I spent many hours this afternoon at what may have been the longest track meet since the 1904 Olympics. My son did turn in a best time, so there were highlights to the day. But mostly I agreed with my younger son who noted that he was hungry, and tired of sitting, and “Why can’t we go home?”

As I was whiling away the interminable time while the officials organized the gaggle of kids into lanes and started another heat, it occurred to me that:

– In the fall, I watch the kids play volleyball… and I miss being out on the court.

– In the winter, I watch them swim… and I long for the cool rhythm of the water.

– In the spring, I watch track… and I’m good. Bored, but good.

I find it hard to believe I’m linking to Oprah, but… Dr. Oz (I assume he’s a regular?) is asserting that good health demands you have sex over 200 times a year.

“If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years,” Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. “They looked at what happened to folks that are having a lot of intercourse over time, and the fact is, it correlated.”

Among the benefits of having sex often, Dr. Oz says, is that it can prove that your body is functioning as it is supposed to. “But in addition, having sex with someone that you care for deeply is one of the ways we achieve that Zen experience that we all crave as human beings,” he says. “It’s really a spiritual event for folks when they’re with someone they love and they can consummate it with sexual activity … seems to offer some survival benefit.”

Let me spare you the math… that’s four days a week. The fact that this was a university study presumes that there is a statistically significant group of people that manage to maintain that pace on a regular basis. I want to meet whomever organizes their calendar. Either I don’t know what I’m doing (with calendaring), or they don’t have kids.

By now you’ve heard that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that Alberto Gonzales in March 2004 — when he was Bush’s White House counsel — had tried to undermine the department he now heads by attempting to get Ashcroft to sign off on the warrantless wiretaps.

Despite being in the intensive care ward at the time, Ashcroft told the White House boys to go pound rocks. He believed the program was illegal. Hold it. Let’s review that. John “God is the King of America” Ashcroft found the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program to be illegal. John “Let the Eagles Soar” Ashcroft, John “Torture ’em til They Talk” Ashcroft, the defender of all things Bush-ish, found this program to be over the line. Isn’t that like throwing a party so trendy that Paris Hilton was uncomfortable? Like finding a hairstyle Sanjaya wouldn’t wear? No one is saying what the original incarnation of this program looked like, but the fact that it spooked Ashcroft scares the hell out of me. Fortunately it was toned down to something that Ashcroft could live with, but still something to which the courts and much of the legislature objected. But even this toned down version was enacted at least several weeks after the original program was given the go-ahead from the White House. So the really illegal program was already in full-swing when the only sorta-kinda-illegal-ish program was approved by the AG.

Is there any actual limit to the amount of illegal activity which we will tolerate from this administration? Nixon was forced from office on significantly fewer and less dire crimes than these. But still we placate ourselves with the knowledge that in only 600 days we can wipe the slate and start over. It’s clear that if Bush was caught doing Condi on Laura’s new Oval Office carpet that we’d have to remove him from office immediately. Hell, we could probably get him removed if evidence came to light that he paid for an abortion for a drunken paramour in 1974. But why aren’t activities that are actually against the damn law a reason to send him packing? Isn’t that why the framers created impeachment in the first place?

Seriously… is there any conceivable revelation that would warrant bringing an end to this madness?

In what may be the comestible development of the century, an Illinois man has begun brewing Pizza Beer. The pizza flavored beverage is the answer to many a beer-drinker’s prayer. Now we may dispense with all that unproductive phoning, ordering, impatient pacing, tipping, and chewing. Just sit down and drink your dinner.

The world will never be the same.

Ted Rall takes a break from his usual incendiary views to offer a pretty rational perspective on how the 2008 Presidential race may play out. Although, as he admits, it’s way too early for this to be credible. But based on where the major players are today, this analysis does seem pretty rational. I’m sure John Edwards is hoping so…