Conservative Corner (my brother, Dan)
Unashamed
(my brother, Scott)
Crazy Aunt Purl
(my friend Laurie)
There's Pie In the Lunchroom
(my friend Chuck)
Too Fat For Ponies
(my friend Sam)
Nashville Junk
(a Tennessean insider)
Recent posts:
2006
March 6-10, 2006
Feb. 27 - March 3, 2006
Feb. 20-24, 2006
Feb. 13-17, 2006
Feb. 6-9, 2006
Jan 30-Feb 2, 2006
Jan 23-27, 2006
Jan 16-20, 2006
Jan 3-11, 2006
2005
Dec 27-30, 2005
Dec 19-22, 2005
Dec 8-16, 2005
Dec 1-7, 2005
April 7, 2006
So I drop Max off at school the other day and head into work. Just as I turn the corner, I notice a new billboard has been put up:
I nearly ran off the road.
What's funny is that I know her. We were in the ROTC together in college. Leah Hulan is a former Miss Tennessee and former Army Intelligence officer. Now she and her husband own a bail bond service. Evidently, she's about to shoot a pilot for a reality series on Country Music Television. She's one of the nicest people I met while in the ROTC, but when she's blown up to 15 feet tall, she's a little scary.
Rozzy has a new phrase. Last night at dinner she kept saying "Oh, for Pete's sake." Except that she doesn't really know what she's saying, she just understands the context in which it should be said. She tried to teach Max the phrase:
"Say 'Over',"
"Over."
"Say 'Peak'."
"Peak."
"Say 'Sake',"
"Sake."
"Over peak sake."
"That's not right, Rozzy."
"Do as I say!"
She's become quite the bossy boots.
Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate...And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself...
That was the first time I have ever heard anyone stand up to Bush and say what needed to be said. Harry Taylor was at one of Bush's townhall meetings yesterday and layed it all out for him: the domestic spying, his anti-choice positions, his treatment of prisoners and said point blank -- I'm ashamed and scared of my leadership in Washington.
To Bush's credit, he let the man have his say before he dodged the issues brought up. Bush limited his response to defending the need to keep tabs on terrorists. That's not the issue. The issue is keeping tabs on terrorists through the legal mechanisms in place.
Usually at these events, Bush gets softball questions like this:
Q Right. And I wanted to say to you, Mr. President, that on the war on terror, Social Security, the tax cuts, Dubai Ports, immigration, you have shown immense political courage. And I really think that you will be vindicated on all of those positions, as Ronald Reagan was, for example. And also I wanted to know what else would it take for me to get my picture taken with you?
But not Harry Taylor. He pointed to the elephant in the room and said "Hey, look at that elephant over there." Way to go, sir.
The more I think about Bush authorizing those leaks, the angrier I get. You can argue until your blue in the face about whether it was legal for him to do so, but I think the legality is a red herring here. Let's look instead at the reasons behind the leak.
Bush authorized Scooter to leak portions of the Iraqi National Intelligence Estimate to journalists in an effort to build support for the war -- specifically, that Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear weapons program.
Now the NIE, which has since been declassified, shows that Bush knew as far back as Oct. 2002 that there was considerable disagreement in the intelligence community over the accuracy of that assertion. But Bush only leaked the parts that bolstered his case for war. So, it was a purely political leak. That is to say, not in the best interests of the country, but an effort to save Bush's political future.
See now why the legality of it is a secondary issue? We have a president who is willing to leak national security secrets for purely political reasons. Not only that, but once the investigation into the Plame leak began, President Bush repeatedly lied to the American people when he said he didn't know who was leaking classified information and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. It turns out he was at the bottom of it.
From Slate:
All presidents engage in this hypocrisy, but Bush has made it Texas-sized by putting on such a show about leaks during his time in office. He's done everything short of forming a Department of Anti-Leaking. The most recent example has been the attack on the New York Times for printing leaks about the NSA wiretap operation, but President Bush has been at it for years. In October 2001, after reading a Washington Times story that described terrorist camps in Afghanistan that the CIA and Pentagon had targeted for destruction, Bush told aides, "an act of treason was committed in the newspaper this morning." He called the four top congressional leaders to inform them that he had ordered the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon to sharply reduce the number of lawmakers eligible for classified briefings on the war. Members of Congress, Bush was saying, could not be trusted. Bush backed down a week later, and the pertinent members of Congress were quickly brought back into the loop.
Doesn't this make those of you who voted for him angry? Or at least dissappointed? If not, then is there anything Bush could do that would change your mind? Seriously, I'm talking to the 36 percent or so that still support this man. Why do you do it? Bill Clinton lied about an extra-marital affair the the Republicans screamed "rule of law!" and impeached him. Bush lied about leaking classified information and the GOP doesn't even want to hold hearings. I'm staring to agree with Harry Taylor.
Then there are the DeLay supporters in Texas. DeLay has quit, but they can't let it go. So they crashed a press conference held by Nick Lampson, the Democrat running for DeLay's seat. They chanted and waved signs and ran around in circles disrupting the event. Some reports say they got physical with some of the Lampson supporters in the crowd. The whole thing was organized by Chris Homan, DeLay's campaign manager.
Classy.
See? See? I told you. I freaking told you. Alberto Gonzales, testifying before Congress, about Bush's illegal domestic spying program was asked point blank if Bush felt he had the authority to listen in on purely domestic telephone calls.
"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.
For Bush, there is no rule of law.
Sometimes The Onion outdoes itself.
Michael Burks is the third Homeland Security officer to be arrested for trying to have sex with a child. He got stung on Dateline NBC. What exactly is going on over at DHS? Do they not run background checks on these people? And if they do, then what's the point if the checks don't turn up pedophiles?
Have a good weekend and try to keep your kids safe from DHS.
April 6, 2006
I, for one, am a bit surprised that Scooter Libby has testified that Bush authorized him to leak portions of a highly classified national intelligence assesment on Iraq in the lead up to the war. I assumed that Cheney would have been the one giving Scooter his marching orders, establishing a bubble of protection around Bush.
I guess I was wrong.
And while I shouldn't be all that surprised that the White House press corps didn't ask Scott McClellan a single question about this new revelation, I am regardless. They had shown some signs recently of growing a collective spine.
What really doesn't surprise me is the White House position on the leaks, namely that if the president decides to leak something, it's automatically declassified. That's very similar to Nixon's idea of presidential prerogative: if a president does it, then it isn't illegal.
Of course in this case it is legal. The president can declassify something if he likes. However, there is a procedure to follow -- memos to write, papers to sign -- all stuff that Bush really hates. So instead of actually declassifying the NIE, he had a super secret declassification in which only himself, Cheney and Scooter (plus whomever he leaked it to) would know that it was declassified. Nice.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is pushing the Prevention First Act. This bill will approach the abortion issue from a different angle:
The bill would prohibit group health plans from excluding contraceptive drugs, devices and outpatient services if they cover the cost of other prescription drugs and outpatient services. It would also require the secretary of health and human services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to healthcare providers and require hospitals receiving federal money to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.
The bill would also mandate that federally funded programs provide information about contraceptives that is medically accurate and includes data on health benefits and failure rates.
What the bill really does is take into account the larger agenda of the anti-choice conservatives who are plotting to get rid of all forms of birth control. Bravo.
Mel Brooks is going to produce "Young Frankenstein" on Broadway for next year's season.
Back in the early days of Comedy Central, I used to watch a show out of Seattle called "Almost Live." It was a sketch comedy show featuring an ensemble cast and the sketches were very funny. Each episode opened similarly. It would be a scene from a fictional program that would be interupted to bring you the show. For example, in one episode you see two guys playing chess. Just as one guy makes his move, he's tackled by a group of men from off camera. "Australian Rules Chess will not be seen tonight so we may bring to you 'Almost Live.'" Funny stuff.
I bring this up because one of the cast was a guy named Bill Nye. He later became "The Science Guy" and had a kid's show. I don't know if it's still on, but evidently, he's still getting speaking gigs because there was a bit of a controversy during his last appearance.
Evidently, he questioned the Biblical origins of the universe and upset some people in the audience.
Well what do you know? It looks like the House GOP is starting to get it. Rep. James Sensenbrenner tore into Alberto Gonzales over his stonewalling them regarding the president's illegal wiretapping program.
“How can we discharge our oversight if, every time we ask a pointed question, we’re told the program is classified?” Sensenbrenner asked Gonzales near the start of a lengthy hearing on the department’s activities. “I think that ... is stonewalling.”
Simple answer: you can't.
My kids have been watching "Wonder Pets" on Nickelodeon. It's a new show that features three classroom pets: a hamster, a turtle and a duckling who go on adventures to help animals in trouble. It's cute, but what I find most interesting about it is that it is basically an operetta. Much of the dialogue is sung and the forms draw much of their style from opera.
Dollie first pointed this out to me and now the NYT has reported about it.
April 5, 2006
Okay, perverts, let's get something perfectly clear. The internet is not the place to be trolling for little girls to have sex with. Oh, it may seem like the perfect solution to your particular problem, but it isn't. Just ask Brian J. Doyle, a deputy press secretary with the Department of Homeland Security.
Doyle, 55, was arrested in in Maryland for trying to seduce a 14-year-old girl in Polk County, Florida over the internet. Thing is, it wasn't a 14-year-old girl. It was an undercover cop.
Doyle was chatting with the fictional girl online when police officers and secret service agents knocked on his door to arrest him, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd during a late Tuesday night news conference.
They seized his home computer and other materials, Judd said.
Undercover detectives knew Doyle would be home Tuesday night because the ``girl'' promised she would send nude photos of herself through a Web cam, Judd said.
"She said, `I have access to a Web cam, and Mom's gone tonight,''' Judd said.
Detectives interviewed Doyle Tuesday night, and he acknowledged soliciting the teenager, Judd said.
Evidently, he sent her gifts and chatted her up quite often. What a ridiculously stupid thing to do.
And if he were the only one, then it might not get so much attention, but a second Homeland Security official was arrested. This one for exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl in a mall food court.
Frank Figueroa is one of Florida's highest ranking federal officers. Not only that, but he used to be head of Operation Predator -- a program that tracked down sexual predators who prey on children.
According to mall security reports, after Figueroa fled the scene, two more security officers approached him in the parking lot and asked why he was running. He said he was trying to find his car. Officer Kevin Williams offered to help him find the car, but he said Figueroa first needed to talk to security about an incident in the food court.
"Mr. Figueroa then pulled out his government ID and stated to me that he didn't do anything in the food court," Williams' report states. Figueroa walked toward his car, and Williams followed, radioing to security Sgt. Robert Francisco.
As Francisco approached the car, Figueroa pulled down the passenger-side sun visor in his government car, revealing red and blue strobe lights. Francisco told Figueroa that Orlando police were on the way and asked him to wait.
He originally plead "not guilty" but has since changed that to "no contest." If convicted, he can face up to a year in prison, where he can expose himself as often as he likes, I suppose. What kills me about this story is that this guy was in charge of a national program to fight criminals like himself. Where does the Bush administration find these people?
Then there is the case of Clifton Bennett, 19-year-old son of Arizona State Senate President Ken Bennett. Young Clifton and his friend Kyle Wheeler were arrested in Phoenix for jamming a broom handle into the "rectal area" of 18 little boys all between the ages of 11 and 15.
One would think that this would be considered a sex crime, but when your daddy is a state senator, you get the charges reduced from 18 counts of sexual battery to one count of aggravated assault -- a charge which lets you avoid becoming a registered sex offender. It also allows you to avoid jail time.
Understandably, the parents of the victims are a little peeved.
Today we have a better idea of why DeLay waited so long to resign. Officially, it was because he considered his Republican primary challengers to be traitors and backstabbers so he wanted to win the nomination and give the party the opportuntiy to appoint his replacement. In actuality, he stayed in the race because campaign regulations say that campaign funds can be used for legal defense. He had to raise enough money to pay his lawyers.
Here's some advice for you teenage girls out there. If your 22-year-old boyfriend wants you to hold his drugs for him while he goes to the courthouse to see his probation officer, sit in the car.
A new dinosaur has been discovered. This one resembles a 7-ft tall turkey. That's a lot of white meat.
I saw a bumper sticker today that made me laugh. It said "My gamer fragged your honor student." I'm not much of an online gamer. I've tried "City of Heroes" but found it a little dull and repetative. I haven't played World of Warcraft, which is the biggie right now.
As I understand it, in World of Warcraft (or WoW as it is known) you can either be a member of the Alliance (which are humans) or the Horde (which are goblins or trolls or whatnot). People who play online form guilds and group together to fight and live in this online community.
A while back there was a glitch in the game in which characters were contracting a plague that was spreading very quickly and killing some low-level characters instantly. It made national news.
Recenty, a popular player died. One of his guild buddies logged on using his account so that the guild could pay their last respects. They had the character stand by a lake while his friends came by to say good bye. However, a rival guild attacked the memorial service and wiped everyone out. Then they posted video of the slaught online.
I don't have an emotional investment in the game, so I thought it was pretty funny. But to the hardcore gamers, it was a jerky thing to do.
Just so you know, with the money we've spent on the war in Iraq, we could have paid for 7,260,000 full-ride 4-year scholarships for American students.
April 4, 2006
I avoided the traditional April Fool's post this year. I really haven't given much thought to April Fool's day for a number of years now. When I first got into online journaling, I was part of a group called Archipelago. My first year with them, I organized an April Fool's prank in which several members wrote each other's entries for the day.
In my case, Pamie Ribon wrote mine and it was a lot of fun. But not much came of it and the group broke up when webrings gave way to blogrolls.
I didn't even have the gumption to pull a decent April Fool's joke on Max. I just lied to him and when he got all excited about it, I said "April Fool." After that, he questioned everything I said for the rest of the day.
Tom DeLay is out. He's figured out what the rest of us understood: he's not going to get re-elected. Rather than face the humiliation of losing his seat, he's resigning it. He's also changing his official residence to Virginia from Texas and says he's going to work to organize efforts to get more religion in government. I suggest he travel to Iran or Afghanistan. They have plenty of religion in government.
I pity the poor schlubs who ran against him in the primary. Tom DeLay won it handily and spent all kinds of money to get that nomination only to resign a week or so later. The people who were bribing him must be angry, but not as much as those who ran against him.
No, I'm guessing that the White House, the Congressional GOP and the people of Texas are breathing a sigh of relief that he's giving up the seat. I also don't believe he had much choice between the two toadies in D.C. and the three in Texas who are cooperating with the authorities.
Neil Boortz, a right-wing radio host and certified drinker of the GOP Kool-Aid, put his foot in it over the arrest warrant for Rep. Cynthia McKinney. If you haven't been keeping up, here is the story in a nutshell: Rep. McKinney, like all members of Congress, do not have to pass through the metal detectors. So, she walked around them. However, McKinney had just dramatically changed her hairdo and the Captial Hill cop didn't recognize her. So, he grabbed her arm. She turned around and either poked, punched or hit him (the details are sketchy). Now the cops want an arrest warrant for assault.
Good luck with that.
Now, back to Neil Boortz: he went on the air Friday and said McKinney's new hair style made her look like "a ghetto slut," "a welfare drag queen," and "like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence."
Boortz claimed at the time that he was entitled to make fun of anyone's hair because he has had to endure all sorts of comments about his bald head. Keith Oberman probably said it best:
"Here's another one, you're a bald racist."
Boortz apologized on Monday for his comments saying "I've known Cynthia McKinney for a long time, and there is no way in the world that that word should be used to describe her or her hairdo or any woman." One wonders what happened between Friday and Monday.
After last night's episode, I think the guys at "24" are just messing with me.
Last weekend I walked over to my neighbor Badger's house. He has a freshly tilled garden patch and was using his extra hour of daylight to get some bell peppers in the ground. He asked if I'd like to help.
"Do you know how much trouble I'd be in if Dollie found out I was gardening somewhere else? I've got plenty of my own dirt to turn over."
David Brooks says the GOP may lose the House in November.
I'm really enjoying the new "Doctor Who" on SciFi. I have the advantage of never having seen any of the previous series, so I can approach it with fresh eyes. It's been a lot of fun so far. There are some silly bits that are not as endearing as the writers had hoped, but the stories are compelling and interesting and the guy playing the Doctor is charming. With Trek gone and Battlestar Galactica in reruns, it's my only Sci-Fi outlet.
Law Day is coming up on May 1. It was enacted by President Eisenhower and first celebrated in 1958. It was conceived as an answer to the Communist's "May Day" celebration. The American Bar Association set this year's theme: Separate Branches, Balanced Powers. The ABA recognizes that the separation of powers is in danger because President Bush wants to establish an imperial presidency.
I'm reminded of the words I just read by Justice Louis Brandeis:
"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power."
Between the signing statements giving himself a pass on the laws we all have to follow and Bush's circumventing the FISA courts to spy on Americans, one wonders whatever happened to Bush's view on strict constructionism?
I didn't even know they were making a film based on "Dallas" and now I read that the director quit because of the casting choices. I wonder which choice it was: John Travolta as J.R. Ewing? Jennifer Lopez as Sue Ellen? Luke Wilson as Bobby?
A new study just released states that people who go to church regularly live longer than those who don't. The study leader, Daniel Hall, a surgical resident and Episcopal priest had this to say:
"There is something about being knit into the type of community that religious communities embody that has a way of mediating a positive health effect," he told LiveScience. Perhaps, he said, being involved in a religion "can then decrease your level of stress in life or increase your ability to cope with stress."
March 31, 2006
Someone explain this to me. Jack Abramoff, who plead guilty to wire fraud, bilking clients out of millions of dollars and bribing government officials gets less than five years in prison (so far). But 21-year-old Anthony Mesa of Orlando, Fla. pees in a Mountain Dew bottle and sells it to a construction worker and is facing 30 years?
Never will I ever complain about my commute again. In Odessa, Del. a truck containing five tons of processed human waste overturned during the morning commute on DEL 1.
That's not a pleasant way to start the day.
Here's an interesting aside for all you corporate-raiding day-traders out there. Even in this era of Sarbanes-Oxley, it remains perfectly legal for Congress and staff to trade stocks based on information they have which is not public.
She's still Tori the horse-faced girl.
My mechanic called me "Mr. Clean" yesterday.
Here's a scientific study certain to get the evangelicals up in arms.
Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" for specific patients, for whom they were given the first name and first initial of the last name.
The patients, meanwhile, were split into three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren't prayed for but were told it was a possibility.
The researchers did not ask patients or their families and friends to alter any plans they had for prayer, saying such a step would have been unethical and impractical.
Bottom line: prayer didn't improve recovery and those who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher complication rate.
Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.
Now, Christian leaders will most likely attack the study as proving nothing, which is their right and I'm not going to argue the point. However, if the study had had dramatically different results, one wonders if it would have been accepted as fact.
Okay let's just say it: Bush is a liar. At his recent press conference when Helen Thomas asked him what his real reason for going to war was, after hemming and hawing for a while he said this:
"I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the [United Nations] Security Council; that's why it was important to pass [Resolution] 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it."
This is a bald-faced lie. Hans Blix and his team were in Iraq. Saddam not only let them in, but was fully cooperating with the inspectors. He even disclosed to the UN that he had no WMDs. It was Bush who warned the inspectors to get out of Iraq before the bombing was to start. Yet even now, years later, he tells the same lies he has repeated over and over.
Man, does the Bush administration love corporate welfare. They gave a Fortune 500 company with a 3Q net income of $1.2 billion $1 million in Homeland Security taxpayer dollars to build a fence around their oil refinery. Why would a Fortune 500 company seek out a government grant to build a fence? Because the money is there for the asking.
Back in my college days I worked with this guy named Phil. Phil was a grown man with an ex-wife and two daughters. He went to school during the day to get his degree in aerospace technology and worked 3rd shift at a local motel to pay the rent. He had a hefty child-support payment on top of it.
When Phil graduated, he got a job making more money. He tried to keep this a secret from his ex-wife because he knew she'd want more money out of him. But he messed up and missed a couple of child support payments and got dragged back into court. I remember asking him at the time why he didn't just pay the child support and get her off his back. That, it seemed to me, was the easiest way to keep her in the dark about his new job.
"Because this is the only way I can get her," he told me.
"Well, your desire to 'get' your ex has screwed you," I said. "Now step up and support your kids."
I was reminded of that exchange when I read in the Wall Street Journal that Michael Scanlon, the former DeLay aide and Abramoff toady who is currently under indictment and cooperating with the feds had a similar situation. And, much like Phil, he screwed himself.
Scanlon divorced his wife when he was a DeLay aide making about $155,000. He had $39,000 in debt and owed about $19,000 on his credit card. The courts ordered him to pay $1,680 a month in child support.
Scanlon left DeLay's office and began working for Abramoff, making considerably more money. He began dating and was eventually engaged to another DeLay aide named Emily Miller. Scanlon rennovated a $4.7 million home and presented it to her as well as a 4-carat engagement ring. He was tooling around the country in a private jet, rented a $17,000 a month apartment in D.C., owned four other houses and was living the high life.
Scanlon and Miller set a date and sent out "save-the-date" cards to friends annoucing their engagement. Then, Scanlon broke it off and started dating a 24-year-old waitress. Miller, angry and hurt, began to question how Scanlon, who works summers as a lifeguard and didn't seem to do very much at his PR firm could live his lifestyle. When Scanlon married his new girlfriend, Miller contacted Scanlon's ex-wifem Carrie Anne Liipfert. Miller told her about the millions Scanlon was spending and the properties he bought.
Liipfert took Scanlon back to court for more child support. Scanlon fought it and refused to tell the court how much he made. Liipfert suggested the court subpoena Brian Mann, a former yoga instructor that Scanlon and Abramoff installed as director of a fake think tank they used to funnel client money.
Bingo - bango, everything starts falling apart.
The feds admit that it was Miller's information that lead to Abramoff and Scanlon's guilty pleas and may eventually drag down 20 congressmen and staffers including Tom DeLay. Oh, and Miller kept the ring.
Another DeLay aide has plead guilty to conspiracy charges and is cooperating with the feds.
The immigration reform bills being carried through Congress right now are going to bite the Republicans in their well-padded backsides. Bush has spent a great deal of effort courting the Hispanic population to get their votes. These bills have pretty much destroyed all that work.
For example, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Wingnuttia) says we should just ship all 11 million illegal immigrants out and "let the prisoners pick the fruits."
As much as I'd like to see DeLay, Abramoff, Libby and Cunningham spend about 15 back-breaking hours a day in the strawberry fields, it will cost a quarter of a trillion dollars to round up and deport the illegal immigrant population.
There are arguments to be made for bills that allow for large numbers of legal immigrants to come over each year. There are also good arguments to limit the number of immigrants crossing our borders. But the current plan to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country as guest workers with no chance of becoming citizens dooms 11 million people to a state where they are here for their labor and nothing else. That's wrong. It's unAmerican. So naturally, Bush is all for it.
There's an interesting article in the LA Times about how high school biology teachers are being challenged in class by students who are determined to bring God into the classroom even if the teacher's can't.
As his students rummage for their notebooks, Frisby introduces his central theme: Every creature on Earth has been shaped by random mutation and natural selection — in a word, by evolution.
The challenges begin at once.
"Isn't it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?" sophomore Chris Willett demands. " 'Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn't."
Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.
Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He's about to start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: "How are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could just be some deformed raccoon."
From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: "Those are real bones that someone actually found? You're not just making this up?"
"No, I am not just making it up," Frisby says.
One wonders how these kids' ministers would feel if, during a sermon on the creation, a group of people started heckling the minister for proof that Darwin is wrong.
Have a good weekend.
March 30, 2006
Rozzy gave Dollie a bit of a scare yesterday. She saw some bigger kids climbing a tree and decided she wanted to try. She's a great little climber and not the lease bit afraid of heights. But this time she fell out of the tree and onto her back. The screaming shocked Dollie enough to warrant a trip to the pediatrician.
She's fine, though -- a bit scraped up, but nothing serious.
I had breakfast this morning with a bunch of lawyers, legislators and judges at the Nashville City Club. Located at the top of the SunTrust Building downtown, the City Club is the sort of place one pictures in movies in television -- overstuffed leather chairs, lots of wood surfaces, golf magazines and newspapers spread about. The bathroom had mood lighting.
There were membership information packets spread out on a sideboard, but I didn't bother. I can't see myself rubbing elbows with the golf and martini set.
Watched the premier of "Teachers." Terrible, just awful. I immediately canceled the seaons pass on TiVo. What a waste of time.
Spike TV is going to produce a TV series based on "Blade."
Justice Scalia claims that the Boston Herald got the story about his alleged obscene gesture wrong. He said that the gesture in question: moving your fingers back and forth under the chin, was one of indifference, not an obscene gesture.
However, the photographer says that the Justice is lying:
“It’s inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment,” said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia’s insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper “got the story right.”
[...]
“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.
The translation of that phrase is vulgar. It suggests that the person it is directed to should commit an act that Scalia believes should be illegal. He said it, in church, during Lent. Oh well, at least he's against abortion and gay marriage, right?
My boss has taken to calling me "Lex" since I shaved my head. It could be worse, he could call me "Uncle Fester."
So there's this guy named Kaloogian who wants to take over convicted felon Duke Cunningham's (R-Federal Prison) House seat. Kaloogian is a full-on Bush supporter. He has drunk the Kool-Aid and asked for seconds.
He went to Iraq more than a year ago, but his web site says he "just got back." What's funnier was he posted a photo of a street scene in which he claims is proof that things in Iraq aren't as bad as the media reports. Problem is, it was a photo of a street in Turkey, not Iraq.
Called on his BS, he took the photo down, but not before issuing a statement:
Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.
This is one of the great talking points on the right -- if you disagree with Bush's policy, then you are opposed to fighting terrorism. What a pantload. I get so tired of hearing that. I'm all for fighting terrorism. But Iraq wasn't a hotbed of terrorism before we got there.
Kaloogian has replaced the photo with one of Baghdad, but it isn't the street-level photo he tried to pass off yesterday. This is an arial shot of the Green Zone -- hardly illustrative of how calm things are in the country.
Now Wikipedia has announced a new noun:
Kaloogian (n): A term that describes the use of a false or out-of-context image in order to advance an idea.
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.
That's the opening sentence for Murray Wass' new piece in the National Journal. It's dynamite stuff. It's about how Rove and the White House staff worked to keep the public from learning that Bush was warned off the Niger/yellowcake story, but included it in the SOTU speech anyway. He was also repeatedly warned that the aluminium tubes imported by Iraq were for conventional weapons and not for enriching uranium as Bush, Powell, Cheney and Rice all contended.
Rove's stategy was to keep a lid on what Bush was told until after the election. Just get past the election and then it won't matter if Bush lied.
We knew that already, of course, but it's good to see one's suspicions confirmed.
The Tennessean is reporting that large jars of peanut butter will no longer be allowed in prisons because inmates were smuggling in guns, cell phones and other contraband in them.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about efforts to expand sex education in public schools.
Did you know that Christianity is on the verge of being outlawed in America? Or that Tom DeLay's legal troubles spring from his public faith which is offensive to "those who despise the goals of Christ?"
Those were the lines being fed to the faithful at the War on Christians Conference. That and the homosexuals aren't nearly as ashamed as they ought to be.
Wow. This guy was one bad dude:
BOISE, Idaho - David Bleak, a Korean War medic who received the Medal of Honor for rescuing a comrade amid hand-to-hand combat in 1952, has died. He was 74.
[...]
The Army's description of his actions on June 14, 1952, said Bleak killed two of the enemy with his bare hands and a third with his trench knife, and then shielded a comrade from the impact of a grenade that had fallen near the man's helmet.
Though he was wounded in the leg, Bleak began to carry the injured soldier, the medal citation said. Attacked by two enemy soldiers with bayonets, "he grabbed them and smacked their heads together, then carried his helpless comrade down the hill to safety."
They don't make 'em like that anymore.
March 28, 2006
Let's have a little civics lesson today, shall we? Think back to your School House Rock cartoons and outline how a bill becomes a law. The House of Representatives and the Senate pass a bill with a simple majority. Then the bill is sent to the president for his signature. Right?
There is a bill, the senate version of which is titled S. 1932. It is a huge spending bill. The House and the Senate passed this bill with a very narrow margin. Cheney had to take time off from shooting his friends to break the tie in the Senate. It was a close vote and a hard road to get there.
But the two versions of the bill weren't identical. There was a $2 billion discrepency based on an obscure regulation regarding the time alloted to people who rent medical equipment for Medicare patients. Here's the deal: when the discrepency was discovered, rather than having either the House or the Senate revote, Speaker Hastert changed the House version of the bill to match the Senate's and sent it on to the president to sign, which he did with great ceremony.
Thus the Constitutional problem. The bill, which is being treated as law, is not Constitutional because it didn't meet all the requirements set out in the Constitution.
Hastert and Frist are trying to say that all a bill really needs is the signature of the President, the Speaker and the President of the Senate. They base this notion on an 1892 Supreme Court ruling Field v. Clark. The facts in that case are extremely different and really don't apply in this case.
A private citizen has filed suit and the case will likely end up in the Supreme Court. One wonders how Bush's cadre of "strict constructionists" will handle this.
In the face of dismal poll numbers, calls from Republicans to bring in some new blood and fear of losing one or both chambers in the midterm elections. Bush decides to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Cap Weinberger is dead. He was Reagan's Secretary of Defense and one of the key players in the Iran-Contra crisis. Poppy Bush pardoned him and several other Reagan cabinet members so the truth would never come out.
The Texas State Lege passed a law which makes it illegal for someone indicted for a felony to own a gun. Heh. This means Tom DeLay has to give up his concealed handgun license. He doesn't like that at all.
Larry the Cable Guy's movie stinks. Hand's up, who saw that coming?
Iraq has a democracy now and that's a good thing, I guess. But I don't see a lot of difference between the U.S. forcing democracy on countries and the old Soviet Union forcing communism on countries.
Growing up in the cold war, we were always told that the U.S. was vigilant against the spread of communism. We had to be because the Soviets were planning on turning the entire world into communits. America, on the other hand, believed in freedom and the power of the people to choose.
The NYT is reporting that senior Shi'ite officials in Iraq have been told by the U.S. ambassador that the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is no longer acceptable to Bush and that he better not be in charge anymore.
In Palestine, a Hamas government was elected democratically. The U.S. wasted no time in saying that we would not deal with a Hamas-led government.
So we like democracy, but only our particular flavor of democracy.
I have some acquaintences who have purchased a high-definition television. Each of them have told me the same thing independently. They make their decision on what to watch based on whether or not the signal is in "high-def."
It has gotten to the point where they will watch the farm report over other more desirable programming just to get that HDTV signal. I was reminded of that when, on Sunday night, the set up for "The Simpsons" was Homer's experience watching Lenny's high-definition television.
When Homer got back home, he was faced with his own TV.
"Lousy non-plasma TV, picture's so blurry. Might as well rub dirt in my eyes."
I don't own an HDTV and have no plans to get one in the near future. In fact, I don't even look at them in the stores for fear of coming home and having a similar reaction as Homer.
Ted's Band from "Scrubs" is actually a real acapella singing group. That's awesome.
Oh and yeah, O'Reilly is an idiot.
March 27, 2006
Dollie's show was great. She has an amazing group of kids who really pulled together a fantastic production of "Pirates of Penzance." The audience was lively and attentive. They laughed at 140-year-old jokes. Every cast group was in top form: the pirates, the daughters, the policemen . . . everyone. It's one of my favorite shows she's ever produced.
The police, in the second act, are a nice surprise for the audience. Dollie put them all in bobby helmets, big fake mustaches and had them dance around with truncheons. Great stuff. I went back stage during intermission and all the stage crew, the parent helpers and everyone were wearing the mustaches.
I swiped a few for Max and Rozzy.
They really had a lot of fun with them. At one point, Max put one on his forehead and said it was his angry face. Heh. Rozzy, somehow 
managed to hurt herself with them. She stuck one on her forehead, one under her nose and one under her chin. She looked like a circus freak. Pulling off the one under her chin made her cry.
In the photo above, Max looks like Gabe Kaplan or one of the Turkish soldiers from those episodes of M*A*S*H.
The two of them can be so funny, when they're not trying to do each other harm.
The pirate show was a blast and Dollie is on Spring Break this week.
"I've got a week off," she said at bedtime last night. "And I deserve it." I'm not going to argue. That's one of the main things I miss about working at the university -- the near constant holidays. That and the first week of Spring semester when all the co-eds come out to play.
Dollie shaved my head for me on Saturday night. Yeah, it's nothing but wild times at the Reed household. It's going to take some getting used to, but I have to say, I like it.
There are some issues that my shaved-headed friends didn't mention in their advice:
About a day after the shave, I found that the stubble made it difficult to slide my clothes over my head.
I'm constantly looking for other shaven heads when I'm in public.
I can now detect the slightest breeze and the most miniscule change in ambient temperature.
Girls want to touch it. Guys make a point of not wanting to touch it.
I'm looking forward to wearing more hats.
I haven't done any maintenance on it, yet. I'm waiting to see how long I feel I need to go between shavings. My son called me "egghead." My neighbor called me "Lex Luthor." A co-worker called me "Dr. Evil."
Last night at the mall, I saw my cousin Jeremy. He spotted the fam and told his wife "that can't be Dollie, that dude has a shaved head." Then he called me "Professor X."
I spent part of my weekend looking for a suitable head cover because the weather has been very chilly of late. But try to find a toque in Tennessee in March. I went to the Hot Topics at the mall and it made me feel old and unhip. If you've never been to a Hot Topics, it's a store for the "alternative" kids. Ever surface and display is painted black. Thrash metal music is bellowing out of the sound system. I'm the only customer without a piercing of some kind. I'm also the only customer with a wife and two kids.
I actually went in by myself to skulk around and see if I could find a hat that would keep my noggin warm and didn't say something stupid on it. No such luck. Everything had either a big skull, fuzzy stripes or said "Vote for Pedro."
Dollie was watching the kids by the fountain and followed me in after the kids threw their pennies and made their wishes.
"Hey, Ms. Boyd," came a call from behind the counter. One of Dollie's students was working there. She chatted for a while and pointed out that I'd shaved my head and was looking for a hat. He gestured toward the wall or hats I hadn't noticed before because the music was hammering my skull to the point of panic.
After deciding I didn't want a stocking cap with the Cheshire Cat from "Alice in Wonderland" on it or a pot leaf, I left.
For good.
Eventually, I found a nice cashmere/silk number on clearance at Dillards.
I told Dollie I wanted a tiny hat like Adabece wore in "Oz" that I can cock to the side at an impossible angle.
Why is Bush still in office? How many more lies will it take to run him out? Just last week, Bush made the point that he didn't want to go to war. He was forced to do so when Sadaam refused to disarm and disclose. He said when Sadaam wouldn't let the UN weapons inspectors do their job, he knew he had to act.
But the NYT has seen the British memo that outlines Bush's push for war from the beginning. It lists Bush's ideas for how to provoke Sadaam into a war.
And if you'll recall, as I do, the giant document dump Sadaam sent the UN, in it he said he didn't have any WMDs. He was disarmed and he did disclose. Bush just didn't believe him. And it was Bush who ordered the UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq, not Sadaam.
This war can be put squarely at Bush's feet. If it had gone well, then you know he would be taking credit for it.
Ben Domenech over at Redstate.org posted an apology for his apology, saying that he shouldn't have obfuscated in his first apology and that he was really, really sorry he plagarized that film review for National Review Online.
What kills me about all this hubub is that even in the face of actual wrongdoing. Even after the apologetic posts and the numerous examples of him claiming other people's work as his own, his defenders on the right are still carping about how the lefties were just out to get him because he's a conservative at the Washington Post.
That's not true. The lefties weren't out to get him because he's a conservative. They were out to get him because he's a hack conservative and the WaPo should have known better than to hire him in the first place.
He called Coretta Scott King a communist the day after her funeral. Why does that not send up a red flag at the Post?
Newt Gingrich has offered some advice for Democrats. He says an effective campaign going into the midterm elections in November would be to list the GOP scandals and at the end of the ad put "Had enough?" Heh.
Frist is retiring this November to take a run at the presidency. I wish him luck at getting the nomination. I'm sure he'll have the backing of the current administration as well as those Republicans who will fall for his particular line of bravo sierra. Like this email he sent out last week which included the following graph:
“The Democrat alternative to Republican efforts to restrain spending is clear: Continue to spend beyond our means, mortgaging our children’s future by saddling them with a debt of $8 trillion … and continue to ratchet up taxes to pay for their fiscal irresponsibility, stifling the American economy."
It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. The fact is that for the last six years, the GOP has been in control of the House, Senate and White House. When Bush took over, he had a $236 billion surplus. Alan Greenspan was afraid we were going to pay down the national debt too quickly.
Under Republican rule, we now have a $400 billion deficit and the national debt went from $5.7 trillion to $8.2 trillion. In fact, it was the GOP and not the Dems who voted to raise the debt ceiling to $9 trillion last week.
Any increases in spending, any mortgaging of our children's future and any saddling of debt came as a result of Republican efforts, not the Democrats. That's an undeniable fact. The Dems don't control anything, so you can't blame them when things are out of control.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia flipped off a reporter in church on Sunday. It was right after receiving the Eucharist.
A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.
"You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian."
Wow. I can see now why he's Bush's favorite justice.
