The Meaning of Memorial Day: Reply to a Friend

"In recent decades especially, the connection between American military intervention

and American freedom has become ever more tenuous.

Meanwhile, competence has proved notably hard to come by."

--Andrew J. Bacevich, "Memorial Day for a father whose son was killed

in Iraq", Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2010

Minuteman Memorial, The Green at Lexington, MA

Yesterday, a friend from Continental Congress 2009, who is also a combat veteran, wrote a heartfelt statement questioning the purpose of the deployment of American troops in the undeclared wars the United States has fought in his lifetime, including the war in which he served. He stated that he did not want to participate in Memorial Day activities that would perpetuate the lie that in these wars, our troops are fighting for freedom or dying for our country or our interests. Although his words were published on a private network, they echo what Andrew J. Bacevich, historian, grieving father, and author of the soon-to-be released Washington Rules: America's Path to Endless War, published today in the Los Angeles Times.

These reflections, public and private, have opened up for me the question that I believe many of us in the R3volution struggle with this Memorial Day: How do we honor the loss of our countrymen while at the same time recognizing that the character of America's wars has changed from that of fighting for liberty to that of advancing the interests of a few oligarchs with transnational ambitions?

Certainly the men whose names are written in stone on the Lexington Minuteman Memorial, who died rather than allow themselves to be disarmed, were fighting for their liberty and that of their families and posterity. And just as certainly, we cannot say the same about the loss of the precious lives of those who have been ordered to Somolia, Afganistan and Iraq.

And yet, this year as tyranny unfolds around the world, and the imperial ambitions of our politicians has become evident in a series of disasterous legislation passed, I do not have the stomach to ignore this question further, and distract myself by observing Memorial Day as "a celebration of the beginning of summer", thereby putting the reality of its origin and the dilemma of its current status down the memory hole. I thank my friend, whose identity will remain between us, for pushing me to face the question above squarely and to begin to wrestle with the meaning of Memorial Day in our times.

Here is what I wrote in response to my friend and fellow delegate, edited to suit this post. This is not the end to my questioning, but only the beginning of it:

Dear F.:

In a conversation with a Gold Star Mother from my hometown, I was recently reminded that Memorial Day is specifically to honor the fallen, and Veterans Day is to honor those who served and lived. Maybe, being from the rural Midwest I am too fussy about these things, but I like to keep them separated in my own mind.

As a youngster growing up in rural Illinois, Memorial Day was not a day only for picnics and cook-outs, and it was not a day to celebrate the beginning of summer. Instead, my grandparents still called it Decoration Day, and schoolchildren dressed in their school clothes (remember those?), would be taken to the cemetery, or to the war memoral in the town square, to decorate them with flags and flowers in memory of those who paid the ultimate price so that we might live free, become educated and make something of ourselves.

But my education did not prepare me to answer the following: What do you say to a mother or a wife or a child who has lost a child or a husband or a father in wars to which they never should have been sent? This is difficult, and I believe that most Americans do not know and so avoid the situation that would make us uncomfortable.. And so Memorial Day has become something other than honoring our war dead. All of them.

F., we are going to take your suggestion--no TV today. And we had already decided not to have a cookout. That can wait until the Glorious 4th! Today we will have a quiet day with the family, and think about those who died for freedom, and those who died in unconstitutional wars, and remember that each life was precious, and each one ended too soon. Some lost to the evil outside who threatened our liberty, and some to the evil within who shed and blood and treasure for their own wicked ends. In this way, I believe all of our soldiers died as a reminder, at least, that liberty must be defended, whether from within or without.

We have decided to stop today, even from preparations for the crisis that is coming, in order to remember the multitude of lives lost in all of America's wars, the good, the bad, and indifferent. We appreciate your service as well, then and now, and will set aside time to honor it specially on Veteran's day, though we strive to remember it every day.

And we appreciate your service to us today as well, the one you did us with your post about your own questions regarding your service in an undeclared war.
Thank you.

Liberty Song Saturday: Memorial Day

Amazing Grace in the wild, mournful tones of the bagpipes, to sing those fallen in battle to sleep.
War is terrible, and death is final. And yet, we become their world --we live their hopes and dreams-- when we remember them.

Accusations of Sedition

Lately, we have heard cries of "sedition" from supporters of the Obama administration, and from supposedly objective news reporters, who are showing their partisan colors with every word that comes out of their mouths. These accusations are heaped upon the heads of those who dare to criticize the current occupants of the executive branch, or who characterize their actions as dictatorial or imcompetent. It seems that the supporters of the Obama administration are floating the idea of sedition as a trial balloon for the possible instatement of some new version of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Unlike President Bush, who's support of the Patriot Act shows his contempt for rights but who nevertheless responded to protestors by saying "It's their right", the Obama adminstration has made no effort to correct the zeal of his supporters for tyranny.

Few of those who throw this word around so lightly understand the principles upon which our government is founded, and therefore are ignorant (at best) of the reason why throwing this accusation around is met by contempt from those who are so accused. Earlier today, I responded to the report of such an accusation on a message board I visit infrequently. There, the moderator reported that he was being accused of sedition by the Daily Kos because he had referred to Obama as "Der Fuhrer". And yet only a Fuhrer, that is a tyrant, would supress the free speech of free people via accusations of "sedition."

Here is my comment:

The concept of "sedition" does not properly belong to the legal tradition of a free society. To see why, consider the definition of sedition from Dictionary.com:

1. Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.

In a free society, any authority the state has comes from sovereign individuals. The state is not sovereign; it is the individual that is sovereign. And sovereign individuals do not owe allegiance to any state, or to any executive or representative thereof. We owe our honor and loyalty to the Constitution that protects our rights. Our rights do not come from the state, and they cannot be taken away from us by the state. Nor can we voluntarily surrender them. That is what unaLIENable means.

Further, according to the Constitution, the government receives any power it has as a matter of duty and privilege; the government has no rights. Rather, "We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union . . ." have from our status as sovereigns, granted the federal government a limited set of duties and privileges for the purpose of protecting our rights. Since liberty is one of those rights, we are at complete liberty to say anything we want about the government that We the People have created, and that extends to the liberty to criticize and lampoon the president and his appointees. By standing for election, the president has put himself if the public eye and must expect to be roundly criticized at his every move by citizens jealous of their right to free speech. If he can't stand the heat, he should get the hell out of the kitchen, as Harry Truman used to say.

This is why the American people objected so strenuously to John Adam's errant signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and why one of this cabinet secretaries stated that he could walk from New York to the Canadian border by the light of his own buring effigies. This is why Woodrow Wilson is considered a tyrant who greviously exceeded his duty and violated the rights of those who voiced their disagreement with the US entry into WWI, when he ordered the Sedition and Espionage Act. And this is why the Patriot Act of 2001 is unconstitutional.

Sedition cannot rightly be a crime in a free society in which each individual is sovereign whose rights are protected by a Constitution such as ours.
If Chairman Obama really wishes to rule as the thin-skinned king he seems to identify himself as, he should go to a country that defines its people as subjects, and conduct his coup d'etat there. He will get no sympathy from the proudly free and sovereign people of the United States.

In this blog, as well in other places, I have dared criticize Obama's policies, and I have used words applied to him and his minions that emphasize how tyrannous and dangerous I believe those policies to be. To paraphrase the immortal words of Patrick Henry to the Virginia House of Burgesses in response to the Stamp Act, I now say:

"If this be sedition, make the most of it."

Directive 10-289: Obama Becomes Wesley Mouch

In Atlas Shrugged, the novel by Ayn Rand, the government passed Directive 10-289. It was a directive to make everything fair and equal, and was sold to the public as a remedy for the economic mess that the country had gotten itself into via government interference with business and redistribution of wealth. The New Intellectual Blog provides the full text of the fictional executive order here.

Directive 10-289 can be summarized as a series of regulations that attempt to freeze the economy in place, and to end the "creative destruction" that occurs in capitalism as innovation sustains long-term economic growth while at the same time destroying the economic stability of established companies and their employees that have been operating in the existing business environment. Among the eight points that make up Directive 10-289 are those that freeze individuals at their jobs, freeze prices and wages, nationalize patents and other intellectual property, and require that production and consumption rates continue at present levels. The natural consequences of Directive 10-289 drive the plot of the second half of the novel, as the economy of the United States is destroyed, the infrastructure of business and commerce collapse, and the nation falls into ruin due to the loss of innovation and commerce, manufacturing and the normal economic transactions that make life in a modern society possible.

Although no adminstration in the United States has ever attempted all of the mandates in the fictional Directive 10-289, many of the individual points have been tried at various times since the beginning of the progressive era. Readers familiar with the precepts of the New Deal, or of the attempted economic fixes of the Nixon era will recognize some of them. In general the United States federal government has not tried to freeze consumption and production to mandated rates; rather it tries to nudge producers and consumers into acceptable (to the government) levels of production and spending through the use of subsidies, tax breaks and other such inducements.

In the past year however,
Chairman President Obama has in effect created Directive 10-289 through the passage of a number of laws that put the apparatus in place for the federal government to control a major portion of the US economy. The Stimulus Bill and the Healthcare Act have already been shoved down our throats, and now with the Financial Reform Bill, the government stands poised to control 60% of the United States economy, and monitor not only the health and financial records of the entire populace, but also to monitor credit card transactions and spending habits as well.

That this adminstration intends to dictate to citizens how much money they will be allowed to make, what kind of health insurance they will be forced to buy and what healthcare they may have access to, what financial products they may buy and sell, and what property they may own is now obvious. To flagrantly violate our liberty and property rights through such legislation marks this admininstration's intent to enslave the American people to the service of a fascist socialist new world order that is now clearly out in the open.

In Atlas Shrugged, the men who plan the enslavement of the American people claim to do so out of concern for the "common good." They say things like:

"We must not let vulgar difficulties obstruct our feeling that it's a noble plan motivated soley by the public welfare.

"They fail to recognize that production is not a private choice, but a public duty. They have no right to fail . . . they've got to go on producing. It's a social imperative."

"What we've got to think of is jobs. More jobs for more people."

So they lie--some even to themselves--about the true motive for enslaving the people. But some of them know that in reality the issue is not the so-called "common good", it's not the public welfare, the social imperative or even jobs. It's about power. And that power is gained by criminalizing any action that a person would naturally take in the pursuit of his own self-interest.

"We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men.The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

It's the same with the Obama adminstration's collection of laws that add up in practice to Directive 10-289. There's a reason each bill is so long and so convoluted. It is not because any of the publically proclaimed objectives of them need that many pages. Rather, it is in order to slip into the bills the structure that will make ordinary life as free human beings impossible to most citizens; it is to create slaves.

Just remember this as Obama halts one third of US oil production after doing nothing for five weeks, and ignoring the emergency plans for just such an accident as happened in the Gulf. Remember this as he goes on vacation this weekend without answering Bobby Jindal's request for permits to save his own state's coastline. Clearly, his actions are not about saving seagulls and fisheries from oil pollution.

Remember this as he moves to control 60% of our economy, and brings down the economy because of the loss of of fisheries, and the rising price of oil. A member of this adminstration has been recorded as saying that they need the price of oil in the US to equal that of Europe. Remember this when the price of food goes up because oil is the major energy source for its production and distribution across the country.

It's about power. It's about shoving irrational legislation down the throats of the American people in order to put in place an economic-political system that has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried.

Obama has become Wesley Mouch.

Liberty Song Saturday: Pendulum

Here is a cover of Pendulum by Jordan Page with a video that includes numerous quotes from the Articles of Freedom. It was originally put together as an ad for the Articles of Freedom Delivery Day--Patriot's Day, April 19, 2010. The Articles of Freedom were delivered to certain officials at every state capitol on that day.

The song, Pendulum, expresses the singer/songwriter Jordan Page's frustration with the false left-right paradigm:

". . . and the pendulum swings from the left to the right,
the momentum increases, the weight and the height,
But if nobody's listening, is anyone right?
And I can't find the key to the middle . . ."

This song is also about Page's personal observations of what is happening to his country and its Constitution:

"I saw a president blind to the needs of his people,
I saw a camel that passed through the eye of a needle,
I saw a group of old men whose money was evil . . ."

"I saw beggars and cripples dying in squalor,
I a saw a son whose sins has exceeded his father's,
I saw a nation of sleepers whose dreams were forgotten,
and a bushel of apples from a tree that was rotten. . ."

And finally, this is a song about Page's personal journey to the R3volution:

"I met a young woman with a baby inside her,
I looked but there wasn't a safe place to hide her;
I met an old man with a face like a mirror,
he showed me his sadness so I could see clearer . . ."

The quotes from the Articles of Freedom are special in their own right, and here they go together with the song. The Articles of Freedom document how our government has abrogated the Constitution, and how the actions of our elected officials in all three branches of government have destroyed Liberty. The Articles of Freedom are also a powerful call to action on the part of we, the people, to restore our Liberty by requiring our government to obey the Constitution.

Although the Articles of Freedom have been delivered to government officials in every state capitol already, it is still imperative that we join together to take the peaceful but forceful actions necessary to withdraw our support from a government bent on tyranny and the destruction of our Liberty.

If you love Liberty, go to the link above and sign the pledge.

It is our right and our duty to change a government that has become an instrument of tyranny.

Gone Fishin'

The Rasta-Jew on the grail for a mid-channel run.

We'll be back soon!

Update: "For It"

Note: I have been "gone fishing", but I interrupt my week of field work to update last week's post. Alert blog-friend Christine MM noticed that that the video I embedded in the post below was removed from YouTube by the user. Here is another version from You Tube:



Back to fishing! Check out my FB for short updates on the Silvery Minnow Project, and I'll blog that this coming weekend!

"For It": Jihad Against Jews Comes to Campus

Some things need to be seen to be believed.
See the video below. In it, a vicious, freedom-hating, terrorist-loving young student supports the rounding up and killing of Jews worldwide. This the face of hatred on American campuses. This is real hate-speech and it is sanctioned by the leftists who are allowed to spread their hatred of American values to our children at tax-payer supported institutions.

The radical Muslim Student Association (MSA) at University of California San Diego sponsors an entire week devoted to the hatred of Israel and Jews. It also apparently sponsors a "Hitler Youth Week," at least according to a young terrorist 'wanna be' woman who supports Hamas, Hizbollah and the rounding up and murder of Jews worldwide.





I have a few questions:
1) Why are students on American campuses not allowed to discuss the genetics of general intelligence in private e-mails without being sanctioned, but certain members of privileged groups are allowed to openly advocate genocide in a public forum? Is it that some animals are more equal than others?

2) Is this MSA organization supported in part by student fees that every student is forced to pay? That is, is UCSD forcing its students to pay for Hitler Youth Week? Isn't it time for students to rebel against forced fees?
3) Isn't it interesting that I found this at Caroline Glick's site from the Jerusalem Post? Will the MSM cover this? I mean it doesn't rise to the level of Tea Party grandmothers toting folding chairs who voice their love for America on their own dime in Quincy, IL., so it obviously isn't news.


This is the intellectual level that the Progressives have brought our universities to; places where hatred is sanctioned as long as it is hatred of the right groups. Places where students and taxpayers are forced to pony up and pay for those who advocate the destruction of our own values. This video should go viral and serve as a wake-up call to the leftists who control our educational institutions that we will no longer pay for nor tolerate them teaching our children to hate the liberty that is their heritage.

To my fellow Jews: We'd better wake up! The collectivists have never had any love for us. They use us when we're convenient and murder us when we're not.

Dogs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I haven't blogged on family life for a while--there has been so much going on around here that was hard to sort through what to blog and what should never see the light of day. I have been meaning to blog about the dogs for a while, but it was to be about the good, the good and the good. Until Sunday evening . . .





But I want to start with the GOOD:
Umbrae is now just over seven months old, and the vet thinks he's a Newfie/Husky cross based on size and some other characteristics. We know the mom, but not the dad, so . . . could be.

Umbrae has passed his Puppy Kindergarten and his Intermediate training courses with flying colors. He is very attentive to us when we are working with him, and so we just began a 16 week Advanced class that teaches the skills he needs to test and be certified by Therapy Dog International.

Because he is already bigger than both of our other dogs, and he is going to be bigger still, we have decided that the more training the better--and if he is a certified Therapy Dog--we can take him to lots of places. Since he is so smart and so willing (and as the Engineering Geek says--"so treat motivated"), this is becoming fun for us as well as for him.

At home, he is our happy-go-lucky Baby Huey, and he now obligingly fetches the newspaper from the top of the driveway for us.



The BAD (or at least the misbehaving): As Umbrae has grown up, Lily has grudgingly accepted him, but for some reason in the past few weeks a new rivalry has begun between Lily and Shayna, and Lily has been the agressor. I had noticed that Lily has begun to encroach on my territory as well.
It all culminated Sunday night when I went to bed early and fell asleep. Apparently, Lily got up on the bed with me, and when the EG moved her off later, Shayna was standing beside the bed. Lily went for her and cornered her. She did not go for the throat, so the trainer is pretty certain she was not going for the kill, but it still meant another trip to the vet, and another round with the trainer. Lily has been the only dog who is not crated. We got Shayna a crate last year when I noticed that she crawled under the rocker to sleep, and she uses it frequently. We started Umbrae on crate training right away and it has kept him calm and happy. So yesterday I finally got Lily a crate, expecting she'd be unhappy, but she took to it pretty well last night.




The UGLY: Poor Shayna, she was standing by the bed and maybe there was a look exchanged, and I was awakened by the serious growling of a dog fight, and the Engineering Geek breaking it up. Although it lasted no more than a minute, Shayna ended up with a gouge in her back. She hid in her crate that night, so I found the bleeding wound yesterday morning.

She came home from the vet with two shaved spots, five staples, and a desire to stay in her crate. Last night she did not want to come out at all, but this morning thirst and bribery got her to come out for a walk and to get her meds. She's now lying on the floor by my chair, but still she's quiet and more submissive than usual.

Yesterday I had a good discussion with the vet about Lily. Although she had a routine shot update in February, we are going to take her in for a full physical to make sure there is not an organic basis for her irritibility. It could be as simply as allergies. We also talked about structuring her days more carefully, and the use of a crate. Although Lily is not supposed to be on the bed, she was, and both the vet and trainer think this fight started as a dominance move on her part. But there has also been a lot of stress around here for a variety of reasons, and Lily is a reactive dog. So we have been told that renewing structure and routine, asserting our leadership equally over all three dogs, and crating Lily are all likely to make Lily and Shayna feel more secure and prevent further badness and ugliness.

From the start, Lily has taken on the function of showing me where my dog skills are wanting, and when our routines have been upset and need resetting. She's been the most challenging dog I've ever had. And yet we have become better dog owners one step at a time as we have dealt with her. She is getting older and has become calmer, she doesn't like strangers, but she no longer fears them, and now in her middle years, we have to keep her feeling safe and secure by providing structure for her. She is our household barometer.

And that's the good, the bad and the ugly dog story for the quarter.

Introducing Liberty Song Saturday . . .

Somewhere there's a picture of one of my ancestors in some little town in Poland or Lithuania carrying the black flag of anarchy while singing the Anti-Fascist March.

The word Anarchy means "no ruler" and the idea that my anarchist ancestor espoused was that each person is sovereign over his own life.

Anarchy does not mean "no law", although those who fight for their individual rights are often accused of lawlessness when they oppose oppressive governments.

Anarchy does not mean "no morality." A thoughtful anarchist understands that the nature that endows a human being with individual rights requires the most rigorous of morality--not one of tradition or convenience--but an objective requirement that the individual rights of all must be respected, and that all morality springs from that.


Many anarchists believe in a kind of stateless communism in which all property is held in common.

Other anarchists are radical libertarians who dream of a "libertopia" that is stateless capitalism, in which each person possesses complete sovereignty over herself and her property.

Today's liberty song is called Justice Day and the lyrics are by Claire Wolfe of Jews for the Protection of Firearms Ownership. These lyrics have an anarchist bent, promoting the idea that when the lawmakers become lawless (rule of men rather than laws), then the outlaw becomes the champion of justice.

"When the criminals, criminals make all the laws,
then anyone breaking them fight just cause . . ."

The song begins with the immortal image from 1984: "You're the boot stomping on the human face--forever - -"

More anarchist imagery is heard with phrases like: " . . .Then out of the darkness the rebels arise, on that day, on that day the outlaw will rise . . ."




Even the person who posted this to YouTube thought it was "leftist", but JPFO is libertarian--and the most radical libertarians are anarchists in the spirit of Lysander Spooner. However, there are those libertarians who think of anarchy as an ideal to be dreamed, but as a matter of policy support minarchy--the concept of a state with very little power--and follow the spirit of the American Founders.

I am a libertarian who has dreamed the anarchist dream, but I also realize that restoring the Constitution, which provides us with a very limited government, is work enough for one lifetime.

Lieberman's Citizenship Bill: An Attack on American Justice

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty

to purchase a little Temporary Safety,

Deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

--Ben Franklin, 1759


Jumping on bandwagons in response to events rather than dealing with issues according to principle is the MO of a venal politician. We have many venal politicians in Washington and in our State Houses. The Progressive Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., has recently indicated how little he cares for the basic principles of American Justice in his proposed bill that would allow the federal government to strip a person of his US Citizenship without a trial and conviction, simply because the government believes that he has "ties" to a terrorist organization. Here is Lieberman, breaking his Oath of Office by proposing a clearly unconstitutional bill:






This bill is one those act now, think later political moves that come in response to an incident--in this case, the failed car-bomb attack in Times Square last weekend. Since the accused car-bomber, Faisel Shahzad, is a naturalized American citizen, he has certain rights that are protected by the US Constitution. When he was arrested, he was given his Miranda Warning, which is familar to every avid watcher of TV cop shows from Dragnet to CSI. The Miranda Warning is a statement from the arresting officer(s) to the detainee, that explicates his due process rights during police investigation and interrogation. We've all heard it:

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

When Shahzad was arrested a firestorm of controversy erupted over the fact that the Miranda Warning was read to him. And so Lieberman, supported by the Scott Brown of Massachusetts proposed that any US citizen who has been accused of "having ties" to a terrorist organization, should be stripped of his citizenship immediately--presumably so that the United States can interrogate him without telling him his rights.

This is wrong on principle, and pernicious as well, and since non-citizens also have certain due process rights in US Courts, it's useless as well.

On principle, the problem is that the United States Constitution guarantees that the rights of any person cannot be removed from him by the United States without due process of law:

"No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. . ." (Amendment V)

Note that it says "no person"--it applies to all human beings, not only to American citizens. However, in the Lieberman Bill, a citizen on the mere suspicion of undefined "connections" to terrorist organizations could be deprived of his citizenship and the rights and privileges thereof, without being even suspected of a crime, let alone actually tried and convicted for one. This is an outrageous violation of the liberty (at least) of American citizens. The due process rights in the Bill of Rights includes the right to presentment or indictment by a grand jury for capital and infamous crimes, the right to be free from double-jeopardy, the right to a speedy trial decided by a jury of one's peers, the right to be informed of the charges to be tried, the right to the assistance of counsel, and the right to be confronted by the accusers and witnesses. The Lieberman bill would make a person guilty by mere association, and strip him of his rights on suspicion of such, rendering punishment before he is tried and convicted.

I suppose this is the logical result of the years of trial by media which has culminated in the popular sentiment that a person who is forced to do the "perp walk" before TV cameras is guilty unless he proves himself innocent. And maybe not even then.

This proposed bill is pernicious because it gives the government unprecedented power to violate the rights of any person that it chooses not to like. How hard would it be to fabricate "ties" to some group or organization that the government decides is terrorist? Gentle Reader, if you think this is far-fetched consider the MIAC Fusion Center Report that placed ties with Ron Paul, the Libertarian Party, the use of the Gadsen Flag, and discussion of the US Constitution on par with domestic terrorism. Talking Idiots Heads on MSNBC have all but accused Talk Radio personalities such as Glenn Beck of commiting sedition ( something that should NEVER be a crime in a free country--but that's another blog).

This bill goes far beyond the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that caused mass protest across the United States, and even beyond Woodrow Wilson's persecution of those who spoke against US involvement in WWI. Under those equally unconstitutional laws, at the least the accused had to be indicted, tried and convicted prior to being stripped of any rights. Joe Lieberman would strip a person of rights before any trial could occur, and even without suspicion of any "crime."

The passage of this law could and would lead to the worst kind of terrorism: terrorism against the people by their own government and the ongoing repression of speech and thought by the state, and the outright suppression and persecution of dissent upon those opposed to specific policies.

Joe Lieberman wants to keep you safe by stripping you of your rights. He claims that this power would be very limited in scope. I remind you that never in history has a government arrogated to itself power that it did not use. In the immortal words of Judge Andrew Napolitano: "It is not government's job to keep you safe. It is government's job to keep you free!"

If you could be invited to one person's birthday party, whose would it be?

Mark Twain's

Ask me a question, I'll tell you no lies. But I might not answer. OTOH, sometimes I'll even blog it!

What 3 things do you think will become obsolete in the next ten years?

Music CD's, DVD's (just download movies), layers of unopenable packaging (I hope!)

Ask me a question, I'll tell you no lies. But I might not answer. OTOH, sometimes I'll even blog it!

T'was the Weekend Before Beltaine . . .

. . . Beltaine, the May cross-quarter day and the traditional beginning of summer in the old calendar. And here's what we awoke to . . .







Wet, windy snowfall on Friday morning . . .











Sunday morning, May 2, for crying out loud!
And the Cross-quarter is on Wednesday, May 5.

Maybe this year we will change the name of Sedillo Hill to "Never Summer Hill.











Snow on the rocks and the Agave.
I've seen it flurry here in May, and even June.
But stick?

It must be the Icelandic Volcano.

And maybe this is why although traditional summer begins in early May, meteorlogical summer does not begin until June 1.

That darn volcano--it put more stuff into the atmosphere in a few days than all the hippy-dippy yuppies and their Priuses and string grocery bags took out over the past 5.

Sigh. Anybody got any ideas for Volcano cap and tax?