My cousin Dandy Nieuws insists he's going to start a blog any day now where we can come together to celebrate and gloat over the hard times befalling Republican politicians and their enablers in the business community. And there will be occasional bouts of genuinely good news, though I've warned him that he may run short of material.

In the meantime I thought I'd mention a few stories that caught his eye—

• After the Democrats picked up a House seat in Mississippi last week, the Republicans have now lost three special elections in a row. Of course the Democrats replacing them bear an eerie resemblance to their Republican predecessors.
• Alaskan Congressman Don Young, under investigation in a bribery probe, is reporting "no activity" in his legal defense fund. As a consequence he's had to spend over a million from his campaign fund for lawyers' fees. He might as well divert all of it. He's going to lose the election anyway, and his legal expenses are only going up, up, up!
• The Vatican is organising a conference next year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It will be interesting to see how the conference evolves. And a priest-astronomer is floating the notion that God may have created aliens elsewhere. (I foresee a severe immigration problem in our future.) There's evidently a push by the Roman Church to save science from the clutches of Evangelical know-nothings.
• And speaking of Evangelicals, pastor Joe Barron of the Prestonwood Baptist megachurch in Plano, Texas, was arrested Thursday after driving 3 hours to minister to someone he presumed to be a 13-year-old girl. He brought along a hymn book, some condoms and a minicam. I'm trying to rein in my imagination.
• Texans are also finding new uses for guns. Jorge Espinal of Ft. Worth was playing poker when he developed an itch. He went to the next room to look for a backscratcher and settled upon a revolver. Unfortunately the gun went off in mid-scratch and left him somewhat bloody but presumably without the itch.

With news like this, how can you not have a good weekend?

Tags: news and politics religion humor