From ESPN:

Atlanta, Houston, Miami and Tampa, Fla., were selected as the four finalists for the 2009 Super Bowl.

The four were recommended by a committee of owners at a meeting in Atlanta on Wednesday. One of the four will be chosen as host by the league's owners next May.


This season's game will be played Feb. 6, 2005, in Jacksonville, Fla. The 2006 game will be in Detroit, with Miami host for the 2007 game and Phoenix in 2008.

Those other three are certainly fine, fun cities with wonderful people (well, maybe not Miami and I don't think they're seriously in the running for '09 anyway since they are hosting in '07, because would the NFL dare give any city the Supe twice in three years?), but the simple truth is:

Houston gave the world Janet Jackson's nipple (guard).

And isn't that the kind of entertainment we all, deep down, really want?

If you expect more than just football and erectile dysfunction commercials on Super Sunday; if your family craves gratuitous nudity followed immediately by the blinding irony of howling, sputtering conservative (faux) outrage, then you want the Super Bowl in Houston.

Admit it. You know that's what you want.

What you reallyreally want.

Is the noose tightening around the neck of the Imperial Bugman, La Cucaracha Grande de Tejas, the self-proclaimed "Federal Government", Tom DeLay?

Or will he manage to scuttle back under the baseboards (again)?

The Stakeholder has the story:

A company that made a $50,000 contribution to a Republican political action committee has agreed to cooperate with a state investigation into possible illegal campaign contributions in exchange for the dismissal of charges against it, according to a motion approved by a judge Thursday.

Diversified Collections Services, Inc. was one of eight corporations accused of giving a total of $190,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority during the 2002 legislative campaign. The use of corporate money for political purposes is illegal in Texas.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle said in the motion to dismiss that the company agreed to cooperate with the state "in its prosecution of any other indicted person for any offense related to the corporate contribution."

Three associates of Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay also have been indicted in the ongoing investigation.

One can only hope that the captured canaries at Diversified Collections will actually sing enough to nail our Dear Majority Leader once and for all.