Elegy for Ramrod
Most never knew his given name.
They called him Ramrod.
Lawrence didn’t fit him.
He came down from Oregon,
Prankster sidekick of Cassady,
Kesey and the merry crew,
a silent stoic in a vocable milieu
his heart was stolen by the Grateful Dead.
……
Here’s the rest of Hunter’s Elegy.
Update: There is more here…scroll down to 5/7 and read up.
Shatner does Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
Via The Sideshow.
In an editorial kind of calling for more congressional oversight of the NSA this Miami Herald editorial says:
Let’s be clear about what this program is and is not. ”The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval,” President Bush insisted shortly after the furor was ignited by a story in USA Today. In short, no indiscriminate wiretapping.
Really, these folks consider this quote from bush as a valid source to justify their clarification of what this program is and is not?
The authors should take the advice of their own closing sentence:
We should be well past the time when ”trust me” is an acceptable response to questions about what the government is up to. That’s the way freedom is lost.
Well, yes. But congress has failed to provide so called oversight and the executive branch seems to be out of control. Ample evidence that the concept of checks and balances is severely flawed.
Better than enhanced congressional oversight might be a complete elimination of these rotting organs which seem unconcerned with our freedom and liberty.
They are up at Watermark: The 112th Carnival of the Cats!
Balko explains:
As for Hillary, I was puzzled by all the people who said in 2004 that they couldn’t cast the divided government vote for John Kerry because they too feared a Hillary Clinton presidency. I wrote at the time that if anything, a second Bush term would make a Hillary presidency more likely, not less, because by the time Bush had served two terms, conservatives and limited government advocates would be dispirited, the left would be hungry and motivated, and everyone in the middle would have Republicans-in-power fatigue. It’s really just about the only scenario under which Hillary could wriggle her way into the White House.
And it’s about to happen.
I can’t imagine that hillary could be a worse president than w but apparently many in the bush base fear a hillary presidency.
That folks of any ilk fear tweedle dee or tweedle dum in the white house shows that we, the people, have let things get far out of hand. Governments at all levels and in all parts of the world need to be eliminated or pared back to the most basic functions.
Heck, when we are done properly paring them back there really shouldn’t be anything left that resembles the monstrosities currently trampling folks.