whale saves drowning diver, pulls her to surface.

Okay, this is a kind of cool story :)

A beluga whale saved a drowning diver by hoisting her to the surface, carrying her leg in its mouth.

Terrified Yang Yun thought she was going to die when her legs were paralysed by crippling cramps in arctic temperatures.

She had been taking part in a free diving contest WITHOUT any breathing equipment.

Competitors had to sink to the bottom of an aquarium's 20ft arctic pool and stay there for as long as possible amid the beluga whales at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China.

But when Yun, 26, tried to head to the surface she struggled to move her legs.

Lucky Yun said: "I began to choke and sank even lower and I thought that was it for me - I was dead. Until I felt this incredible force under me driving me to the surface."

Beluga whale Mila had spotted her difficulties and using her sensitive dolphin-like nose guided Yun safely to the surface.

An organizer said: "Mila noticed the problem before we did.

"We suddenly saw the girl being pushed to the top of the pool with her leg in Mila's mouth.

"She's a sensitive animal who works closely with humans and I think this girl owes her, her life."

Constitutional smackdown! And, l'affaire Gates

"Soldier explains constitutional republic to cheering audience"

Our congresspeople are too busy to read the bills they vote on, so maybe it stands to reason that they're also too busy to read the Constitution they swore to uphold.

On another matter...

The prevailing liberal attitude on the Gates matter seems to be summed up thusly: "Well, maybe there wasn't overt racism in this case, but it doesn't really matter because racism exists everywhere anyway!" I've even seen people intimate that Crowley's minority colleagues sticking up for him only did so because they were intimidated by their white colleagues, or because they are sell-outs to their own race. It's insane. But while I was surfing around, I found this amusing piece -- at Salon of all places: In Defense of Obama's Stupid Remarks About l'affaire Gates.

Mr. Obama is new to the reality of being expected to have an opinion on everything on an instantaneous basis, and now perhaps has re-learned a brief, painful lesson about Law of Power Two: Always Say Less than is Necessary.

The article is about 5 days old, but the points made are still quite appropriate.

A sign of the apocalypse

Common sense has been spoken on MSNBC. Take note, people. This might never happen again.

Of course, none of the sense was spoken by actual MSNBC employees ("You do have a public plan! Uh-hunh! You do you do!") but let's not expect too much from them at once.

If you only have a couple of minutes, watch the last half.

(Ryan is kind of a cutie, isn't he?)