About half the orders went out in the mail yesterday. Hoping to get the other half out this weekend. Had to take a break — my drawing hand was starting to cramp up from it, and that’s never good news.

As I said before, it’s almost guaranteed that I screwed up somebody’s order. Just let me know and I’ll sort it out.

A note of support from one of the most genuinely decent people I know.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have stated repeatedly that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Is that based on the assessment of the U.S. intelligence agencies, or are they, like the Bush administration, just saying whatever the fuck they want? As Charles Davis explains, the answer is apparently the latter.

Really?

Really?

WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits up to $250,000, tried for years to get congressional authority to collect the premiums in case of a looming crisis. But Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized - and that bank failures were so infrequent - that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade, according to banking officials and analysts.

Now with 25 banks having failed last year, 17 so far this year, and many more expected in the coming months, the FDIC has proposed large new premiums for banks at the very time when many can least afford to pay. The agency collected $3 billion in the fees last year and has proposed collecting up to $27 billion this year, prompting an outcry from some banks that say it will force them to raise consumer fees and curtail lending.

To possibly reduce the fee increase, the FDIC has asked Congress for the temporary authority to borrow as much as $500 billion from the US Treasury - up from the current $30 billion limit - in case the number of bank failures increases even more dramatically. If Congress approves the measure, to borrow more than $100 billion, the FDIC would still need permission from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the White House.

Are we at “perfect storm” levels yet, or do we need one more colossal instance of incompetence and/or corruption to push us over the edge?

Finishing up one project I should be able to tell you about soon, diving in to another that I have to keep under wraps for now. Anybody with keys to the blog should feel free to take the wheel for little while.

Well that turned out to be a much more popular offering than I anticipated. I’m not taking any more orders for the moment, until I get the current backlog cleared out. They’ll be back pretty soon — I just need to get a handle on things.

…adding: it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m going to screw up somebody’s order. If you’re the lucky one, just shoot me an email and we’ll sort it out.

You think we were alarmists, overstating the case, those of us who spent the last eight years waving our arms wildly trying to draw attention to the fact that the Bush Administration considered itself above and beyond the law?

Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Who wrote these memos? All but one were crafted in whole or in part by the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the so-called “torture memos” that redefined torture much more narrowly than the U.S. definition of torture, and counseled the President how to torture and get away with it. In one memo, Yoo said the Justice Department would not enforce U.S. laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.

Olbermann quoted somebody last night, I think Scott Horton, to the effect that while we did not fully realize it at the time, we were effectively living in a dictatorship from 2001 through Jan. 20, 2009.

Meanwhile, Crazy Glenn Beck is suddenly very very concerned about government overreaching its power. Doesn’t everyone understand? he implores. This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats — it’s about our founding principles!

You’re eight years late to the party, CGB.

Anybody have a connection at Kidrobot? I’ve always thought that Sparky would lend himself well to vinyl…

I’ve been focused on writing next week’s strip and wasn’t paying attention, but you people bought a LOT of magnets since last night.

I’ll get them out as quick as I can! But be patient, this is a new ball in the juggler’s routine that is my ever-evolving career.

An outtake, if you will, from an earlier draft of this week’s cartoon. It’s a good bit, but I was trying to squeeze a lot in and something had to go.