and population growth in South Dakota is within 20 or 30 miles of an Interstate highway.  Towns which were bypassed, like Huron and (to a lesser extent) Aberdeen, are struggling to survive.

This story alone takes George H.W. Bush out of the running.

If you ever thought that President Clinton gave a damn about U.S. national security, then try to explain this Wall Street Journal op-ed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh (without impugning Mr. Freeh's character, that is):

Finally, frustrated in my attempts to execute Mr. Clinton's "leave no stone unturned" order, I called former president George H.W. Bush. I had learned that he was about to meet Crown Prince Abdullah on another matter. After fully briefing Mr. Bush on the impasse and faxing him the talking points that I had now been working on for over two years, he personally asked the crown prince to allow FBI agents to interview the detained bombers.

After his Saturday meeting with now-King Abdullah, Mr. Bush called me to say that he made the request, and that the Saudis would be calling me. A few hours later, Prince Bandar, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asked me to come out to McLean, Va., on Monday to see Crown Prince Abdullah. When I met him with Wyche Fowler, our Saudi ambassador, and FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, the crown prince was holding my talking points. He told me Mr. Bush had made the request for the FBI, which he granted, and told Prince Bandar to instruct Nayef to arrange for FBI agents to interview the prisoners.

Several weeks later, agents interviewed the co-conspirators. For the first time since the 1996 attack, we obtained direct evidence of Iran's complicity. What Mr. Clinton failed to do for three years was accomplished in minutes by his predecessor. This was the breakthrough we had been waiting for, and the attorney general and I immediately went to Mr. Berger with news of the Saudi prison interviews.

Upon being advised that our investigation now had proof that Iran blew up Khobar Towers, Mr. Berger's astounding response was: "Who knows about this?" His next, and wrong, comment was: "That's just hearsay." When I explained that under the Rules of Federal Evidence the detainees' comments were indeed more than "hearsay," for the first time ever he became interested--and alarmed--about the case. But this interest translated into nothing more than Washington "damage control" meetings held out of the fear that Congress, and ordinary Americans, would find out that Iran murdered our soldiers. After those meetings, neither the president, nor anyone else in the administration, was heard from again about Khobar.

Currently, only Jimmy "Malaise" Carter stands between the title of Worst President of the 20th Century and William Jefferson Clinton.  But there's still time for the "Comeback Kid" to overtake the current #1.

Oh, by the way, why isn't Sandy Berger in prison right now for stealing classified documents from the National Archive?

Small article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

Statewide, a steady agriculture industry helped South Dakota post 2.4 percent growth, double the rate of the previous quarter and a full percentage point above the national average.

The 1.4 percent national growth marked a slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2005, when income grew at a 1.9 percent clip, but it was on par with the overall average of the past three years.