The Conservative Cat

Lennie at CrossBlogging is starting a list of Illinois Bloggers. The actual list-- which includes RSS feeds for all the blogs-- is at http://www.illinoisbloggers.com. He currently has four center-left blogs and seven center-right blogs. We don't show up on either list, since we're technically a Foaming-at-the-Mouth-Right blog.

Iowa Hawk is celebrating Halloween with a report on the little-known Fifties horror flick The Blog, which recounts the adventures of Biff Baxler and his shoulder-shimmying girlfriend Darla as they try to stop an evil force from consuming local media outlets.

Aaron of Free Will reports on a genuine Illinois tragedy: the passage of the AllKids plan. The title gives away the ending: Bill That Says Nothing Passed By Senate That Gets Paid Too Much.

Jeffrey Trigg of Random Act of Kindness has a short but funny story about Peoria Politics. Sometimes it's not a good idea to demand things from the taxpayers.

Illini Girl returns from a month-long absence to inform us that Rumors of her blog's death are greatly exaggerated. This is especially good news if you are a fan of Illini Basketball.

Bloggo Chicago has proof of an unusual phenomenon: a full inbox is not always stressful.

For some time now, Bruno Behrend of Extreme Wisdom has been talking up his Plan for an Illinois Rennaisance. This plan involves converting education funding from a locally-administrated property tax to the statewide income tax, paying schools on a per-student basis rather than on the basic of their local property tax revenue, reducing administrative mandates to trim costs, and allowing school choice. Bruno has been refining this plan steadily over the past few weeks in response to comments from readers. This week, Bruno points out that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is attempting to implement part of the Rennaisance Plan, showing that this approach transcends normal political boundaries. In Britain, as in America, the opponents of such plans are not the Left or the Right, but the teachers' unions.

In The Best Possible Outcome, diehard White Sox fan Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House talks about the other big story of last week, the withdrawal of Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court. Rick points out that a Presidency weakened by indictments against top officials for the Valerie Plame leak, the best possible outcome at this point may be significantly worse than the anti-Miers forces expect.

Mark of Liberty Just in Case has not felt very much like blogging lately, but he finds new resolve in a Peggy Noonan opinion column. The Twenty-First Century is being defined by a new kind of war, one in which words are just as important as conventional weapons.

Eyes on the Ball has a news story you won't see anywhere else. It seems that French President Jacques Chirac is not happy about Iran's loose lips.

Finally, The Hungry Writer has a vignette about an astronomer thinking on the nature of human love. Cats are simple: love means sharing your food. For humans, it's apparently a whole different order of magnitude.

That's it for this week. We'll be back next Sunday. If you want to participate, submit an article using our handy carnival submit form before the deadline Saturday night. Then come back Sunday night for another edition of the Carnival of Vicious, Invading Paleface Bastards!

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat