The Senate narrowly missed passing an amendment against burning the flag -- a periodic test to smoke out the craven ones in US politics.  This time it ensnared more Democrats than ever before.

A superstorm drenched much of the East Coast in up to a foot of rain, which caused our Research Director to remark to the Bucks County Courier Times in PA:

“Global warming is like putting the weather system on steroids,” Kert Davies said. “It makes droughts more intense, floods more intense and storms more intense and all of it more frequent.”
 
Which got us a complaint from Major League Baseball, which did not like the negative connotation that Kert gave to steroid use.  They want you to think of home runs when you think of steroids, not foul weather.

And speaking of foul weather, our explorers are about to complete the first ever journey by ski/canoe to the North Pole in the summer.  They are days away, it's a massive meltdown and they have been talking to climate scientists the whole way to help document the meltdown from global warming.  Don't miss the push to the finish: www.projectthinice.org

 And my favorite news of the week, uber investor Warren Buffett whose simple, honest clear-eyed approach to life and success has been built on a lifetime of inconoclastic moves, may have just made his greatest ever.  Instead of building his own foundation, he made plans to leave his fortune to the already towering Gates Foundation.  Imagine going down in history as the world's greatest philanthropist by doing one thing, giving the world's richest man 30 million dollars.  And I'll bet it works.  Happy Fourth of July.