What Caught My Eye Today

Congress - Big news. Depending on what side of the political spectrum you gravitate this big new will also be either good news or bad news. Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties with a suddenness that seemed to stun the Senate, a moderate's defection that pushed Democrats to within a vote of the 60 needed to overcome filibusters and enact President Barack Obama's top legislative priorities. Of course, if you have no interest in politics, this is pretty much a snoozer, so no hard feelings if you want to skip to the next story. As for the rest of you...OH MY GOD! The cable networks are probably drowning in their own drool over this one. Usually, the Senate is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Not long after Specter met privately with Republican senators to explain his decision, the party's leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, said the switch posed a "threat to the country." The issue, he said, "really relates to ... whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority party to have whatever it wants, without restraint, without a check or balance." That's just a tad bit melodramatic don't you think, Senator? I'm not sure this warrants scaring the piss out of the country. Besides, the dude was already voting with the Democrats most of the time anyway. Now you can focus on running the conservative candidates that you want next year in Pennsylvania.

Influenza - The global swine flu outbreak worsened as authorities said hundreds of students at a New York school have fallen ill and federal officials said they expected to see U.S. deaths from the virus. The irony is that in a normal year, flu season would almost be over. Cuba suspended flights to and from Mexico, becoming the first country to impose a travel ban to the epicenter of the epidemic. Confirmed cases were reported for the first time as far away as New Zealand and Israel, joining the United States, Canada, Britain and Spain. Swine flu is believed to have killed more than 150 people in Mexico, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the U.S. has 68 confirmed cases in five states, with 45 in New York, one in Ohio, one in Indiana, two in Kansas, six in Texas and 13 in California. Still, U.S. officials stressed there was no need for panic and noted that flu outbreaks are quite common every year. The CDC estimates about 36,000 people in the U.S. died of flu-related causes each year, on average, in the 1990s. On a related note, it took 99 days, but Barack Obama finally completed his Cabinet. Kathleen Sebelius finally won Senate confirmation to be Barack Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary. Any guess as to what she's going to be doing on her first day of work. I'll bet you a buck, she'll be skipping out on orientation.

Space Shuttle - Of course, Obama still has some slots to fill, including that of NASA Administrator. NASA is facing a critical deadline to make its biggest decision in a generation: whether to go forward with plans to retire the space shuttle fleet and replace it with a new mode of space travel. But the agency still has no chief to make the $230 billion call. A key deadline is April 30, when a congressional rule governing the shuttle's infrastructure expires. After that date, NASA will be free to start taking apart the shuttle program if it chooses. But some in Congress want the shuttle to fly longer because retiring the fleet would force the U.S. to rely on Russia for trips to space for nearly five years. Obama has said he wants at least one more shuttle flight beyond those already planned. Oh, I don't know. The Russians seem like friendly sorts. I'm sure they wouldn't mind flying us around space while we build our next generation spaceship. And that's not all. A Congressional Budget Office report concluded that NASA cannot carry out its current plans on its existing budget. The report outlined options that include delaying the flight of the new spacecraft, spending more money to meet the current schedule or drastically cutting back on science. Yeah, that's a shame. We've already got a fleet of shuttles built by the lowest bidder and we're still out of money? What corners are left to cut, and does anyone really want to take that risk?