There is something else we can try.  If you've given up on staging marches and rallies, or if – like me – you haven't but you want to try something else as well, and if you've given up on lobbying Congress as pointless, or if – like me – you haven't but you want to try something else as well, and if educating your fellow citizens as to exactly how completely corrupt the whole system is seems like an incomplete answer, and if staging a general strike or taking over the capital only seems like a good idea if you can get millions of others to join you, there is another approach that can be taken right away by a single person, a small group, or a crowd.

At 10:03 A.M. on August 7, 2006, one month before Judge Algenon Marbley ordered all 88 Ohio Boards of Elections to continue to preserve the ballots from the 2004 presidential election, Jacqueline J. Neuhart, Director of the Guernsey County Board of Elections, sent an e-mail to "All Counties" asking if they were aware of a website called savetheballots.org. Her exact wording was: "Good morning, everyone. Has anyone else heard about this? I wonder how far it will go."

Pursuant to a public records request, Matthew Damschroder, Director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, graciously provided us with responses to said e-mail. Here they are:

Monday, August 7, 2006, 10:30 A.M. From Lorain County Board of Elections
"Someone should tell them to give it up. The election is over. They lost."

Monday, August 7, 2006, 10:32 A.M. From Brown County Board of Elections
"YES BROWN COUNTY HAS HEARD ABOUT IT"

Monday, August 7, 2006, 10:32 A.M. From Allen County Board of Elections

Following on the heels of his flirtation with violent "decisiveness" toward Pakistan, Barack Obama got twisted up even further in the conflicting loyalties that complicate the lives of Democratic presidential candidates and the people who vote for them. Pretty soon the other candidates were in there with him, like cats in the yarn.

After declaring in a speech last week that he might order military strikes on Pakistan border areas to take out suspected al-Qaida camps, he was asked by an AP reporter if he’d use nuclear weapons against al-Qaida in Pakistan.

I pause here a moment to ponder the insanity of this question, or what I might call the "Yossarian moment" it produces, referring, of course, to Joseph Heller’s notorious central character in the World War II novel "Catch-22," whose everyman sanity stood in constant amazed contrast to the routine insanities of war, like people all the time trying to kill each other. This is a Yossarian moment on steroids, reporter to almighty-deity-in-chief wannabe: When killing thine enemies, sir, would you be inclined to take ’em out 50,000 at a swath? A hundred thousand? A million?

After fifty years of what Forbes Magazine long ago called "the largest managerial disaster in business history," the nuke power industry is demanding untold billions in a federal "Bailout-in-Advance." Congress will decide on these proposed loan guarantees for new nukes in its September conferences over the new Energy Bill.

Both sides are gearing up for the new war over the irradiation of our energy future.

As usual, it's vital to "follow the money."

The industry once promised that atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter." But after a half-century of proven failure, Wall Street won't invest in new nukes without federal support. So buried in the Senate version of the new Energy Bill is a single sentence authorizing the Department of Energy to underwrite virtually unlimited loans for still more nukes. The sentence was slipped into the bill by industry backers without open debate.