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Joe
Biden drew a considerable amount of criticism for his
performance during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on
the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito. Someone actually put the
stopwatch on the senior senator from Delaware to see how long it
took him to get through a verbose introduction and actually ask
a question. Then there was the display of the Princeton
University hat.
That's our
Joe.
It's no
secret to anyone who has been around Delaware politics that
Biden is verbose. We heard that, when he delivered a
commencement address, the sophomores were ready to graduate. So
that's a bit exaggerated. But there isn't much doubt that, if
Mr. Guiness kept track of such things Senator Biden would hold
the record for the longest time between when he said he's going
to wrap up his speech with a few final words and when he
actually utters the last of them.
Biden was one of those who questioned
whether committee hearings were even necessary and suggested
going back to the days when advise and consent for a
presidential appointment was referred directly to the full
Senate. Sensible as that idea might be, he was not likely to
back it up by skipping his chance to perform on national
television at the Alito sessions.
National media exposure, of course, is
nothing new for Senator Biden. He's managed to get much more
than his share. But these days, it's hard to get too much of a
good thing. After all, he is considering running for President.
There isn't much doubt that Alito is going
to get to sit on the Supreme Court bench. Whether or not
longwindedness is an impediment to getting to live in the White
House remains to be seen.
Legal Times has done a good job of putting
our senator into context with his committee colleagues.
CLICK
HERE to read
that article.
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There's nothing new about a teacher who finds students a
bit antsy. But the University of Bristol in England conducted a study and found
out for the first time that ants can be a bit studious. According to an article
in the Washington Post there may be a lot more fact than fiction about Flik than
we realized.
CLICK HERE
to read that article.
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It's all right to be squeamish if you're a high school
student in New Jersey. A new law said they can't take the fun out of lunch when
you get to biology class. It sounds like they did it in the name of political
correctness. But who cares? Th result is the same no matter how you got there.
Gov. Codey last week signed a
bill that said public school students "may refuse to dissect, vivisect,
incubate, capture or otherwise harm or destroy animals" as part of instruction.
MORE
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Speaking of Jersey, the Garden State now has an official
slogan. The tourism folk over there paid a marketing firm $260,000 to come up
with 'We'll win you over'. The governor didn't think that was very good, so he
asked the residents to try to come up with a better one. His office received
about 8,000 ideas.
After eliminating the obscene,
the inane and the ridiculous, that was whittled down to a manageable few and it
was put to a vote, via telephone and the Internet. This time there were 11,000
responses. The winner: "Come see for yourself."
The winning author gets a
weekend getaway and a pair of tickets to a ballgame.
Although it's hard to dispute
that it's good being first, does anyone see a lesson in there?
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