I have to believe that the true conservatives–the ones who believe in limited government intrusion into citizens’ private lives–are shaking their heads over the recent actions of Congress and the President regarding the Schiavo case. Every day, spouses make health care decisions for their incapacitated partners, many of whom do not leave clear instructions. It’s one of the fundamental rights connected with marriage. But this Administration apparently looked at their calendars and decided it was time to throw a bone to the religious right. In doing so, it has perhaps permanently undermined the GOP’s historical commitment to states’ rights and limited government. What we are witnessing is the transformation of the GOP into a party that rivals Democrats in their willingness to expand the reach of government. The only difference is that Democrats have typically seen government as a guarantor of some modicum of economic justice. Republicans see government as the guarantor of security and a “moral” society, with the morals being defined by a highly vocal and philosophically rigid segment of the party.
If any good comes of this mess, perhaps more people will be motivated to complete their own health care directives. I wonder if Bush has a health care directive.

We usually get hammered with at least one major snowstorm in March and it arrived yesterday. It was something of a hit-and-miss affair; the weather oracles were predicting anywhere from two inches to over a foot of snow. Here in Minneapolis, we have about five inches on the ground, while places further south like Fairbault and Rochester were buried under a foot or more. It’s kind of remarkable how accustomed your eye becomes to the monochromatic existence that is winter in the Upper Midwest. Shades of gray, brown, and white stretch to the horizon and the color green is a distant memory. When you spend more than half of every year in the depths of winter or at its margins, the promise of summer burns even brighter in the inner calendar of your mind. You begin to assign an almost religious significance to those four months that don’t contain the letter “R.”

I guess I’m not surprised by the Senate’s vote to open the ANWR to oil drilling. I’m not convinced that it represents the environmental catastrophe that some make it out to be, but I’m certainly not thrilled with the decision. To claim that drilling in the ANWR will relieve our dependence on foreign oil is delusional thinking. If we believe the most liberal estimates, the ANWR contains about ten billion barrels of oil. On average, the United States consumes about twenty million barrels of oil a day. The oil in ANWR represents enough oil to completely meet our needs for about a year and a half. Yes, fellow Americans, energy independence is now within our reach. The only people really benefiting from this are the Alaskans’ pocketbooks; more oil flowing means bigger oil subsidy checks in the mailbox of each Alaskan.
I now expect to receive the severed head of a dead polar bear in the mail from some pissed-off Alaskan.

TiVo has signed a deal with Comcast to provide software for the cable company’s DVR boxes. The new boxes should be available sometime in 2006. This should put at least a temporary hold on the TiVo deathwatch. Now, if only TiVo would sign a deal with Time Warner, preferably before my current TiVo box dies.
A nasty little virus has been migrating around my workplace over the last couple months. People who’ve had it say that it kicked their ass all the way into the next week. I’ve managed to avoid it so far, but I’m getting paranoid. If I’m in a meeting with someone who’s coughing or sneezing, I’ll sit in the opposite corner of the room. I’m thinking about asking everyone who comes into my office wear a filter mask. I’ve even drafted plans for a plastic bubble that will envelop my entire wheelchair. Speaking of, wasn’t that the cheesiest movie ever. It’s so cheesy that to call it such is an insult to cheese. It’s the Cheez Wiz of television movies. John Travolta should have dropped dead as soon as he stepped out of that damn spacesuit. Now, that would have been cool.

I’m certainly no expert on terrorism, but the recent descent of the IRA into thuggery reminds me of the collapse of Shining Path in Peru. Once Peruvians got tired of the indiscriminate killings practiced by SP (and with more than a little help from President Fujimori’s dictatorial rule and merciless crackdown on terrorists), the group seemed to lose sight of its original leftist goals and took up narcotrafficking and kidnapping for ransom. Now we see the IRA engaging in common criminal enterprises such as bank robberies and barroom killings. And then they try to make amends for the slaying by offering to shoot those responsible. Was that really intended to impress anyone? The IRA needs to come to terms with its own irrelevance and Sinn Fein needs to start behaving like a sincere, responsible partner for peace. Perhaps by St. Patrick’s Day 2006, we will see a return to the original vision of the Good Friday accords. The people of Northern Ireland have waited long enough.