Gah! [rolling eyes] Stupid bloggers! We write the bills this long so nobody will find out about stuff like this!

Via Pundette, Investor’s Business Daily reports: sure you can keep your health insurance if you like it. Just like President Obama promised. But you can’t change it. And if you stop it for any reason, ever, you’ll never get to get it back.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

Oh, come on, it’s the government! They’ve got our best interests at heart!

Say, has MSNBC reported on this? Somebody else click over there and find out, okay, because I’ve got a really sensitive gag reflex.

Hey, look: a Memeorandum thread.

Do you notice how everything I wrote yesterday was really short, but everything I’m writing today is really long?

I don’t do it on purpose. It just happens.

Well, great.

Society is totally unprepared for a major zombie attack. Skynet is right around the corner. Some anonymous Senator is groping David Brooks’ thigh. And now:

Giant Mystery Blob Moves Through Alaskan Waters

It’s big, it’s black, it’s gooey and it may be alive.

Giant blobs of thick, oily biological material are floating in the Arctic Ocean’s Chukchi Sea north of the Bering Strait, reports the Anchorage Daily News.

“It’s certainly biological,” Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer told the newspaper. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.”

No one in the North Slope towns of Barrow and Wainwright can recall ever seeing anything like it.

Jellyfish and sea birds are getting caught up in the sticky, stinky stuff, which according to one official “has hairy strands on it.”

“It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism,” added Hasenauer.

What’s next?

President Obama promised us Hope, but I don’t think this is what he meant.

As in: I hope our soon-to-be-newest Supreme Court Justice isn’t the anti-Second Amendment radical that I’m afraid she is.

In 2004, she joined an opinion that claimed “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”

And while a graduate student, she:

…explained that the Second Amendment to the Constitution did not actually afford individual citizens the right to bear arms, but only duly conferred organizations, like the military. Instead of making guns illegal, she argues that they have been illegal for individuals to own since the passing of the Bill of Rights.

Those are some pretty strong statements. I’d be willing to bet that a large majority of Americans will disagree. A large majority.

And yet, Senate Republicans haven’t been able to nail her on it, or even wring an explanation out of her.

Jim Geraghty writes:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) tries his hardest to pin Sotomayor down on whether or not she sees the right to bear arms as a “fundamental right” — which would presumably make it harder for states to restrict it.

“I understand the importance of the right as defined in Heller that was all I can say is that I keep an open mind on the incorporation clause,” she concludes.

And, from Yahoo News:

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma pressed Sotomayor for the second day in a row to say under what circumstances she might accept — or rule — that there is a “fundamental” right to bear arms, as opposed to an “individual,” or less pervasive, right.

As she had earlier, Sotomayor declined to answer the question directly. Instead, she asked Coburn if he would want a justice to agree with him without hearing arguments or listening to the parties to a case. Sotomayor said, “I don’t know that that’s a justice that I can be.”

I can appreciate a judge not wanting to give opinions on specific hypotheticals, since doing so may compromise that judge’s appearance of objectivity when dealing with an actual, similar case.

But, Judge Sotomayor, the Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

And the Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Judge Sotomayor, what does that mean? Don’t tell me you can’t answer that question, because I don’t believe it.

Regardless, looks like she’ll be very easily confirmed. So. Let’s just hope.

UPDATE – via Memeorandum, the NRA weighs in. Too little, too late.

NASA strives to remain relevant with 40-year-old pictures, video

I guess we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of the original moon landing.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — NASA released newly restored videos Thursday of two U.S. astronauts taking the world’s first steps on the moon.

The images were released just four days before the 40th anniversary of the historic event that captivated the world on July 20, 1969.

What’s that? “Newly restored?”

NASA hired a digital restoration firm to make the improvements.

Yeah. Photoshop out all the evidence that the moon landing was a fake, they mean.

A NASA official has said that the original tapes of images sent back to Earth by Apollo 11 have been lost…

Lost? How do you lose something like that?

My now-teenaged son once lost both keys to the padlock on our shed out back, and I still haven’t forgiven him.

…and the camera that shot them was left on the moon.

Y’know, it’s probably still there. We could go get it.

I always felt a special connection with the moon landing, because I was born just nine days later. And yes, I know there were lots of people born on the very same day as the landing itself, but how many of them had a grandfather named Neil?

The kind of diet recommended for treating hypertension and high blood pressure…

…may also help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. That means a lot more vegetables, and a lot less meat.

Oh, well, I’ve still got coffee and beer. And Two out of three ain’t bad.

Military Developing Half-Robot, Half-Insect ‘Cybug’ Spies

Oh, great:

Miniature robots could be good spies, but researchers now are experimenting with insect cyborgs or “cybugs” that could work even better.

Artist’s rendering:

At least these ones won’t power themselves by feasting on dead bodies. Unless they start out as maggots, that is.

Oh, and: Scientists can already control the flight of real moths using implanted devices.

Skynet, here we come!

I’m swiping this picture from Doug Ross…

…just because I like it. And I’ve been looking for a reason to link him.

His caption: “It’s Italy. Any man can look.”

My caption: “Now, God! Now!”

More at the link.

What to do if Homer Simpson breaks into your house and you’re all out of doughnuts:

Maine Man Uses Beer to Lure Drunk Intruder Out of His House. And as if that’s not embarrassing enough:

The intruder apparently didn’t realize that it was a nonalcoholic beer, police said.

Finally, a use for that stuff.