There were a few ideas I contemplated writing about today after the long holiday hiatus. But I'm not in the frame of mind to do anything but just nod my head in agreement. These events all relate to the fact that our country keeps making the same mistakes. Yahoo for our collective lack of historical perspective.

The first came from Lawrence Lessig's illuminating blog at www.lessig.org about the prospects of copyright changes from a Congress run by the Democrats. According to Lessig there is no chance, but let him explain it, since he does it so well.

The second was a piece in the Washington Post about a new Bush signing statement that, because of its vagueness, could potentially grant the federal government new authority to open your mail (snail, not email). It's pretty obvious how I feel about that (and how most Americans, no matter what their political affiliation should feel about that). So I will just point you at the article (Bush Warned About Mail-Opening Authority) and let you read for yourself.

I will inject though, that from a historical standpoint and the political science standpoint, Bush's ability to stretch the power of the executive branch through signing statements is mind-blowing. I hope that the practice dies with his administration (or even sooner with a good court challenge). If there is a more ruthless, sly and under-the-radar means of undermining the political process and American democracy, I'd like to know. King George indeed.

The last point has to do with climate control and global warming. A friend of mine at USC just told me it is 84 degrees where he is, and presently in Champaign it is 38 degrees. Which illustrates the point of this NY Times Op-Ed piece (The Ununited States, When It Comes to the Weather) quite nicely. That article is definitely worth the read for an obvious, but often ignored reason why our country is so slow to accept that global warming exists (I think rednecks could easily be added to the list of reasons). To help combat global warming, GM has made a hollow pledge to revive the electric car in the future, once the technology is developed. What I don't get is why the technology used in electric cars of the past, couldn't be used again. Oh wait, I do. GM is pulling another fast one on the American public that can't remember the success of the past electric car experiment.

Into the Future

Well, being too tired to write at the end of December/start of January means I missed my chance to pontificate on what the songs of the year were, what the remixes of the year were, what the mixtapes of the year were, etc. I think it would have been an awfully disjointed list unless I had devoted about 8 hours of time that I didn't have to gather my thoughts and my music.

Instead, in honor of our new year being upon us, I'm sharing with you a song that I have been listening to non-stop and will be probably be listening to non-stop after its official release. Tracey Thorn, of Everything But The Girl, has a new album coming out in March. Seeing as how she is my hands down favorite vocalist of all time, I'm more than a little excited about this. In fact, unless Portishead delivers on their promised album (another year passes, another promise for a December release... check back 12/31/07), I think Tracey's new album Out of The Woods, will be my most anticipated album in 2007.

Here is the first single off her new album. Head over to her MySpace page to hear the insanely epic, insanely well-produced, insanely awesome Martin Buttrich remix.

Tracey Thorn - It's All True