BACK IN BALA

Spent a great week in southern Spain and northern Morocco, including spending International Women's Day in Grenada, where the day was marked with a march at dusk with puppets, music, and an impressive crowd holding signs with slogans (roughly translated) like "Women's rights will not be lost or privatized." We also spent a lot of time on the beach. Meanwhile, the port deal collapsed, Olmert announced plans to get out of much of the occupied West Bank and annex the rest of it, South Dakota moved to annex women's wombs, and the GOP ethics sketch-fest continued apace. You can catch the details of the latter over at the now-open-for-business TPMMuckraker. Speaking of which, self-appointed ethics czar James Dobson is apparently shocked at being associated with Jack Abramoff; I compiled some of the evidence here. Meanwhile, Whiskey offered an update on the locked-out workers in Boilermakers Local 484 in Meredosia. And Michael Tomasky gave Democrats across the political spectrum good reason to be grateful he's not a candidate for political office of any kind - or a kingmaker for one either (otherwise, we'd only be running candidates who knew which two ex-presidents died on the same day in 1826.