How utterly cool is this...I did a 330-mile AIDS ride last year, but this is wild.  I would love to ride across the entire country.

From Workbench: Blogging by bicycle from L.A. to Jacksonville. LA2Jax is a weblog chronicling a coast-to-coast tandem bicycle ride by Dave Cushwa and his 9-year-old son Will. They began March 4 on the Pacific coast in Los Angeles and expect to end May 13 on the Atlantic coast in Jacksonville, 3,500 miles later. Via Marc's Voice 

From the LA2Jax FAQ:

Q.       What types of electronics will be onboard?
A.       We plan to carry a “sub-notebook” computer, two digital cameras, a digital voice recorder, a cell phone or two, a Sony CLIE PDA, a Gameboy, and a radar detector to avoid speeding tickets (we might end up skipping the radar detector to save weight).  So far, Mom is withholding permission for a GPS receiver with mapping.  Stay tuned.  Santa brought us a Garmin GPS V!    It has mapping for every street in North America, and almost all campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, and other points of interest.  It will drastically simplify our navigation, and make finding accommodations a snap!

I am jealous.

Regardless of my position on the impending war in Iraq, it is clear that the United States will have international bridges to rebuild after this current rash of diplomacy.  The subject came up this morning as I was walking with two of the other math tutors at the junior high, and today as I was catching up on my aggregator I came across a post on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.  He says, among other things, that "we're in international affairs not just for today but for the long haul. And our political leadership in the world community matters profoundly." 

My recent trip to London, in the heart of the biggest supporter of pre-emptive action against Saddam Hussein outside of the U.S., underscores this point.  It wasn't a scientific study, but three different Black Cab drivers and a variety of strangers in London pubs asked me essentially the same question--"who does your President think he is?"  The President's handling of the conflict is hurting the U.S., and whether or not he turns out to be right is not the only issue.  Once this conflict is over the United States still will need to interact with the rest of the world.  Regardless of the end result, it makes me wish we had a bit more diplomatic diplomacy from our head of state.

Says Gene Healy in Reinventing the Legislative Process:

...before any bill can pass, [Members] should be required to pass a quiz on the details of that bill--to show they've actually read it.

Here, here.  I agree.  A few more ideas?

• Each bill should only cover a single issue--Members should be required to vote separately on each aspect of a bill.  Hopefully that would make it more difficult for pork to be slipped into the language and that additional clause justified by the Member because "I can't vote against the entire bill just because I disagree with Senator Smith's rider for exemption for cow farmers from the northwest corner of her State" or some other such nonsense.
• A judicial model would be great--each Member could be required to write an opinion of the matter at hand justifying their position and vote, and those statements are permanent parts of the legislative record.   
• The practice of delegating legislative authority to federal agencies should stop.  If an Agency wants to pass regulations restricting something or another, each aspect of that regulation should be void until approved by the appropriate legislative body.  We do not get to vote for the employees or heads of these agencies, so they should not have the authority to pass regulations (not laws, regulations) governing our lives.
• Just about every congressional district should be halved and the restriction of 435 Representatives should be dropped.  I think a 1:100,000 or 1:200,000 Representative:Constituent ratio would be more appropriate and truer to the concept of "House of Representatives," but I would settle for at least a doubling of the number.

Yes, I recognize that none of these are likely to happen, but it is nice to be able to dream sometimes...