Man about Murfreesboro

Today is "water day" at Rozzy's daycare. That means at some point she'll change into her swimsuit and get to play with hoses, sprinklers or water guns. She is very excited.

"Which do you like better," I asked. "The fact that it's water day at your school or that it isn't water day at Max's school?"

Do they have any kind of traditional value system at all, vis-à-vis what America used to be? Or are they taking their Mexican values, because most of them are Mexicans, and, you know, basically setting up Acapulco North?

Bush has chimed in on his view about the recent court decision shutting down his warrantless wiretapping program:

"I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live. We believe, strongly believe, it’s constitutional and if Al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know why they’re calling.”

What an idiotic thing to say. I mean it. I've called Bush dumb before, but this really takes the cake.

For one thing, no one is saying he shouldn't be listening in on the calls of terrorists. Of course you need to spy on terrorist communications. But there is a process in place by which this can be done legally and Bush doesn't want to follow the law. Why is that so hard to grasp? Why does Bush not want to follow the law?

Secondly, he has degrees from Yale and Harvard, you'd think they might have covered civics at some point. Federal Courts make decisions based on the law and the Constitution, not on the "nature of the world we live in." The courts are the final word on whether or not his warrantless wiretapping program is legal. Bush doesn't get to decide, neither do his lawyers in the Justice Department. The courts get to decide. This court said it was not only illegal, but if violated the Constitution. Does that not bother him?

Gonzales said yesterday "We also believe very strongly that the program is lawful." But the courts said that the FISA law is very specific about what you must do to tap someone's phone and the Bush administration isn't willing to do that. Gonzales says the RUMF (resolution to us military force) granted Bush extended powers which, when combine with his own powers as commander-in-chief, allows him to do whatever he wants.

The courts said the RUMF doesn't mention anything about wiretapping and since the program violates the 4th ammendment to the Constitution, then it doesn't matter what congress authorized because they cannot legislate powers outside the Constitution. Furthermore, any power granted Bush is through the Constitution so his commander-in-chief powers cannot grant him extra-constitutional authority.

When faced with a court that says your program violates the First and Fourth Ammendments as well as the FISA law and the Seperation of Powers Act, Bush says "well you just don't understand the nature of the world we live in." His surrogates say "we believe very strongly that the program is lawful."

The study, which examined the views of married women with children from April through this week, found that they support Democrats for Congress by a 12-point margin, 50 percent to 38 percent. That is nearly a mirror-image reversal from a similar period in 2002, when this group backed Republicans 53 percent to 36 percent. In 2004, exit polls showed, Bush won a second term in part because 56 percent of married women with children supported him.

I've been engaging in some friendly banter with some commentors on my brother's blog. Scott pointed out a story about a high school in Canton, Ohio that has a startling number of pregnant girls in the student body. Ofne of the administrators in the story is quoted as saying he didn't know how this happened. Which is funny and Scott said so.

This prompted a commentor to observe that if the schools were teaching the Bible, it wouldn't have. I pointed out the government's policy on abstinence-only programs and how if the students were given access to good information about birth control, it wouldn't have happened.

I should have just let it go. But the thing is, I can't. I consider myself a champion of the public school system. It cuts me to the quick when people talk about the schools like they're some sort of breeding ground (no pun intended) for moral decay. I'll defend them loudly and proudly because the U.S. has a great system in which everyone gets the opportunity to learn.

I know plenty of people who have decided to home school their kids. That's fine. Go forward and be strong. I'm also reading where more and more people are deciding to home church their families. To them I say God bless.

A federal judge in Detroit has ruled that the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional. This is exactly what Bush was afraid of. He knew that the instant this program was put before an actual judge in an actual court, it would be knocked down.

"IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants, its agents, employees, representatives, and any other persons or entities in active concert or participation with Defendants, are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (hereinafter “TSP”) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hereinafter “FISA”) and Title III;

"IT IS FURTHER ORDERED AND DECLARED that the TSP violates the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III;

There you have it. And because it has been declared unconstitutional, Congress cannot pass legislation to legalize it. The only path is to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Well, there is always a third option: Bush could ignore the order and continue the program. But if he gets caught, he gets impeached.

They caught the guy who killed JonBenet Ramsey. He claims it was an accident, that he wanted to kidnap her and everything went pear-shaped, so he strangled her. The difference would be first versus second-degree murder and the death penalty.

I'll have to go back to my archives and check, but I probably wrote at the time that the parents were to blame. That was where the police were focusing at the time. Let that be a lesson to me and everyone else who "knew" it was the Ramseys.

After ten years, I really didn't think we'd ever know for sure who did it, but Jon Mark Kar has confessed. He's been living in Bangkok, Thailand -- a prime sexual tourism destination for people who like underage girls.

One of the reasons it took ten years is that the Boulder Police were reluctant to look for suspects outside the Ramsey home. As I recall, that was the only homicide that year in Boulder, so we're looking at a group of cops who didn't get a lot of practice at investigating murders. The public pressure to find the killer must have been enormous because the entire world was watching. Now we're going to be treated to rehashing the entire thing all over again.

The other night the fam and I were at Wal-Mart looking for candy with which Dolls can bribe her students to bring their paperwork back to class. At the beginning of the year, each student gets a huge packet of forms that must be read and signed by a parent. So, Dolls bribes them to do it. Otherwise, many of them will not bother.

Anyhoo, we're on the candy aisle trying to pick out candy. I wandered off to look at the specialty candy. I saw where Hersheys was offering a special dark chocolate that was 75% cocao. Hmmm. Then I saw a Lindt "extra fine" chocolate bar that was 80% cocao. I bought it, figuring it would be some really tasty dark chocolate and eff Hersheys and their 75% BS.

I got it home and unwarpped it. It was extremely dark and looked extremely tasty. So, I took a big bite . . . and promptly spit it in the trash. Ewwwwww. It was bitter.

"I didn't expect a chocolate bar to attack me like that." Max and Rozzy came in the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about. They spotted the chocolate and asked for a piece.

Rozzy's reaction was classic, she got a bit of it stuck between her teeth, so she couldn't get the taste out of her mouth. She just stared at me and whined. Heh.

Last night, we were at Krogers picking up some corriander seed and paprika so I can make up a batch of pork rub when Dollie spoted a bar of 100% cocao chocolate.

I must have had Samuel L. Jackson call about 30 people over the last few days. Heh.

Max recently received the results from some testing at school. It seems my little 3rd grader is reading at a 5th grade level. That's great and I'm proud of him. We've been reading (in my case re-reading) my collection of newspaper comics. We've just about made it through Calvin and Hobbes and are working on Foxtrot.

He's really enjoying them and so am I. Speaking of Calvin, this guy is waaaaay into him.

What is it with Republicans and racist comments lately? Here is what Tramm Hudson, the GOP nominee for Katherine Harris' congressional seat in Florida said recently:

"I grew up in Alabama, and I understand, and I know this from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know to swim."

“I said something stupid. I apologize for it and would apologize in person to anyone hurt by my comments. To those who are understandably offended, you have my deepest apologies and I want you to know that it was out of character for me and those who know me know that to be a fact. This was a thoughtless remark that does not reflect my lifetime commitment to treating everyone fairly and without bias. I apologize to everyone who is offended by this comment.”

There you go. George Allen take note. That is the way a politician apologizes when he's said something stupid.

I should note here that occasionally we, as Americans, benefit from having a president who doesn't read very much. Take, for example, the Federal Pension Protection Act Bush recently signed. It has two provisions in it that will benefit same-sex partners -- allowing retirement benefits to be transferred to domestic partners after one dies.

Today is picture day at Max's school. He decided this morning that he'd like to wear a tie. So he dressed in a long-sleeve dress shirt, a tie and cut-off blue jeans.

Rozzy got a little upset that today was not also picture day at her daycare. Upset to the point of throwing herself down and crying. I made it all better by taking a photo of her in her dress with Dollie's phone.

We got a note from her daycare yesterday saying she hasn't been eating her lunch. They suggested we pack her a lunch because we know what she likes to eat.

"Papa, said no," Dollie said. We make a point of backing each other up. It is, afterall, us against them.

"I'm not making another lunch every morning when they provide you one," I said. "They're not going to give us a discount for not having to feed you, so you'll eat what they give you."

"Okay, here's the deal," I offered. "If you don't eat your lunch, no gymnastics lessons." I hesitated to do this because I'm the parent quickest to come up with little tradeoffs like this without looking at the larger picture. I was afraid Dolls might give me "the look" because she didn't want to put gymnastics on the table. For example, I once punished Max by not allowing him to go with me to the comic book store. The result was that Dollie was left with both cranky kids.

"We just got the brochure for gymnastics lessons," she said. "If you want to go this year, you have to start eating your lunch."

That seems to have changed her mind a bit. She loves gymnastics. The funny thing is that we get a note each day telling us what was served for lunch. It's almost always stuff she eats at home.

Max's appetite has grown considerably in both the amount he eats and the variety of his diet. Last night we went out for pizza at the Mellow Mushroom. Max ate more pizza than I and unlike myself, he didn't pick the onions off. We dubbed him Max of the Hollow Leg and Scrawny Frame.

The International Astronomical Union is meeting to discuss the universe. The big topic: is Pluto a planet or not. They've been trying to hash this out for years. See, by all reasonable criteria, Pluto is not a planet. It is a small ball of ice and dust out at the end of our solar system. But since it was discovered in the 1930s, school children around the world have been building coathanger and styrofoam solar systems that include nine planets.

What troubles me about this is not that Pluto may be downgraded. I don't really care one way or the other for two reasons: 1) I'm not an astronomer and 2) A rose, by any other name, will still be a distant frozen ball of ice and dust.

The balless astronomers have come up with a compromise that does trouble me, however. They want to come up with a new category of outer-solar system object that is somewhere between "classic" planet and "random ball of ice and dust." Pluto would sit at the head of this class and lending its name -- behold the pluton -- the planet that isn't quite a planet.

What does this mean? Well, it means we're getting three more planets in our solar system. Ceres, an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter would be reclassifed as a pluton, as would Charon (another random ice ball discovered in 1978) and UB313, an ice ball discoverd in 2003 that is even farther away from the sun than Pluto.

So instead of nine planets, we've got 12. Is this somehow better? And they're just getting started. By redefining these objects as plutons, the astronomers have opened up a pandora's box of ice balls that will become planets.

The new definition for planet, by the way, is any object, massive enough to be round that is not a star, but is orbiting one. That allows Pluto to be a planet, but not our moon. It all seems rather vague and . . . well . . . unscientific to me -- especially the part where these astronomers will have to vote to determine if any of this stands.

Then there is the effect of this on the superstitious. How will your horoscopes be affected if there are 12 planets instead of nine? Will your charts have to be redrawn? What happens when Mars enters UB313? Does the International Astrologers Union get a vote, too?

In Kenton, Ohio, two high school football players decided to play a prank. They stole a deer decoy from a man's yard, built a stand to help it stand up (it only had two legs) and put it in the road on a dark night.

Only one car swerved and hit a pole and a fence. The driver broke his collarbone, leg and arm. His passenger has brain damage.

Hey! You remember that story about BP shutting down the pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and causing yet another increase in gasoline prices? It turns out it wasn't BP's lack of maintenance on the pipeline. It was an act of God.

In Riverton, Utah, neighbors got into a squabble when one built a house that supposedly blocked the view of the other. So, the homebuilder added a window on his house that he says is abstract art, but look suspiciously like a hand flipping a bird.

Found a sample poll at another site and decided to swipe it. Sue me. Or provide your own answers.

My senior year of high school, my friend Billy snuck all the books out of my locker, lined it with plastic and stuck a live lobster in there. When I showed up to school, he asked if he could borrow a pencil. I couldn't figure out why a crowd was gathering to see me get a pencil out of my locker until it was too late.

The answer I always give is Motley Crue, Theatre of Pain tour, but in truth, I saw the Beach Boys a couple of weeks before that one.

Community Theatre: "Dark Comedy" "Talk Radio" "The Boys Next Door" "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abbr."

One more quick note. In an article in the UK Guardian titled "Liberal Agonies" it is noted that much of the critical intelligence information about the foiled UK bombing plot came from Pakistan where someone was most likely tortured to give up the goods.

Conservatives have pointed to this information as proof that liberals just don't get it. Bush says people need to remember that we're at war with religious extremists who want to do us harm (as if we've forgotten). Torture, claims the right wing, is a legitimate tool for battling terror.

When I read the story, I had to think about that very hard. If the reason the Brits were able to stop those planes from exploding was because of information received through torture, then one can no longer say that you get no usefull information from torture, right?

Then I read this from Craig Murray, Tony Blair's former ambassador to Uzbekistan. No one that has been arrested in this plot has been charged with anything. Thanks to the conservatives in Britain, the law was changed to allow the government to hold these people for 28 days without charges.

Also, it seems that none of these people had made any bombs. None of them had bought a plane ticket. Many of them didn't even have passports, making the idea of an imminent dry run seem a little specious.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

It seemed so real, but we'll know soon just how real when the Brits have to either charge someone or release them.

Last night, we went to Wal-Mart to price steam cleaners. As we're walking down the aisle, a tall man with a very shiny head dragging along his brood of kids walked by.

My niece is running for student council. She's in 6th grade and her dad is nervous about her getting involved in politics so young. I say good for her. Being on student council won't help her popularity much, but running an election can teach you a lot about organization, cause and effect and hard work.

So, if anyone of you out there has an opportunity to vote for her. I heartily endorse Lynna Reed for 6th Grade Student Council. Her slogan: Vote Right! Vote Reed.

The Big Dog speaks:

Lieberman has characterized his loss - and the need for his subsequent independent run - as liberals in the party purging those with the Lieberman-Clinton position of progressiveness in domestic politics and strong national security credentials.

"Well, if I were Joe and I was running as an independent, that's what I'd say, too," Clinton said.

"But that's not quite right. That is, there were almost no Democrats who agreed with his position, which was, 'I want to attack Iraq whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction.'"

"His position is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld position, which was, 'Does it matter if they have weapons? None of this matters. ... This is a big, important priority, and 9/11 gives us the way of attacking and deposing Saddam."

Clinton said that a vote for Lamont was not, as Lieberman had implied, a vote against the country's security.

The entire article is refreshing if only because Clinton lays it all out there: the war on terror, the UN, the coming election, his work on AIDS. He is a man of the people who isn't afraid to speak to America -- not just a hand-picked group of syncophants.

Sen. George Allen (R-Old South) is in a touch relection race against a strong Democratic candidate. Said candidate, James Webb, sent a volunteer to follow Allen on the campaign trail and video his public speeches. This is pretty standard practice. One certainly wants to know what one's opponent is saying publicly.

The volunteer, a 20 year-old American college student of Indian ancestry named S. R. Sirdath, was the only face of color in the audience at a recent Allen rally. In the middle of his speech, Allen pointed him out and said . . . well . . . read it yourself:

"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great," Allen said, as his supporters began to laugh. After saying that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen said, "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Allen then began talking about the "war on terror."

Now, "macaca" could mean any number of things. It is a term used by some racist groups to indicate people from Northern Africa. It is a term equated with "monkey." Allen, who has a history of sporting confederate flags and opposing the holiday for MLK, may have been making a racist slur. Or, he could have been saying something in jibberish for "foreign guy." Either way, he held up the one brown face in the crowd for ridicule to the delight of his Virginia Republican supporters.

When questioned about what the word means, Allen said he wasn't sure, but it sounded a little like "mohawk" which is what his staff had nicknamed Sirdath because of his haircut. A photo of Sirdath would seem to indicate otherwise. Allen's campaign manager said Allen had nothing to apologize for. Then, Allen apologized.

"MY FRIENDS, we're going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas," Sen. George F. Allen told a rally of Republican supporters in Southwest Virginia last week. "And it's important that we motivate and inspire people for something." Whereupon Mr. Allen turned his attention to a young campaign aide working for his Democratic opponent -- a University of Virginia student from Fairfax County who was apparently the only person of color present -- and proceeded to ridicule him.

Let's consider which positive, constructive or inspirational ideas Mr. Allen had in mind when he chose to mock S.R. Sidarth of Dunn Loring, who was recording the event with a video camera on behalf of James Webb, the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat Mr. Allen holds. The idea that holding up minorities to public scorn in front of an all-white crowd will elicit chortles and guffaws? (It did.) The idea that a candidate for public office can say "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" to an American of Indian descent and really mean nothing offensive by it? (So insisted Mr. Allen's aides.) Or perhaps the idea that bullying your opponents and calling them strange names -- Mr. Allen twice referred to Mr. Sidarth as "Macaca" -- is within the bounds of decency on the campaign trail?

George Allen, by the way, is planning on running for president in 2008. I'd like to see him give it a go.

Recently, I wrote a press release about a client's appointment to a national commission. It is pretty standard stuff: give a CV of the client's experience in the area, write up a quote about how pleased the client is and how important the goals of the commission are. The hope is to get a paragraph in the paper with a headshot.

As is SOP, before the copy was submitted to the client for approval, it went through the office filter, that is to say, someone else in the office must read the copy to make sure I didn't write something stupid.

Anyhoo, one of the made-up quotes got changed a bit and then it was sent to the client. The client called me to make her revisions before it went out. Again, all SOP. But the changed quote got her goat.

"You will not quote me and use a split infinitive!" she said. Evidently, split infinitives are a pet peeve.

For the record, I didn't write the split infinitive into the quote. All I really wanted to do with this section of the blog was get around to explaining, for those of you who aren't tongue-clucking grammarians, what a split inifinitive is.

When you put words (usually adverbs) between the word "to" and the verb to which it refers, you've split the infinitive. Probably the most famous example is the opening "Star Trek" speech:

"To boldy go where no man has gone before." In this case, "boldly" comes between "to" and "go."

I assume we all have these little linguistic pet peeves. Mine is the use of a modifyer with the word "unique." It's simple, people, if something is "unique" something else can't be "more unique" or "very unique." Unique things follow the Highlander rule: There Can Be Only One.

I had a girlfriend in high school who bristled whenever she heard someone pronounce the "t" in "often" as in "awf-TEN" instead of "off-en." One of my other clients will not allow us to use contractions in anything written for his company. His 8th grade English teacher told him it was lazy writing, so he believes it's (excuse me, it is) lazy writing.

So embrace your grammatical idiosyncracies, people. Call people on it when they dangle their participles or confuse "lie" and "lay." What's the hard in spreading a little snark in the world if it means we'll all speak and write more better?

I have not been caught up in the whole "Snakes On A Plane" hype, other than my amusement at the fact that such a film exists. From a marketing standpoint, it has become a study in "new media" marketing. Because of the reactions of the bloggers to news about the film, the studio made changes: they changed the title back to "Snakes On A Plane" when word that another title was being considered. They spent five extra days shooting additional footage when fans complained that the PG-13 rating wasn't going to be profain, gory or scary enough. They even got to add a line a dialogue that wasn't in the script. Fans wanted Samuel L. Jackson to yell "I'm tired of these [expletive] snakes on this [expletive] plane."

I'm not going to rush out and see this movie. Truth be told, I would have a hard time dragging Dollie to it, due to her fear of snakes. But everyone who is interested in the fields of marketing, filmmaking and media should take note of how well this movie does. We're looking at something new here.

That's how the police chief in Holyoak, Mass. described the conclusion of a domestic violence call that has made national news. It seems the man was beating up his wife and she took matters into her own hands. Good for her. The only reason we're all reading about it? The police chief said "winky."

While out to lunch today, I turned to Blue Collar Radio on Sirius. The show was "Wall to Wall Good Stuff" which is a comedy request show. The host announced that they were starting a new segment: News From Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This is my birthday week. I turn 38 this year and while I'm not "old," I'm no spring chicken anymore. I've started to notice little things that make me feel like an old timer. The new guy at work was four years old the year I graduated high school. Members of the freshmen class at Dollie's school were born around 1993. The sheriff on "Eureka" is supposed to be a year younger than I. Louis C.K. on "Lucky Louie" is the same age.

I've got aches and pains that weren't there last year. I make the "fatty grunt" when I pick up my daughter, put on my shoes or get in and out of my car. I don't feel old. I don't look old. But time marches on for all of us.

I was listening to Radio Disney on Saturday as Max and I went to the comic book store to play Heroclix. A song came on that disturbed me because I misheard the lyrics:

He said I've been to the year 3000/
Not much has changed, but they live underwater/
And your great-great-great granddaughter/
Is too fine

That didn't seem an appropriate thing for a timetraveler to be telling me. Then I realized the last line is "is doing fine." Great. I'm losing my hearing, too.

"As much as the comic book thing annoys me sometimes, at least they have plots and characters," she said. "It's something I can wrap my head around. You're not constantly quoting mindless statistics."

"You mean like 'Anyone can see that the Titans have never failed to cover during a pre-season home game in which the wind was coming out of the north and their opponent was wearing red, blue or green.'"

The LA Times ran a scary story about the guy behind all the "Girls Gone Wild" videos. I can honestly (and proudly) say I've never seen one. After reading that story, I never will.

Who's the big loser in Connecticut? Alan Schlesinger. He's the Republican running for Lieberman's seat. Bush announced today via his mouthpiece Tony Snow(job) that the president would not be supporting Schlesinger. At least that's what I got from this exchange:

Q: Does the President support the Republican candidate for Senate in Connecticut?

MR. SNOW: The President supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut, and wishes them a successful election in November.

Q: Wait a minute. I realize he supports democracy, but I'm wondering, does he actually support his own party's candidate?

Q: Why aren't you committing -- why wouldn't the President commit support for the Republican candidate in that --

MR. SNOW: I don't know. Why do you ask? Is there something about the candidate that I should know about that would lead to judgments?

Q: -- it seems like a very natural thing, why wouldn't he support a member of his own party? Is it because he's well behind in the polls? Is it because the President likes Joe Lieberman? What's -- why not?

MR. SNOW: There may be -- there are a whole host of reasons the President -- I'm just not going to play.

MR. SNOW: It's not a game. It's not a game, but I'll -- okay, I'll tell you what. I'll refer you to the political office to give you the full judgments on that. I think you know the situation in Connecticut.

A Headline News anchor named Chuck Roberts referred to Ned Lamont in Connecticut as the "al Queda candidate." That's your "liberal" media at work. The thing is, he won't be punished for it. Here's what he said:

“How does this factor into the Lieberman/Lamont contest? And might some argue, as some have, that Lamont is the al Qaeda candidate?”

Now some might argue, as some have, that Roberts himself wasn't calling Lamont the al Queda candidate, but was merely quoting someone else. That presupposes that someone else actually did it. Lexis/Nexis and Google searches do not point to anyone ever using that term before Roberts and he certainly hasn't listed any examples.

Yeah! What he said. And what he said, too. Froomkin in the WaPo has a great roundup of the GOP spin on Lieberman/Lamont.

Watched "V For Vendetta" with Dolls the other night. It was very entertaining. I'd read the graphic novel some years ago and while I no longer have it in front of me to compare, I don't think the film followed the book very closely. Regardless, it was enjoyable and the Wachowski Bros. were most likely trying to create a metaphor for the current state of our American government. There is a strong political messagein "V," you just have to get past the funny mask.

We also watched "The Dukes of Hazzard" which, while not nearly as political, was still entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the Duke boys in the General Lee being stuck in traffic in Atlanta. People passing by would make comments like "nice roof, redneck." Heh.

I haven't looked into the matter at all, but if I were to guess, there will be no "Dukes of Hazzard II: Electric Boogaloo."

"I want to tell you something," she said quietly and sweetly. So I came closer and leaned near her.