Gene Healy and Benjamin Friedman have a good piece in the Orange County Register on the recent announcement that the military will be deploying three military brigades for domestic missions.

So Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia again trotted out the “new professionalism” canard during oral arguments for a Fourth Amendment case last term. I guess you could say the rebuttals I’ve been posting on this site since the Hudson decision are just anecdotes. But they’re sure are a lot of them.

So I’m pretty sure my Colts were just beaten by San Diego’s punter.

Kudos to the Chargers. Few people (including me) gave them much of a chance.

So I was returning something at Walmart this afternoon. Needing an afternoon pick-me-up, I stopped by the in-store McDonalds for a coffee. It was self-serve. I walked over to the coffee station, and noticed they only had decaf brewed. So I told them, and a guy came out, started brewing a fresh pot of regular, and told me it would be four minutes. No problem.

A couple minutes later, as the pot was about half-done, a guy stepped in front of me with his own cup, and poured from the decaf pot. He apparently didn’t notice the bright orange rim, because he spit the coffee out, and went back to the counter to demand a new cup. The guy at the counter told him the regular was still brewing, that I was in line ahead of him, but that he should get his coffee in a couple of minutes. I guess that was too long. The guy butted in front of me, then slipped the decaf pot under the regular spout to catch the drip, and poured himself a cup from the half-brewed regular pot. He took his time with the pour, so the decaf pot was about a third filled with regular coffee by the time he was finished.

I wanted to pour his own coffee on him. I did loudly ask him what the hell he was doing, and explained that it probably wasn’t a good idea to be slipping caffeinated coffee to people who might want to drink decaf, possibly for medical reasons. I also explained to him that, additionally, he is a giant asshole.

He didn’t seem to mind. He just sorta smiled evilly, then scurried out with his coffee. I’d like to think that a few minutes later, he had to slam on his brakes on his way to wherever he was going, causing his coffee to spill into his lap, inflicting severe, hot-coffee-related crotch pain.

So if you’re running a sports league, and if one of the teams in your league finishes the season undefeated, and if that team still has no chance of being your league’s champion, your system pretty much stinks. College football isn’t my favorite spectator sport. But I do watch the major bowls every year, mostly just to root for a BCS train wreck.

So way to go, Utes!

Let’s see if I can beat Bill Simmons picking against the spread.

This week’s games:

Falcons (-1.5) over CARDINALS

All the road teams are favored this week, which tells you just how screwed up the NFL’s seeding system is. Atlanta finished second in the toughest division in football. Arizona snuck in at 9-7 after beating up on a weak division (they were 3-7 outside the NFC West). Arizona has home field and a playoff experienced quarterback in Kurt Warner, but I like Atlanta’s run defense and running game, here. Atlanta rookie QB Matt Ryan doesn’t need to be perfect, just adequate.

Atlanta 27, Arizona 13

Colts (-1) over CHARGERS

The Chargers play us tough, but my Colts are the hottest team in the league, and probably the best road team this year. We’ll have Bob Sanders back on defense, and the offensive line seems to be gelling, at least when it comes to pass protection. Our running game is still a disaster, but that doesn’t seem to have mattered in big wins at Pittsburgh, at Baltimore, at home against New England, and, yes, at San Diego. Also, I just can’t fathom an 8-8 team that shouldn’t be in the playoffs, much less hosting a game, knocking off a 12-4 team on a nine-game winning streak with the league MVP behind center. Also, Norv Turner. He’s good for five Colts points all by himself.

Colts 31, Chargers 10

Ravens (-3) over DOLPHINS

Tough call. The Dolphins are consistent and impressive, but young. The Ravens sport their usual badass defense, but have shown an inconsistent offense that’s been both anemic and explosive. In the end, even if Flacco and the Ravens’ offense sputters, I just can’t see the inexperienced Dolphins coming through in the playoffs against a grizzled, experienced, tenacious Ravens defense. I think we’re looking at a bruising, low-scoring game.

Ravens 13, Dolphins 3

Eagles (-3) over VIKINGS

I’ve watched a lot of Vikings games this year, because Adrian Peterson was on my fantasy team. Peterson aside (and that’s a huge aside), they’re just not that good. They don’t score a lot of points, and rely too much on their (admittedly good) run defense. Philly is probably the second hottest team in the league right now. But there have also been times when they’ve looked really bad. Still, I’ll go with the team with the veteran, Super Bowl-experienced quarterback and the dual-threat running back. I like that even if the Vikings defense shuts down Philly’s run, Westbrook can catch the ball out of the backfield and still present some problems. Philly’s run defense isn’t too shabby, either (fourth in the league). Contain Peterson, and Minnesota has to rely on Tavaris Jackson and a crew of mediocre receivers. Contain Westbrook, and Philly can fall back on the league’s sixth-best pass attack (matched up against the 18th-best pass defense). I like Philly, big.

Philly 34, Minnesota 9

I was hoping to have my favorite albums of 2008 list done by now, but haven’t yet gotten around to it. Instead, here’s one of my favorite songs of the year, “The Girl,” by City and Colour. It’s a beautiful song that would have fit right in on the Shins’ 2003 album Chutes Too Narrow, in my opinion one of the best CDs of the decade.

And since I didn’t give you a song last week, here’s a bonus. It’s more funny (and a little mean) than great. But if you know about anything about Steve Earle’s life and career, you may get a kick out of it. “Steve Earle,” by Sugarland.

Here’s the Straight Dope on the Yellowstone supervolcano. Here’s the list of the latest recorded earthquakes in the region.

Meanwhile, James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report notes that over the last 10 years there have been 128 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in the Yellowstone area, and there were just four such quakes in the entire 1980s.

There have been 30 in the last five days.

Cue scary music.

No, it’s not the latest Wall Street failure. It’s D.C.’s Metro public transportation system. The D.C. Examiner reports that the system is anticipating major reductions in service, a hiring freeze, and possibly layoffs.  Yet salaries at all levels of Metro have increased at several times the rate of inflation.

Metro’s Approved Fiscal 2009 Annual Budget includes large pay hikes for salaried management employees, as well as hourly workers such as bus drivers, rail operators and maintenance workers. But the numbers take on added significance when compared to previous years.

For example, in the section entitled “Multi-Year Operating Cost Comparison,” we see that salaries for Metro managers in the Bus Services section have more than doubled since 2006. Next year, Metro’s top bus executives expect to be paid twice what they made just three years ago, and this when almost every economic indicator is steadily heading south.

[...]

In 2007, an exclusive Examiner series highlighted the excessive overtime payments that pushed more than a hundred bus and rail operators into six-figure territory – almost double the median income of the Washington, D.C. area.

[...]
Meanwhile, Metro’s “customers” have to contend with broken escalators, defective subway cars, increasing crime and decreasing system reliability even as they continue to pay the higher fares and parking fees imposed on them last year when most Metro employees were getting yet another raise.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is sad. Due to incompetence, sense of privilege, malevolence, and disregard for the Constitution, he managed to leave office with both the left and the right hating him. The guy actually made John Ashcroft look like the administration’s resident civil libertarian.

Now Gonzales can’t find a publisher for his book, and no one has yet offered him the cushy, high-paying job at a D.C. law firm that high-ranking public officials seem to think they’re entitled to upon stepping down. So he’s wallowing in self pity and delusions of victimhood.

Check out this quote from his interview with the Wall Street Journal this week:

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?

. . . for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

Words fail.