Somebody remind Uncle Buzz.

Friendly reminder: I'm told that the official moment of the vernal equinox, which is the start of Spring here in the lovely Northern hemisphere, is tonight around 8 Eastern time.

Please note again that this is not to be confused with the Summer solstice, which is the beginning of Summer and happens around June 21st. Buzz Aldrin, I am looking at you.

Thanks to the interesting (some would say wacky) mind of Erin, an interesting fact/controversy has come to my attention. Modern pagans often associate the vernal equinox with the celebration of a (poorly documented) ancient goddesss of the Anglo-Saxons, Eostre. It's likely that the Christian holiday Easter got its English name from the Anglo-Saxons' holiday in honor of this goddess.

However, so far as the modern pagans' thing, it turns out the Eostre was mostly associated by the Anglo-Saxons with the month of April (thus the Easter thing), and was not really associated with the vernal equinox. So, probably the modern pagans are making a mistake by attaching Eostre to their celebration of the vernal equinox. Sorry, guys.

Check out the Wikipedia entry for what they say about this.

Anyway, vernal equinox it is, so I recommend you celebrate this occasion by drinking heavily and/or doing some outdoorsy thing, or whatever heathen rituals your non-Christian religion dictates.

Wasn't he a character on "The Muppet Show?"

Politics follow. Fair warning.

I've of course been following the trial and conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick "Shooter" Cheney.

(Sorry, couldn't resist. I know, it was too obvious.)

For those of you not following along, Scooter has been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for his actions during the investigation to find the leakers of the identity of Valerie Plame.

Was chatting about the conviction briefly with Pete yesterday. After I bemoaned the fact that we haven't actually managed to convict or even charge anyone for leaking the fricking information, Pete expressed the opinion that maybe now that can move forward. If Scooter is facing 20 years in prison and a fine of millions of dollars, which apparently he is, he'd have pretty strong motivation to turn on the people who did the actual leaking so as to save his own bacon. Perhaps motivation strong enough to overcome the whole White House inner-circle loyalty. 20 years in prison is a long time.

However. The defense team here wasted no time in proclaiming that they would a) ask for a new trial, and failing that b) appeal the verdict.

What I notice is that such proceedings could reasonably last for more than two years, until after the next election cycle. At which point no one would care.

This even aside from the fact that President Bush, whose primary characteristic seems to be loyalty to "his" people, could easily pardon Libby and skate for it in any case.

As a side note, Bush's post-Libby-conviction quote was that Scooter had done "amazing service for the American people" or some such. Hey, wait. I'm an American. What's Scooter done for me?

So, yeah. I'm going to go ahead and opine that in fact there is little or no pressure on Scooter to turn on the real leakers, and predict that sadly nothing substantive will come of this.