People sometimes ask how I choose the linked stories that I post here every day. There's really no science to it -- I just make frequent visits to my three news bookmarks, www.cnn.com, www.poe-news.com, and www.slashdot.org, and bookmark anything interesting going on that day. The following day, I go through the news assortment and pare it down. I cut out the stories of gratuitous sex and violence, the stories that are just disturbing, and most of the stories about government and Presidential stupidities (because there's just so many of them).

Even then, it's amazing what people will post as news. Yesterday in the Metro section of the Washington Post, there was an article about a man found dead in his apartment inside a duffel bag. Police were reported to be treating the death as "suspicious" and "investigating it as a homicide". Another article I read this morning included a brief section on Bush's Iraq contract policy:

At a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Bush defended the decision, saying American taxpayers want the contracts restricted to those countries that "risked lives."

"The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risked lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq. It is very simple," Bush told reporters.

"Our people risked their lives, a friendly coalition risked their lives and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that. And that is what the U.S. taxpayers expect."

I'm not sure when Bush became such an expert on taxpayer needs or when he asked us about this issue, but I bet that given a choice, most taxpayers would rather have their $50 back than feel so strongly about which of Cheney's multinational corporations gets the money .

If my fifty dollars is going towards creating and funding a permanent economic black hole in the Middle East, it only makes sense to get as many greedy countries into the deal as possible. Then maybe they'll only take $47.95 of my money, and I can get two hash browns on the side.