Of FISA and diverticula

The BooMan with the executive summary:

Paraphrased (and disguised) from a Capitol Hill source:

1. There will be no FISA votes before recess.

2. We will have the FISA vote on Tuesday July 8th, which will feature an up or down vote on Dodd/Feingold amendment to strip out retroactive immunity.

3. Senator Dodd will be controlling the 2-hour debate time leading up to the debate on the Dodd/Feingold amendment with Senator Leahy getting 10 mins.

4. Following the votes on amendment(s) there will be another cloture vote.

5. Prior to the cloture vote, there will be up to 60 minutes for debate equally divided and controlled between the Leaders or their designees, with Senator Leahy controlling 10 minutes. Senator Feingold will control an additional 30 minutes and Senator Dodd will control an additional 15 minutes.

Between now and July 8th we must work a miracle. We have won a temporary reprieve. Now is not the time for complaining but for organizing. Suggestions?

Well, Tuesday July 8th is my 50th birthday, so my suggestion is that we all celebrate it this way:

So here's a fantastic opportunity to talk to your Senators, when they're home for the most patriotic of all holidays, about what this bill means to you as a constitutent. If they're having town meetings, please attend and bring up the bill, or try to schedule individual meetings with them.

Senator Tamaulipeca Jacket -- 202-224-2934 -- and Senator Perjury Technicality -- 202-224-5922.

In other 50-year-old news, I had my colonscopy yesterday morning, causing me to miss the TexBlogPAC event, complete with VIPs. (Had I attended I would've urged Chris Bell to run for state Senator.)

But instead I enjoyed a little Demerol -- it really relieved the lingering pain in my shoulder from the adhesive capsulitis I have been suffering from -- and looked at teevee pictures of the inside of myself. The colon (well, mine, anyway) is not gray or blue but actually orange, which is why, as part of the preparations for the event, I was instructed not to eat anything red or orange in color. It's bad enough being limited to clear broths, but green Jell-O? The grape popsicles were good though.

Because my maternal grandfather died of colon cancer, in his sixties -- he passed away three weeks before I was born, which if you've been keeping up is almost precisely fifty years ago -- it's been a good idea for people in my family to have this routine screening performed, as suggested by the medical advisors, at age 50 and at subsequent intervals thereafter as determined. Sure enough, I had one small polyp which was removed and two diverticula, which earned me a scolding about fiber in my diet. I'll call in about a week after they biopsy the polyp for results.

The most painful thing was actually the MoviPrep taken before and the bloating immediately after. The procedure itself was unremarkable.

We're good to go for the Red Sox-Astros this weekend, and the special Boston buffet being served at the ballpark. It's going to take a lot of eating to refill that 23 feet of lower intestine, after all.

Now go back and click on all those links up there, and read them each thoroughly.