President Bush addressed the nation last night and is apparently still taking the entirety of the American populace for chumps. Now, I’m not going to argue that there aren’t a lot of chumps out there, but not everyone is going to buy his latest rhetoric.
Some folks pointed me to this press release today. It appears that some people up in New Hampshire are going to take advantage of the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows local government to claim your private property via eminent domain and sell it to private business. Of course, the land in question in this case is owned by Supreme Court Justice, David Souter (who voted in favor of the town of New London, CT in the recent decision, effectively abolishing parts of the 5th Amendment). Best of luck to the folks from Freestar Media, and I look forward to giving your hotel, restaurant and museum plenty of business to help out the poor people of Weare, NH.
I go out of state for a long weekend, and the Supreme Court puts a big ol’ chill on technological innovation. Did someone steal the Supreme Court’s lunch money on the way to school, or throw their books into a mud puddle, or tell them they couldn’t stay up late to watch Letterman? Apparently, it’s not enough to abolish sections of the Fifth Amendment, the Supreme Court also decided that it’s more important for large businesses to be able to sue small companies, and their users, into oblivion than to allow companies to develop products for the competitive marketplace. (more…)
What the hell is this country coming to? We’re trying to step all over our freedoms in order to “protect” the symbol of that very freedom. We’ve got a Federal Government run by Republicans who are supposedly supporters of less Federal Government and more State responsibility, but are actively denying State’s rights to determine where Liquified Natural Gas terminals are installed in their locales. And just today, we’ve got a Supreme Court who basically just abolished protections against the eminent domain sections of the 5th Amendment.
I can’t believe, with all the other problems we, as a country, are facing (corruption, wars, and crime, just to name a few) that we are really seeing another anti-flag burning amendment working its way through the House and Senate. Good ol’ Orrin Hatch is getting into the act again:
“It’s important that we venerate the national symbol of our country,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the amendment’s chief sponsor. “Burning, urinating, defecating on the flag - this is not speech. This is offensive conduct.” (USA Today - on Yahoo! News)
This is the same guy who suggested that the Recording Industry use some sort of remote method to destroy people’s personal computers if they are using P2P software and downloading copyrighted materials. I’m not sure I want some guy who’s all about invading people’s homes and remotely destroying their property telling me what’s offensive conduct. (more…)
I tend to do all my grocery shopping at this one particular chain because of the following: they have excellent health report ratings, their produce is very fresh, and a sale price is a sale price. You know the drill: you go to a grocery store or drug store and the first question the cashier asks is “do you have your blahblah card?” where blahblah = store name. I always answer “no” because I have always refused to sign up for one of those cards. I actually had a cashier at a Stop & Shop supermarket ask me if I was crazy when I answered in the negative to both card possession and desire to sign up for one. My response was that I didn’t think it was anyone’s business what items I purchased. Apparently that just confirmed that I was crazy. (more…)
This was one hell of a weekend. I just spent three days in Tactical Handgun 101 training with instructor, Randy Cain, who is a Gunsite instructor.
So a coworker wanders into my office with the latest Foo Fighters CD yesterday and points out the label on the cover. It’s not the now-ubiquitous FBI Anti-Piracy Warning that adorns every new CD, instead it’s a sticker that reads:
I don’t know why it continually shocks me that there are so many people in this country who insist that non-scientific theories be included in science classes, but yet it continually does. Back before I started this blog (all of a few weeks ago), I’d generally rant on my other page, and one of my more recent rants referenced a story about some IMax theaters in the South refusing to show a production entitled “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” because it referenced the theory of evolution.
My words to a West Coast friend over ICQ were, and I quote, “Holy crap!” when I read the news that the almost-original lineup of Pink Floyd was reuniting to play the Live 8 concert. Bob Geldof, the organizer of the Live Aid concert and the guy who played “Pink” in the movie “The Wall”, is organizing the Live 8 concert to “focus attention on the need for political justice for the world’s poor.”
