https://www.economist.com/fina...

Apologies for the paywall link, but I don't have another source at the moment.

Perhaps you meant ethylene, a relatively harmless compound that is emitted by ripening fruit and stimulates nearby cells to ripen more quickly. This is why it's recommended to ripen certain fruits and vegetables in paper bags (e.g. avocados.)

Phosgene is a chemical warfare agent from World War I. As sinister as some processed foods may be, I'm not sure they're to the point of using MWDs on our food yet...

Wrong. This bill was introduced April 1st as S.778 to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

THOMAS link: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:10:./temp/~bdcFpU::|/bss/|

Here's Rockefeller's press release: http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=311060&

Run, don't walk, to call your senators.

Nebraska also uses the same method as Maine to distribute their electoral votes. I think that if more states used such a system we would see more 50-state campaigns and platforms, rather than two candidates slugging it out over 1% of the vote in Ohio & Pennsylvania.

See: http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/me_ne.htm

While it might look like this is a feint to extract more contributions in the cable vs. DSL battle, I suspect that cable providers wouldn't mind using this legislation to degrade competing VoIP services either...