Noted.

MANURE! Not everyone is in love with the White House Kitchen Garden. Michelle Obama's offense? She went organic. The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA), which flacks for agribusiness giants Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Crop Protection and Monsanto, doesn't want the first lady getting people thinking they can grow safe, healthy, chemical-free food in their backyards. "Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents," MACA complained to the White House. "The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs."

While the fertilizer peddlers say the White House garden's organic status causes them to "shudder," Detroit-area gardener Colleen Vanderlinden counters: "Organic gardening has reached a level of...popularity that it so wholeheartedly deserves. The First Lady taking the step of putting in an organic garden at what is not only the White House, but the people's house, rings not of some empty symbolic gesture, but of a sign that the tides are turning." That is what really makes the chemical companies shudder.

DODGY DRAFTS: Every year, American banks make billions of dollars in overdraft fees. In 2006 these individually small amounts netted $17.5 billion for the industry, and as the economy tanks, banks are expecting the bonanza to increase.

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