I've been a Pittsburgh Penguins fan ever since I was 4 years old.  But tonight, let me waste no time in congratulating the Detroit Red Wings on a terrific finals, and a great season.

If there are so many planets out there that COULD harbor intelligent life, how come none of them has successfully contacted us?

In last Sunday's Boston Globe, Nick Bostrom made a very interesting argument: that if we do find life on Mars, it would actually be a NEGATIVE development.

I pooh-poohed the argument when I first saw it, but, thinking about it some more, I realized there are some points worth considering here.

This is one of the most ridiculous stories I believe I have ever seen.  Michelle Malkin and the right-wing crazies, perhaps sensing they have no chance of helping a fellow zany win the White House for a long, long time, instead must focus on Rachael Ray's scarf and call her a terrorist sympathizer.  Really?  REALLY?  This is what they've come to.  It would be amusing if it weren't so utterly pathetic and sad.

You've heard, perhaps, that Barack Obama is planning a rally in Iowa on May 20, presumably after the Kentucky and Oregon results are in.  

I've got kid duty today, but I'm just perusing the news while they nap - and a great thought came to me.

I may be dreaming here, but you know what would totally kick ass?

I am tired of all the media types hyping the fact that the New York Giants are Super Bowl champions, as if it's some kind of foregone conclusion.  They'll do anything to sully the reputation of the New England Patriots, whom everyone knows are REALLY the better team, and would stand a much better chance of defeating a tough football team from, say, Cuba or another planet.

I've had enough of moving goalposts and rewriting Rules.  We have had eight years of a president who Decided that the Rules don't matter.  What matters is getting what you want.  If you have to bend and even break The Rules to get there, so be it.  This president has disregarded the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, dictates of Congress in areas where it has authority, judges' rulings, and so on.  

We've also seen this president constantly change the definition of 'success' in Iraq to the point where the goals are no longer recognizable.  Sure, you can set goals and benchmarks and definitions for success, but if you don't like what you see, just keep changing them so you can eventually declare victory when something 'good' happens.

What troubles me the most about the Clinton campaign is that I see the same pattern emerging.

Here's the opening to John McCain's latest email to his supporters (all 15 of them):

Dan Froomkin is on the ball again.  He correctly points out today that news sources continue to regurgitate the Bush administration's stance that Abu Zubaydah was a high-value Al Qaeda operative who gave up valuable information as a result of being tortured.

Yes, it's time for another break from candidate-bashing to have a go at usage mistakes by journalists and writers who should know better.  This is mostly for fun, and I hope you'll take it that way.  But I have to say it DOES vex me a little…

Here are tonight's four more-or-less-random selections:

Everyone here's been talking about the daunting math Hillary faces, based on the rules and how many delegates are left.  But that all depends on what the meaning of "rules" is, Camp Hillary is apparently saying.

Yes, the Hill Peeps are now making suggestions that just because a delegate has pledged to vote for whomever his or her representatives have directed by their own votes, that doesn't mean a little arm-twisting can't change that.  What kind of arm-twisting?  Well, they leave that to your imagination.

With Barack Obama nearing the nomination, Karl Rove is starting to show his hand and how he will try to play it.  It's really no surprise: he'll try to make the tired case that Obama is not a true patriot.  Here's an exchange between Karl Rove and the not un-enabling Alan Colmes on whatever Trash The Democrats show it was they appeared on yesterday.  Rove will try to twist anything to his advantage, even when the logic just isn't there.  Maybe enough dumb people will fall for it, and maybe they won't:

The Clinton camp seems to be at it again.  After Barack Obama was declared the winner of the Wisconsin primary, Hillary Clinton levied a new charge against him: by winning so many consecutive primaries, she said, Obama is merely copying the concept her own husband pioneered in 1992.  

I know you don't need me to tell you that the Bush administration has let OBL slip off the radar.  But a revealing comment was made by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen in an interview with Justin Webb of the BBC yesterday.  So I'll let him tell you for himself.

It's time for another installment of "Grammar In The News".  Unfortunately, this is just too easy.  I'm trying to take just three examples of inexcusably poor grammar or usage by a real news source (that should know better) at a time, so here is today's crop:

The anti-immigration crowd is reaching new levels of hysteria.  It's not enough to scapegoat Mexicans; now the blame has expanded to ... the Polish!  I hadn't really intended to post anything tonight, but I'm feeling slightly indignant, though I know that buffoonery like this is pretty marginal stuff.  I'm Polish, you see, so I felt the urge to respond.

Every once in a while, my peeve-o-meter fills up, and I have to do a diary about common grammatical and usage mistakes.  I'm restricting this to news sources and other public, edited things, because these people ought to know better.

Oh, that Rupert Murdoch.  In Friday's Review & Outlook piece, Criminalizing the CIA, the Wall Street Journal makes a very curious argument: The Justice Department has sole authority to determine what is legal, and any directives it gives are automatically legal.

It was at about this time last year that I read a 'Best CDs of 2006' story in the Boston Globe, and that led me on a fairly productive chase.

It was because of that that I found Regina Spektor's "Begin To Hope", and it's why I went ahead and got The Raconteurs' fine self-titled album.  I would have gotten my beloved Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood" anyway, but I was glad to see that included as well.