Overnight - A roundup of news items that you might have missed

Iraq War Claims the life of another senior officer Col. Stephen Scott was killed by a mortar in the heavily fortified Green Zone on Sunday. He was the ninth O-6 to die in the conflict there. He had always assured his family that he was safe, quartered and assigned to the international area that headquarters the American forces and the Iraqi government, but in recent days the increasing violence had him worried. ''You could tell in his voice that he was telling us he was safe, but he wasn't really believing it in the last three weeks,'' his sister, Kathleen King said. The loss of Colonel Scott is felt acutely in Missouri; he has family in St. Louis.

The Department of Veteran's Affairs refuses to provide voter registration assistance to wounded veterans, citing such efforts as "partisan" but doesn not elaborate and explain exactly how registering voters is a "partisan" activity. Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake sent a letter to Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein and John Kerry that his department will not help injured veterans with voter registration efforts. "VA remains opposed to becoming a voter registration agency pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act," Peake wrote in the April 8 letter. What this means is that wounded veterans confined to the facilities where they are receiving care are effectively disenfranchised from the voting process if they can not get off-campus or make other arrangements to get registered to participate in the electoral process.

No, I shan't be visiting Florida...well...ever...I probably won't make any friends with this confession, but oh well...here goes...twenty years ago when the Titan II mission was drawing down, NASA offered my husband a job. I threw a fit, insisting that he stay in the Air Force, I wanted nothing to do with living in Florida, ever. I'm a gun owner, but the fast-and-loose way guns aren't regulated in that state was enough to mortify me, and violent crime statistics were what I used to make my case. With the passage of the "Take your Guns to Work" law, I feel even better about that twenty-year-old episode of foot-stamping.

Military Secrets for sale on eBay and Craigslist? (.pdf warning) The GAO undertook an undercover investigation in which they found they could purchase military and homeland security secrets online, for sale to the highest bidder. Some items had been stolen from the military or from military suppliers, and other items, while not stolen, were classified and subject to reverse engineering procedures. (Speaking from the perspective of someone who has suited up in biohazard gear, I don't like the idea that copies of my suit are floating around out there, with people intent on exploiting the weaknesses and eliminating the asset inside the suit.)

Romney still running, two months after dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination But what is he running for? The number two slot this fall? The nomination in 2012 or 2016? McCain will certainly face a firestorm of protest if he taps Romney for the number two spot - there is already an anti-Mitt petition at www.NoMittVP.com, and social conservatives are threatening to stay home or only vote in down-ticket races if the option at the top is McCain-Romney.

Another recall of Chinese toys The CPSC has announced another recall of toys manufactured in China because the items have unacceptably high lead levels. The toys come in sets of four robots per card (picture here). The robots have a gun in one hand and a shield in the other. The toys were sold at "dollar" stores nationwide between October and December 2007. If you have any of these toys, take them back to the store for a refund, or call OKK Trading at 877-655-8697 for additional information.

So now I won't listen to her deranged rantings on Clear Channel I just have no patience for Democrats who attack other Democrats, and Randi Rhodes' diatribe calling Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro "fucking whores" was all I needed to hear to dismiss her as a raving lunatic. Direct the vitriol at McShameless, please and thank you.

Who are these people, anyway??? What I find mindboggling is that 28% of my countrymen still think that aWol is doing a good job. WTF, Mate? If they haven't seen enough at this point, what, pray tell would it take to get them to admit that the idiot son is the Worst. President. Ever.

Senate approves sweeping public lands bill By a vote of 91-4, the Senate passed a massive bill that pulled together 62 public lands proposals from every region of the country. But most significantly, the bill extends federal immigration and labor laws to that "perfect petri dish of capitalism," the Marianas Islands. You remember the Marianas from the Abramoff/DeLay/corruption scandal, don't you? (This is the same bill, by the way, that Tom Coburn, (wingnut, Oklahoma) held up for months by insisting on adding an amendment that would allow people to pack heat in national parks. He withdrew the amendment after facing the ire of many of his fellow republicans in the Senate who accused him of attaching a wedge issue to a noncontrovercial bill.

Some things you should be punished severely for even making me imagine - I just can't make myself see a naked woman in Dick Cheney's sunglasses. The very thought is just fundamentally wrong. Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick.