Thanks to the continuing economic meltdown, don't be surprised if this is the last holiday season when you aren't universally charged sales taxes on your online purchases.
As it is now, some states require Internet merchants to collect state levies, but enforcement is all but nonexistent. With state treasuries increasingly going dry, however, pressure on Congress to make it mandatory coast-to-coast is building fast.
There has been an ongoing battle over online sales taxes for about a decade. Amazon and eBay are against collecting them, arguing it is too complicated and onerous. On the other side is the National Retail Federation, which contends it is unfair that brick-and-mortar stores must collect the taxes while Internet stores do not since it allows them to sell their goods for less.
State legislators, who desperately need the new revenue, are turning up the heat, and they think the new Congress might be more receptive than previous ones. If he has an opinion, President-elect Barack Obama hasn't yet made it public.
Look for the Department of Homeland Security to finally issue regulations regarding the buying and selling of ammonium nitrate -- a fertilizer used as a key explosive ingredient by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and assorted terrorists around the world.
Under the proposed new rule, which is expected to go into effect early next year, buyers and sellers of the fertilizer must register with Homeland Security before the transactions occur. Records of all sales and transfers must be kept for at least two years, and any loss or theft must be reported within one day.
NASA reports that the Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual maximum size on Sept. 12, when it stretched for 10.5 miles -- a bit less than the 10.6 miles it encompassed in 2006, but more than its 9.7 million square miles last year.
But don't break out the aerosol cans yet. The September reading was the fifth-largest in the 30 years that the ozone hole has been measured.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has recently returned to Iraq's government the remnants of priceless ancient Cuneiform clay tablets that ICE agents had seized in a 2001 investigation. The tablets had been held in high-security evidence lockers in the U.S. Custom House, which was located in one of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Pieces of the ancient relics were salvaged by agents searching the rubble left by the twin towers' collapse. They were among 1,046 cultural antiquities repatriated by ICE to Iraq in September.
Let's face it: 50 years after Sputnik, most Americans are still a bit fuzzy on more than a few concepts of science. And while shows delving into science and myths hold a certain cable audience, there's a lot of techno-gullibility out there.
Hoping to better educate folks -- and burnish the image of science -- the National Academy of Sciences made a Hollywood announcement recently of the Science and Entertainment Exchange -- a clearinghouse to match writers, directors and producers with leading experts on science and medicine topics before they portray them in television, films and video games.
Director Jerry Zucker and his producer wife, Janet, head up the advisory board, along with academy prez Ralph Cicerone.
Legislation we'd love to see, courtesy of the 111th Congress:
The Snowe-Flake Act to promote winter sports, sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
The Green-Bean bill to encourage more vegetable consumption, sponsored by Reps. Gene Green, D-Texas, and Melissa Bean, D-Ill.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com and Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com.)
Washington Calling
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