response 20 of 35:

Jan 6 00:03 UTC 2006

 I spent a good portion of yesterday in O'Hare airport, either
 walking from one terminal to another trying to find a flight with
 room for standby passengers, or sitting at gates where (as often
 as not) there was a television showing CNN.

 The amount of coverage being devoted to the miscommunication of the
 miners' status was truly mind-boggling..  What was particularly
 upsetting about it was that the same footage and interviews, which
 were almost totally free of useful information to begin with, were
 repeated over and over, ad nauseam.

 Meanwhile, in Washington, one of the most powerful (and most corrupt)
 political lobbyists in the nation, who has strong financial ties to
 dozens of Republican and a few Democratic lawmakers, who has extremely
 close and complicated ties to the currently-under-indictment ex-speaker-
 of-the-House, has reached a plea agreement with the Justice Department
 in exchange for testimony against an unknown number of legislators.
 The Abramoff plea bargain has the potential to blow Washington corruption
 wide open, though it's unlikely it'll go that far.  It's still an
 incredible story, full of fascinating back-room deals, blatant swindles
 and influence peddling, all kinds of juicy stuff.  But you'd be lucky to
 catch a 15-second video clip of Abramoff's perp-walk on CNN, they're too
 busy interviewing some miner's step-father about whether or not he thinks
 it was a bad thing that his son got trapped in the mine..  Yikes.