New day

Made it into Belfast half an hour ahead of schedule, and cruised right out to my hotel. My driver told me that the story I heard about it is true; the Europa is the most bombed hotel in the world. Forty-seven different bombings, he said.

I napped (still can’t sleep on flights), and then meandered around town in the afternoon. I’ll post pix from that later. For now, click through this guy to see some of the gorgeous sunrise photos I took from the plane:

Congress should pass the Patriots Act

Arlen Specter wants to get to the bottom of the Patriots’ spying scandal, which broke early this season. And he’s mad that the NFL erased the evidence that the Pats turned over:

“That requires an explanation,” Specter said. “The N.F.L. has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It’s analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.”

In a certain very literal respect, I suppose destroying those tapes does compare to the CIA’s destruction of tapes. But in most other respects, I don’t think we’re served well when a senator compares the outcome of football games to CIA torture of terror suspects who were shipped to secret prisons.

Show some resolve!

Whoops! I was so busy getting the Jan/Feb issue of my mag together that I almost missed my New Year’s Resolution of making sure I post at least one item every day!

Fortunately, I came across this neat writeup about companies that worked for/with Nazi Germany. “Enjoy”!
(And, yes, I do own a Hugo Boss suit, but it was in clearance, so I got to exert my Jewish stereotype on that one.)

My other resolution is to get back to only drinking water, black coffee or gin. I slipped up and had a Dr. Pepper a few days ago, and Amy broke out a bottle of wine Saturday night, but I’m sticking with it pretty well!

A new personal best/worst!

Thanks, federal government and state of New Jersey! I didn’t really want the other FORTY-FOUR PERCENT of my holiday bonus and online sales commission anyway!

Maybe in another year or two you can take more than half of my cash!