Comments on a couple of stories I've seen in the last day or so.

1. You've all probably heard by now about the cow in Washington that had mad cow. While that concerns me, what concerns me more is that even after the cow tested positive, the "unaffected" bits of cow were allowed into processing. Most quotes I've read makes this practice seem perfectly normal. I can't say I share the sentiment. I may be over-reacting, but I'd like to think that when it comes to food safety a little over-reacting is OK.

I'm also of the understanding that a law that would have prevented meat from mad cows from going to processing was passed by the Senate but died in the House. I'm sure there are some holiday steaks going to honored representatives as we speak.

2. Ralph Nader isn't running for president, at least as a Green. This leaves the party with several options, the most notable of which is Peter Camejo, one of the 800 or so people who ran for governor in California during the recall. He finished fourth with three percent of the vote.

Related to this the Greens are trying to figure out if they should run a national campaign or a "safe state" race so as to not draw off votes from the Democractic candidate. I don't think that's going to be as much of a problem this time around, especially if Dean gets the nod. I think he'd appeal to the Green crowd a lot more than Al Gore. There's also some percentage of voters out there who were just sick and tired of the Clinton-Gore thing and voted Nader in, well, maybe not protest. Call it resignation, I suppose.

In any event, they should run a national campaign. If they're serious about being a viable third party option, what's the point in skipping states? Might as well continue to build a base.