First, the FBI admitted it had illegally used the Patriot Act to gather information about American citizens. To me, that seems even more scandalous than any of the aforementioned current events. Here, actual, serious crimes have been admitted to by a government agency. And yet, when compared to Gonzales, Walter Reed and Plame, this has barely registered as a blip on the radar.

And then there's the little matter of what's happening in Ohio. Just last week, two GOP-appointed election officials were sentenced to 18 months in jail each for rigging the 2004 recount in Ohio, guaranteeing the re-election of George Bush. Now, the new, Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has asked that the bosses of those two workers, the four members of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, resign or be fired. They've refused, and this one's going back to the courts.

Meanwhile, in smaller, more local, and more insignificant idiocies, I managed to pick only 9 of the Sweet 16. However, I still hold out hope — my Final Four picks are all still alive. Go Gators!

Also, it was with some sense of consternation that I read an ill-informed and completely unsupported anti-global warming screed in my own company's Sun-Sentinel. It comes with the usual "many scientists disagree" platitudes, with the usual inability to name a single one (preferably one not on the payroll of an energy company), while ignoring the fact that a huge coalition of scientists all agree that global warming is real and is caused by humans. Indeed, the article attempts to paint the findings of these scientists, The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the recent Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis as, in fact, being against Gore's claims:

"Mr. "I Invented the Internet" is renowned for his exaggerations. He has been using the microphones provided him by the mainstream media to predict, among other things, that global warming will cause ocean levels to rise 20 feet. To demonstrate how much the media has adopted his preaching as gospel, all you have to do is check the recent cover of Sports Illustrated, which had Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins depicted on a baseball diamond in water up to his waist.
One problem: The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which Gore quotes in almost every appearance, says its worst-case scenario is that the most sea levels will rise in the next hundred years is 23 inches. That's only a difference of more than 18 feet."

This is, quite simply, a lie — or at the very least, a fundamentally flawed misreading of the report (I won't even bother with the bullshit "Invented the Internet" meme, debunked a thousand times over). I've read the report, you see. To quote it, "thermal expansion alone would lead to 0.3 to 0.8m of sea level rise by 2300." OK, so far, the quote above looks reasonable. But it fails to account for the very next point in the report, which states "If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7m."

So, there's your 20 feet. So, obviously, the article ignores all the facts in a desperate attempt to make them fit its author's world view. Who would write such a skewed picture of the world and call it journalism? Ann Coulter? Sean Hannity? Oh, no ... it's the Sun-Sentinel's TV critic, Tom Jicha! Well, at least in his most recent column, he's back to commenting on American Idol, so hopefully we won't be treated to any more of this garbage.

Look, it's really quite simple:

Here's CO2 in the atmosphere over time. Note the huge spike since the Industrial Revolution.

Here's temperature changes over the last 2000 years.

Ta-da! How hard was that?

Anyway, that's all you get out of me today. I'm crawling back under a rock to continue sleeping off St. Paddy's Day.