Memo to Dennis Hastert

In case you need a reminder to make sure your brain is in gear prior to opening your piehole:

1:55 P.M. - COLUMBIA, IL (AP): Glen Mueller's unfolding corn harvest is fraught with quandaries far larger than the machinery that dwarfs him on his land outside of Columbia, Illinois, near Saint Louis.

Last year's record yields are a faded memory, replaced by crops thinned by months of drought. With better crops elsewhere in the Corn Belt, he's facing low market prices.

And now he's worried about whether fallout from Hurricane Katrina will push up the cost or lead to delays in getting crops to export terminals.

His luck may well depend on efforts to clear the wreckage of Katrina, which damaged key shipping hubs at New Orleans and snarled barge traffic already slowed by low Mississippi River levels.

The bottleneck is squeezing farmers' ability to get their grain downriver and on to foreign markets. (my italics)