I nominate Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for the dumbest remark of the young year:

“I often think we would have been better off if the terrorists had blown up our levees,” she said. “Maybe we’d have gotten more attention.”

Nevermind the offensiveness of the remark, her statement represents either grand ignorance or a disgusting sense of priorities.

Had terrorists blown up the levees, there would have been absolutely no evacuations prior to everybody being ten feet under water. Not only would no one have had time to leave, they wouldn't have had time to prepare. There'd have been no Superdome or convention center set up and that wouldn't matter nearly as much cause cars would be under water before anyone that had a car could drive there. There'd have been not the slightest inkling that the day would be any different than the day before. What emergency response there was would have taken much longer to arrive.

The death toll would have dwarfed both 9/11 and the hurricane's bodycount. Is Landrieu seriously saying that it might have been worth it for a little more attention after the fact? Would she be pleased to see the government dedicate the totality of its resources towards fishing tens of thousands of bodies out of the water? Does nothing matter so much as a bounty from the federal government? I guess I shouldn't chalk up to malice what can be attributed to gross stupidity.

So is she right that the government would be responding much more thoroughly if it had been a terrorist attack? Maybe. How's that Freedom Tower project going? Anyhow, even if she is right about that, we should all seriously be thanking God that the terrorists aren't creative to come up with such an attack.

What do former Congressman Chris Bell and I have in common? We're both tall? We both don't like Rick Perry much? C'mon, you're not thinking!

Here's a clue in the form of his congressional biography:

BELL, Chris, a Representative from Texas; born in Texas, November 23, 1959; B.J., University of Texas, Austin, Tex., 1982; J.D., South Texas University*, Houston, Tex., 1992; journalist; lawyer, private practice; member, Houston, Tex., city council, 1997-2001; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Eighth Congress (January 3, 2003-January 3, 2005); unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 2004.

The answer, obviously, is that neither of us has tried a single case as a prosecutor in Harris County!

This little detail hasn't stopped some from salivating over the prospect of Bell running for Harris County District Attorney. Bell would be great cause... well... DA Rosenthal sucks. As it happens, I agree with their assessment of Rosenthal. I've voted against him in every primary and general election that I could. But come on... Chris Bell? Being a good guy or even a good councilman and congressman (if you consider him thus) does not qualify one to be the boss of a bunch of attorneys that have... you know... actually prosecuted cases.

Fortunately Bell has stated unequivocably that he is not going to seek the DA post.

* - There is no South Texas University. Presumably they meant South Texas College of Law, which is not affiliated with any four-year institute of higher learning.

Science News focuses on a study that said urban sprawl can be partly to blame for the average increase in obesity America's seen over the past few decades.

The question, it seems, is selection vs causation:

He and other researchers have evidence that associates health problems with urban sprawl, a loose term for humanmade landscapes characterized by a low density of buildings, dependence on automobiles, and a separation of residential and commercial areas. Frank proposes that sprawl discourages physical activity, but some researchers suggest that people who don't care to exercise choose suburban life. Besides working to settle that disagreement, researchers are looking at facets of urban design that may shortchange health.

My personal theory? "A bit of both."

Yes, people who aren't really interested in exercise might choose places that don't offer them the option to exercise. However, as far as I am aware, most people prefer their neighborhood to have those amenities anyways - it raises property values, for example.

Living in Houston, sprawl is a major problem. The commute I do to and from work every day would have people wondering how it is I manage, back in my hometown of Milwaukee. (With no traffic, it clocks at 20 minutes; with traffic or accidents, up to an hour 30 on a really bad day). There are people who live further out, and some of my co-workers have a minimum 1-hour drive presuming no traffic just to get to work.

In addition, yes, there are other problems caused. The complaint in the article about lack of restaurants in walking distance is a bit silly; if you can't walk, cook your own meal or you'll have to drive. If you're too lazy to cook your own meal or don't know how, you've got bigger problems.

However, a long commute can be draining. Even when you're just sitting in the car, sitting in the car in stop-and-go traffic is draining. You get out of the car feeling tired. Further, a commute that's 45 minutes (as opposed to 10-15) is less time that could theoretically be devoted to exercise, and more importantly, it's 30 minutes of daylight (the time when most people are most active and most likely to exercise) lost. Getting home in the winter months, when it starts getting dark, exercise seems less a priority mentally because it's "already nighttime."

Is the study foolproof? No. Can I see where reason comes in that sprawl might be "a" factor in contributing to obesity? Heck yes.

Omaha, Nebraska's got an interesting new chain of gas stations going up: "Terror Free Oil".

The group responsible also has a website.

These occasionally pop up, with some regularity. I still don't buy from Citgo, because their oil comes primarily from Venezuela, and whether "Citgo USA" is an American corporation or not, they have ties to Hugo Chavez that I don't want to support.

And the connection between many Middle Eastern oil exporters, and money that's gone to fund terrorist groups, has been examined time and again.

However, the problem is that someone - somewhere - is going to buy the "terror" oil, even if we don't. Oil's a globally scarce commodity, and shifting who you buy it from might not help a whole lot. For instance, embargoes on Iraq didn't change much, and trying to embargo Iran wouldn't do much because they sell mostly to Russia, China, and states in that area (one of the reasons Russia and China are willing to overlook the insane Iranian quest for nuclear weapons is that if sanctions were put in place, they would be the ones impacted most because they are the ones who'd have to be searching for new oil suppliers).

I support them, in theory. In practice, however, "only" buying from certified terror-free places would be an amazing trick to pull off.

One of the long-recurring bits in American society has been the push by a small portion of the population - though sizing varies - to legalize (or I should probably use the term re-legalize) the growing and consumption of the hemp plant, aka pot, marijuana, and a host of other names.

Udolpho, meanwhile, states the following:

I used to be in favor of legalizing marijuana, but the persistent stupidity of marijuana zealots has beaten that position out of me, and now I am against legalization just to spite them. Experience shows that even occasional marijuana smokers are not terribly bright, and it is my belief that stupid people need to suffer.

Putting aside some pretty heated rhetoric, I'm mixed on this topic, mostly because the topic itself is mixed.

Arguments against pot:
- Its listing as a harmful agent by various government agencies.
- Its various mind-altering properties.
- The fact that drug gangs manufacture it right now.
- The fact that it can become an addiction.
- The fact that, when combined with other things (like heavy machinery) it can conceivably be dangerous.

Arguments for pot:
- Its various mind-altering properties.
- The fact that it does seem (depending on various case studies/medical studies) to offer some benefits for certain people, such as those suffering symptoms from chemotherapy.
- The fact that it has an appetite-inducing effect (worthwhile for people who have medical conditions that otherwise destroy appetite).
- The fact that most of the harmful properties come from the smoked-and-inhaled method of application, but it can be derived into pill form or "baked" (pardon the pun) into various foods or made into butter.

Arguments against pot that I think don't quite hold up under scrutiny from above:
1) the involvement of drug gangs. While this is a true statement, it's also a bit of a red herring, since legalization wouldn't mean the drug gangs would control it, but that legal producers could take over and the drug gangs would have to move on to something else. See also: Mafia and Moonshine, Prohibition.

2) The fact that, when combined with other things, it can be dangerous: we have warning labels on plenty of other things that are legal, too, most of which cause much the same problem (drowsiness or inattentiveness). Cough syrup/Nyquil, for example.

Udolpho also comes up with a few other things I question. For starters:

What are the drawbacks? Do we really need more boring, listless, unmotivated people in the world? Do we need more vacant stoners sitting around playing video games and watching the Home Shopping Network? No. And obviously it's not healthy. I am sick of taking shit for smoking a cigarette and hearing all about bogus second hand smoke hazards (if only), then hearing marijuana advocates parrot the simplisitic and as it happens wrong assertion that their drug of choice is completely harmless. Even though they're just pothead losers they need to be challenged about their idiotic beliefs regarding marijuana.

Whether marijuana smoke is more or less healthy than cigarettes is debatable, but since a lot of the harmful portion of a cigarette is chemicals added by the manufacturer, whereas marijuana is pretty much dried leaf product, there's probably a case to be made that marijuana smoke is less damaging than cigarette smoke. This, I think, is something that probably ought to be studied more, and there's probably a case to be made for people being offered cigarettes that are nothing but pure dried tobacco leaf (though the tobacco companies probably wouldn't like this, since they put most of those chemicals into the cigs to make them more addictive in the first place).

He also goes after alcohol, which is another "controlled" substance, and makes a few potshots I won't copy here. Next paragraph down, if you're wondering, but I'll feel safe enough simply pointing out for his reference that plenty of chain-smokers are also alcoholics too, so the argument there is probably just a wash.

The trouble I have overall, though, is his continued insistence that pot-smokers are inevitably stupid. I've known some who are ordinarily bright people, but have a pot habit. The problem with pot isn't that it attracts stupid people, or that it necessarily is limited to them: instead, it's that it is limited to bored people. It's an escape for making them feel ok with being bored. Some people seem to feel a need for that.

And no, the marijuana lobby aren't stupid. Some of their arguments - about the fact that it was legal in the past and was no problem for certain very bright people (George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to name just two), about the relative danger vs cigarettes, and in the tactic of trying to get it approved for medical use as a wedge toward generic use - are actually pretty bright.

But most damning for Udolpho at all in my mind is that while "Marijuana" is illegal,Marinol - which is a synthetic version of the generally recognized "active ingredient" in marijuana, THC - is available by doctor prescription. The difference between the two? $$$$$$$$$ per dose, because a particular pharmaceutical company has patent and trademark on Marinol and makes a mint while giving kickbacks to the government. Conspiracy theory material? In some senses, yes, but as the patent system is in general broken with regard to medicinal research, it's just one part of a larger problem.