Nifong Gets His Comeuppance

In what likely is the most egregious example of prosecutorial malfeasance in recent history, Mike Nifong, the Durham County, NC district attorney who falsely accused and persecuted three Duke University lacrosse players, is finally beginning to get what he deserves. Few cases of bad conduct are worse than a judicial officer deliberately pursuing innocent people, charging them with crimes, and trying them on those charges for no better reason than political ambition. That is what Nifong did.

The lives of these three young men and their families were turned upside down for more than a year, they spent tens of thousands of dollars each trying to fend off the forces of the American judicial system, which was manipulated against them by a miscreant prosecutor seeking reelection. Duke University, which has its own shameful behavior to account for in this incident, also suffered from Nifong’s selfish crusade.

F. Lane Williamson, the chairman of the three-member disciplinary committee considering ethics charges against Nifong, commented, "This matter has been a fiasco. There's no doubt about it," just before it stripped the Nifong of his state law license. Williamson’s comment is classic understatement; it is impossible for me to find words to suitably describe what Nifong did.

Disbarment is an essential penalty for Nifong, but it should be only the first one. He should be made to repay all expenses incurred for defense of the three players and to repay North Carolina for the cost of their trials, even if that means that his every possession is seized and sold off. And if Nifong doesn’t have enough to cover the attorney fees, the State of North Carolina should pay the rest, and force Nifong to work for the State for free until he pays the rest. But not until he sits in a jail cell for a few years to pay his debt to society and to consider his disgusting behavior.

We Americans put our trust in the mechanisms of our government, and the people who perform duties for us through their government service. Breaching that trust, as Nifong did, is an intolerable injustice, an unforgivable failure of government to serve its citizens, and must be resolved with the most strenuous sanctions and penalties. Mike Nifong must become a symbol of what happens to government servants and elected officials when they break their trust with the American people they serve.

Technorati Tags: Justice, Politics, Crime

There Is Talent, And Then There Is TALENT

A lot of people watch American Idol, and a lot of people like it. I watch it on occasion, but not regularly, usually toward the end of the cycle when the better singers are the only ones standing. There are a few truly talented people among all those wannabes, but not many. Even the winners sometimes are not top-flight talents.

In Great Britain there is a similar program, “Britain’s Got Talent,” with Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and Piers Morgan of “America’s Got Talent” as a judge, and a truly gorgeous lady named Amanda as the third judge. The following YouTube video shows one contestant on the British show that actually is a tremendous talent.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Great Performances, Music

Subtle Bias Shows Up In Times News Story

News coverage, if it is done properly, delivers factual information straight and without bias toward any side. This is the job of the American news media: balance, fairness and accuracy, which are essential if Americans are to be informed well enough to make good decisions on important matters, and to have an accurate sense of reality.

It is not uncommon for today’s news media to stray from the straight and narrow path of honest news reporting and venture into the world of biased reporting, which, of course, destroys the objectivity and neutrality we depend upon. Some issues are more critical than others, obviously, and some examples of press bias are more damaging than others. The following example deals with an issue that is irrelevant to the security of the country, but is relevant as a political issue:

In Senate Vote, G.O.P. Fights Off Gonzales Rebuke
By David Johnston and Eric Lipton

Washington, June 11 — Senate Republicans blocked a symbolic no-confidence vote against Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Monday evening, dismissing the measure as an irrelevant gesture, though Democrats had hoped it might intensify pressure on Mr. Gonzales to resign.

"What’s wrong with that?” you might be asking. It seems innocuous enough, right? And, if you don’t stop and think about it, you might not notice the subtle jab at Republicans contained therein.

When you realize that the U.S. Senate has no role to play in whether Mr. Gonzales keeps his job or not, you ought to wonder why senators are wasting their time and our money on an irrelevant issue like a no-confidence vote on the Attorney General, instead of working on real problems. The reason, of course, is that Democrats score political points by pressuring the Republican administration to fire one of its main people and by doing so loudly in the press.

This story in The New York Times takes the Democrats’ side by placing the blame for the failure of this action on Republicans. However, when you consider that everyone in the Senate knew full well that it was a purely political effort, and for that reason was certain not to get many Republican votes, and when you realize further that there are only 51 Democrats in the Senate, nine short of the 60 votes needed for passage, there was never much chance of passing the measure.

So, while it is true that Republicans did not support the measure in sufficient numbers to pass it, given the political nature of the measure it is somewhat disingenuous to blame Republicans for the measure’s failure. It would have been just as accurate for the headline to be written: Democrats’ Partisan No-Confidence Measure Fails. But the most honest headline would simply have said: No-Confidence Vote Fails 53-38.

Having been written as it was, the headline and the story convey, however subtly, the idea that Republicans are playing politics by supporting the AG of a Republican administration, and in light of the enormous negative publicity against Mr. Gonzales, the Republicans appear partisan in their refusal to vote for the measure. It is one more piece of information that delicately colors perceptions, helping to firm up the idea that Republicans are not decent people who don’t play fair, and many people will react by thinking, “Those dastardly Republicans are protecting that horrible guy that fired those poor U.S. Attorneys for no reason.”

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Politics, Press Bias

I Admire Harry Reid

No, I really do. I know regular visitors to Observations have perceived my mild conservatism, and that there are some Democrats that I’m not fond of, and some Democrats whom I really am not fond of.

But Harry Reid has earned my respect. You see, Harry Reid is not your typical politician. And what is really interesting is that I would not have made that statement as little as 10 days ago, and I also would not have had the high admiration for Sen. Reid then that I have today.

What has produced this flattering opinion of the Senate Majority Leader that runs so sharply contrary to expectations? It is the fact that Sen. Reid sticks to his guns; he doesn’t waiver in the wind; he doesn’t stick a wet finger up to see which way the political winds are blowing; he ignores polls in making decisions in the Senate. Case in point: Despite approval ratings about the same as Scooter Libby’s, the man sentenced to prison for maybe lying in an investigation that shouldn’t have occurred into a crime that didn’t happen, and not far different from President Bush’s marks, Sen. Reid insisted in pushing aside Senate work on important matters to push ahead on a matter that not only isn’t important, but also isn’t the business of the U.S. Senate. Nosiree, Harry Reid isn’t going to be deterred by the fact that the attempt to hold a no confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is meaningless, or that even if he could get the Senate to vote to take the no confidence vote, it will have absolutely no effect on whether Gonzales remains in the AG’s position. You’ve got to admire that kind of independence in our elected servants.

But that isn’t all. Sen. Reid, against heavy opposition from the majority of Americans who want substantive changes made to our immigration policies and control established on our borders, unilaterally labeled the 12-to-40 million illegal aliens in the United States today “undocumented Americans.” Undeterred by the U.S. Constitution, which does not bestow such authority in the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Reid plunged blindly ahead to reclassify these intruders as citizens who just don’t have the proper paperwork yet.

So, hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! That’s three cheers for Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid. He’s my D.C. Hero for this week.

Technorati Tags: Congress, Politics, Democrats, America

"The Story of Two Houses"

Like most people, I get a lot of emails, and some of them are junk. But a lot of them are good ones, and occasionally I get one the authenticity of which I question. Following is one in the latter category:

House #1

A 20-room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year.

The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.

~~~

House #2

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on an arid, high prairie in the American southwest.

A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer.

The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~

House #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.

House #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

We've all heard about Al Gore's house, the condemnation for hypocrisy, the staunch defense by supporters, but this is the first I've heard about George Bush's house. I've done a little checking and the description of both houses appears to be accurate.

The Goose, the Gander and Libby

By Jay Ambrose

I don't get it. When Bill Clinton was in trouble for lying in a legal case, we were told that, oh, for Pete's sake, everyone lies.

But now, Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been sentenced to prison for lies. How can that be?

Of course, Clinton did take a hit. He was impeached by the House. But leftist scholars had told us that the constitutional criterion for evicting a president from office committing "high crimes and misdemeanors" was not satisfied by the crime of perjury for some reason, and the public seemed endlessly forgiving because, after all, sex was involved. You could almost hear a continental murmur: "There but for the grace of God go I."

So there was no eviction and, once Clinton was out of office and vulnerable to the criminal courts, no whisper of prosecution. It is true that, before his tenure was up, a federal judge found Clinton in contempt of court, ordering him to pay $90,000 for his lies, and that he later went along with the suspension of his license to practice law in Arkansas (which isn't exactly what he had been practicing in the first place). But that was about it, and Clinton has since been bouncing happily along.

It has been different with Libby, who has led a productive, important, decent life but made the mistake, first, of working for an unpopular vice president in Dick Cheney, a Republican, no less, and not so nice-seeming as Clinton, and, second, of running up against a fixated, Javert-like prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. This guy failed, you know. Fitzgerald set out to prove someone broke the law by leaking the classified identity of a CIA employee, but no law was broken, and he landed on the next best thing. That happened to be crucifying Libby for saying he had not done something that wasn't illegal anyway.

Did Libby knowingly lie during the investigation? As somebody whose own memory is far from what it used to be, I can almost believe that Libby may have suffered at least some lapses instead of engaging in outright fabrication. But the jury said he is guilty, and let's assume he is while also recalling what was going on here.

A former ambassador had said in a New York Times op-ed piece that the administration had misled the American people about Iraq trying to get uranium from Africa. The basis of his contention was a government-sponsored investigative trip that did not begin to demonstrate what he said it demonstrated. It turned out that his wife at the CIA had recommended his name for this trip in the first place. In Washington politics, when people come at you falsely and you discover behind-the-scenes facts that might illuminate what's really happening, you leak to the press.

It's an old game, and while there were claims of a CIA spy being dangerously "outed" in this case, that's a melodramatic, hyped-up interpretation of events at best.

Maybe a prosecutor looks at these circumstances and still says, you know, Libby really did obstruct the pursuit of justice and we need to make a statement about that. Then you learn that Fitzgerald knew even before the interrogation of Libby that the initial leak had another source, and you find yourself asking several questions. To what extent should we applaud anyone who uses the mighty apparatus of the federal government to keep bulldozing away until he can get a conviction of someone for something? Is that the kind of law enforcement we really want? And isn't a hanging judge's prison sentence of two and a half years wildly, even maliciously disproportionate to the offense?

Despite my disdain for much of the prattle in Clinton's defense, I thought eviction from the White House would have been disproportionate to his offense.

Yes, dishonest testimony subverts the means by which we arrive at just conclusions in court cases, and for Clinton to get off scot-free would have sent all sorts of wrong signals.

But he didn't. There were some consequences, including the impeachment. Libby, too, should face penalties of some sort, but not this, not 30 months in prison. This punishment is a travesty and an outrage.

Jay Ambrose is the former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.

Technorati Tags: Crime and Punishment, Politics, Justice, America

Back in the Slammer, Again

Well, it seems that the judge in the Paris Hilton case was a peeved as the rest of us with the unilateral action of the sheriff, who released the heiress to home confinement with only an ankle bracelet to supervise her.

As news reports tell it, the judge, along with the City Attorney, were both incensed at the action, and called Hilton back into court today and ordered her back to jail. Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer was calm but apparently irked by Sheriff Lee Baca's decision to release Hilton three days into her sentence due to an unspecified medical condition. "I at no time condoned the actions of the sheriff and at no time told him I approved the actions," Sauer said. "At no time did I approve the defendant being released from custody to her home." (Source: Fox News) She, reportedly, broke down in tears and cried for her mother.

Paris has her defenders, or at least some who think her 43-day jail sentence was over the top. Their opposition holds that no one who had be found guilty of driving while intoxicated had ever gotten 43 days in jail before. They are probably right.

But Paris did more than just get convicted of driving under the influence; she broke the terms of her probation by driving on a suspended license, kept the judge and the rest of the courtroom participants waiting for 30 minutes beyond the scheduled start time of her hearing, and then had the audacity, or lack of sense, to tell the court that she couldn’t be bothered with reading court documents herself, that she had her people do it for her. Obviously, she had no idea what those documents said, and that likely meant that the judge had to take additional time to make her aware of what they said.

Given all of that, it’s no wonder the judge sent her to jail. I feel certain he was trying very hard to get the self-absorbed girl’s attention, and send her the message that just because she is rich and doesn’t use, or have, any common sense, or care much about things, the rest of the world does not recognize that she is as special as she thinks she is.

I don’t blame the judge for giving her a tough sentence, and I hope that living in these sparse conditions of the detention facility for six weeks will get her attention, and make her stop and think a little about what a waste her life has been up until now, and just maybe the experience will propel Paris Hilton to make something useful of herself.

Paris Back in the Hilton

So, young, naughty Paris, who finally got what she deserved, and what might actually have benefited her, developed a reaction to jail and got sent home.

Originally sentenced to 45 days for violating probation on a drink-driving conviction, she was told there was no prospect of early release. But guess what? She got an early release; the sentence was cut in half after she was given credit for good behavior. Just what was good about her behavior? And why did that merit halving her jail time, given that she drove drunk, then ignored her probation, and then after that showed up late for court, and then, again, said that, no, she hadn’t read the court documents, that one of her “people” was supposed to have done that?

But the 26-year-old out-of-touch, self-absorbed heiress will now be kept under house arrest and must wear an electronic tag for another 40 days. Oh, the shame of it! The utter humiliation!

She was held at the Century Regional Detention Centre in Lynwood, California, where she was credited with having served five days, and where her lawyer said she spent 23 hours a day in a solitary cell. She was separated from the main prison population in a special unit for celebrities, public officials, police officers and other high-profile inmates.

So, what went wrong?

The decision to send her home was made as a result of a medical problem, but officials refused to give details of the condition, citing privacy issues. Other sources said that she cried all the time, that she said the jail was too noisy, that she didn’t eat, and the kicker: she developed a rash. What that says to me is that the therapy was working, not that she needed to be sent home to mommy.

I guess this is just one more pitiful example of what passes for justice, sometimes, in America.

But what message does this send to other young people? Or, to older people, for that matter?

Technorati Tags: Crime and Punishment, Culture, Justice, America

What’s Up in Russia?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to retaliate against a proposed missile defense system the U.S. wants to install by aiming Russian missiles at Europe.

It seems the Russians have returned to their Cold War mentality, when they objected to nearly everything enemy nations wanted to do, however innocuous it may have been. What threat, after all, does a system to destroy missiles that have been launched at the U.S. and/or European nations pose to Russia?

Here’s what the United States wants to build: a system that will knock out incoming ballistic missiles potentially coming from North Korea and Iran by stationing radars in Alaska and California in the U.S., one in the U.K., and one in Greenland, and a series of interceptor missiles based in Alaska (40 of them) and California (4), and 10 of them in Poland with a radar facility to fire them located in the Czech Republic. There would also be 130 interceptors based on ships. The interceptors would physically hit the ballistic missile in mid-flight. There would also be missiles to try to destroy incoming rockets in the final stages.

So, this plan generates threats from Russia? One wonders exactly what the Russians are planning that they are so adamantly opposed to a system designed to protect us and our friends from potential nuclear attack from North Korea or Iran? The Russian threat is somewhat like saying “If I take a swing at your nose, you had better not try to block it.”

Weird? Uh-huh. Suspicious? You betcha.

Technorati Tags: Common Sense, Communism, National Security, America

Amnesty: NoEnforcement: Yes

The amnesty bill now being debated in the U.S. Senate, the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, doesn’t pass the smell test for those Americans concerned with their culture, the rule of law, fairness in bringing in new citizens, and a common sense approach to immigration.

We have some number of millions of illegal aliens—perhaps as many as 40 million, by some estimates—in this country thanks to the negligence of the federal government and the willful complicity of many cities, counties and states. Many or most of these illegal aliens are probably good people looking for a better life than they could make back home, but more than a few of them are not good people. They are criminals, drug dealers, drunk drivers and maybe—even likely—terrorists.

Each of these people, good or not good, is by definition a lawbreaker, a criminal.

It isn’t difficult to get into the U.S. if you want to get in. There are numerous checkpoints manned by the Border Patrol for those who want to do it the right way, but it isn’t much of a challenge for those who won’t or can’t come in legally. Our government has miserably failed in one of the very few legitimate duties it has: guarding its borders against interlopers. If you value your family and your belongings, you lock your house to keep the thieves out. That might keep only the less determined thieves out, but it is at least taking some positive action to protect your valued possessions. The United States hasn’t locked its doors; it left them wide open. And that isn’t the fault of the Border Patrol, it is a policy failure that goes back decades.

The amnesty bill is one attempt to correct all these problems, but it is a pitifully inept attempt that, among other things, rewards illegal aliens for breaking the law. That won’t fly.

What will fly with Americans that care about preserving their country and way of life is a plan that at the very least doesn’t reward bad behavior, and put gate-crashers ahead of paying customers; one that requires people who want to adopt the U.S. and its way of life as their own to integrate themselves into the existing society by learning about our country’s history and traditions, and learning to speak its language; one that expects people to earn their way in, not sneak in; a plan that says to all who want to come here, “we don’t take just anybody, you have to be worthy of becoming an American.”

Anything less won’t pass muster, and can’t be allowed by the people to get out of Congress. We must enforce our borders and our immigration laws, and we must deal with illegal aliens like the law breakers they are.

The pandering of the presidential hopefuls who have signed on to this plan is disgusting. Democrats see millions of new Democrat voters; Republicans want to throw a bone to Hispanics so perhaps their votes won’t go so heavily to Democrats. They could care less about what happens to the country with an influx of millions of Mexicans, Central and South Americans and God only knows who else that want to come here on their own terms.

This inane plan must be defeated, and each and every political candidate who supports it must also be defeated.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Liberalism, Illegal Aliens, America

A Prosecutorial Vendetta

May, 31, 2007
Dan K. Thommason
Scripps Howard News Service

What in the world did former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby ever do to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to make him so angry? Fitzgerald now wants the federal court to throw the book at Libby as the final step in one of the most graphically unfair, ridiculous investigations and prosecutions in the history of the Republic.

There really has to be something personal here. One would think the Chicago prosecutor with a reputation for self-righteousness had a bone to pick with Libby from the very start.

Fitzgerald has asked for a three-year sentence for Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice and lying during an inquiry into the disclosure of a CIA undercover agent who hadn't been covert in some time. For heavens sake, the Watergate cover up conspirators didn't get that harsh of treatment for precipitating a constitutional crisis. There are convicted muggers, thieves and dopers who are doing less time.

Valerie Plame, the CIA operative, was about as important to the security of this nation as I am and that much seems implicit in the fact that Fitzgerald decided early on there were no grounds to prosecute anyone under a law making it a crime to reveal the identity of an American spy. But one would have thought that revealing her occupation was a serious breach in national defense that threatened us all and that her life has been ruined by that disclosure. Instead, she and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, seem to have thrived, becoming media celebrities and the darlings of liberal salons. If the court accepts Fitzgerald's demands, the couple can giggle all the way to the next Vanity Fair party while grousing that Fitzgerald didn't put away more White House aides.

But wait a second. Wasn't this essentially a victimless non-crime, the leaking of Plame's name that is? Then why continue to pursue the matter? That's anyone's guess but a legitimate surmise might be that Fitzgerald was interested almost from the first in getting someone to lie so he could prosecute anyway. In fact, there was almost immediate speculation to that effect after he was appointed. Badger anyone long enough and discrepancies in their stories are likely to appear. I'm sorry, but there has to be some personal motivation in all this.

Having chosen Libby as the scapegoat in this charade, Fitzgerald now wants to administer the coup de grace by putting him in the slammer for 30 to 37 months. Why not? We all know by now that Libby's crime makes him public enemy number one. At least that's the way it sounded in Fitzgerald's sentencing recommendation. He argued that Libby "showed contempt for the judicial process ... by repeatedly lying under oath about material matters in a serious criminal investigation."

He also said that Libby has shown no remorse for his actions. Well, in Libby's mind he feels he was unfairly made an example, wrongly prosecuted and wrongly convicted and there are a great many Americans out there who agree with him no matter what the special counsel says.

This is not a defense for lying nor should public officials be treated leniently when they disobey the law. But there are crimes and there are crimes and the impact of Libby's actions, even if accurately portrayed, which is in doubt, is without real significance except to demonstrate the diligence of those prosecuting him, another notch on the handle of the counsel's gun so to speak. It is difficult for the average person to see how a case can be obstructed when there is no case. Fitzgerald's mandate was to determine whether the law on CIA disclosures had been broken and he knew almost immediately that it hadn't but he kept going.

What about all those others who had a hand in outing Plame -- the former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who told columnist Bob Novak and began this travesty? Why was no one else but Libby pursued with this fervor. The prosecutors even jailed a reporter for not telling them what they already knew. So what in the world is going on here, Fitzgerald?

Perhaps Libby is fortunate that Fitzgerald didn't ask for the death penalty. He probably would have if he could have. Federal District Judge Reggie Walton will make the decision on June 5, and he needs to start asking questions about the severity of this request.

Haven't the taxpayers spent enough on this nonsense?

Will the Real John Edwards Please Stand Up? Probably Not

John Edwards seemed a little greasy in the 2004 election, but these days he makes the performance three years ago look positively principled and decent.

Everybody knew that Edwards made his fortune as an ambulance chasing plaintiff attorney, and his pleadings on behalf of the country’s poor came across as a shallow effort, but the once and present candidate either isn’t a quick study, and didn’t learn anything on that score, or he figures that people really don’t care about such things.

But some of us do care about things like hypocrisy, and John Edwards seems up to his neck in it. Edwards’ poverty center was up and running during the 2004 campaign, and that seems appropriate for someone who claims to want to help the poor, right? Business Week magazine tells us, however, that the center was housed in the same office as his political action committee. Convenient, eh? What’s more, the nonprofit center reportedly spent an astounding 70 percent of the money it raised for the poor to fund a speaking tour for Edwards, and on staff salaries for folks who, it turns out, not long thereafter signed on with the Edwards presidential campaign. Real nonprofit organizations operate on a fraction of their funding, rather than on most of it, and real nonprofits don’t funnel employees to political campaigns.

Edwards gave a speech a few days ago at the University of California, Davis, titled, "Poverty, the Great Moral Issue Facing America." So, Edwards continues his work to help the poor, right? Maybe not. News reports tell us that he received $55,000 for the appearance, and that the poor students who attended were charged more than $17 a ticket.

Further, during the 2004 presidential campaign Edwards told us of his humble beginnings in a little house he grew up in that was all his mill worker father could afford. Once again, however, the truth is a different story than the one Edwards tells. Yes, he did live in that little house, until he was a year old. After that, mom and dad and Johnny found themselves movin’ on up, thanks to his father’s promotion to a management position and enough of an increase in income to keep the Edwards forever above the poverty line. Funny, we didn’t hear about that in the campaign ads. Now, John and Mrs. Edwards tough it out in a 28,000-square-foot house with six bathrooms and ignore the poor folks in the mobile home park across the street as they pass by.

So much for John Edwards, the politician and hustler, whose pandering to the poor has shown him as unfit to be President of the United States. But as tawdry as his poverty pimping is, that’s not the worst of it. Just last week Edwards gave a major foreign policy speech in which he labeled the war on terror a bumper sticker slogan. With this absurdity John Edwards separates himself from reality. Not only is Islamic terrorism a very real threat to his country, but he seems to have forgotten how adamantly he supported the war on terror in 2004, when he complained that the Iraq war was distracting us from fighting terrorism.

Seems like the overriding concern in what John Edwards really stands for is how many votes it will get him. That isn’t unusual in politics, even in presidential politics, but those aren’t the people we want to elect.

So we should bid John Edwards a fond a swift farewell from the political arena. He doesn’t have what it takes.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, War on Terror, Democrats

An Interesting Column I Found While Surfing

I came across the following piece while surfing blogs, and thought I would pass it along to those who might also find it interesting. It is from My View from the Center, the webmaster of which identifies himself as "whymrhymer" (although he does have a real name).As usual, comments are welcomed:

Pick Your Poison: Ron Paul

When Ron Paul uttered his rationale for the 9/11 attack on the U.S. (”They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.”) it may have woke up some Americans to the possibility that our country has done some very ill-considered things in the name of ‘making the world a better place.’ Some people, however, refuse to wake up! Look, for instance, at Rudy Giuliani’s reaction to Ron Paul’s statement: ” I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.” And, as unlikely as it seems, that may be the truth! Who, in Giuliani’s circle of friends and supporters, would even consider that saving the world from itself was not the correct thing to do and who among them would ever believe that someone could hate you and attack you for doing the right thing?

As I see it, Ron Paul is at least partially right; one of the basic principles of how the world works is: Every “good” act will be perceived as bad by someone!; but he is wrong to completely ignore the social, political and religious aspects of that hatred. In any event, creating an enemy is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you create enemies you must be prepared to deal with them.

Keep in mind that some things MUST be done in the name of survival and America’s involvement in the Middle-East just may have been one of those things. No one outside the ‘circle of power’ in the White House knows for sure but I’ve always assumed that we (the U.S. Government) had a very sound, strategic, survival-related reason for our active involvement in Middle-Eastern politics and I also assume that one day, when some dead politician’s memoirs are published, we will find out what that reason REALLY was. You can be sure, however, that whatever the reason we went into Iraq, we didn’t go into Iraq with a clear understanding of the consequences (the cost and the number of U.S. casualties).

Now Forget What You Just Read! It’s Not Relevant!

What IS . . . IS!

Today, it doesn’t matter WHY we got involved in the Middle-Eastern mess, all that matters is that WE ARE THERE and we have to take a next step.

Pick Your Poison!

In the very unlikely event that Ron Paul became president in 2009, assuming he sticks to his current ’script,’ we will probably see a massive troop withdrawal from around the world. It is not likely we will go completely ‘isolationist. i.e., close all overseas military bases and completely abandon close allies, but you can be sure we will be out of the Middle-East and other war zones.

If one of the leading Democrats takes office in 2009 the result will be pretty much the same except that our withdrawal of troops will be limited, at least initially, to Iraq.

If one of the Republican front-runners becomes president we may stay in Iraq until the Iraqi government and military are strong enough to survive without us or, depending on which Republican wins, we may see a similar scenario as we would see under the Democrats.

Personally, I believe that, for our own safety and survival, the radical Islamist movement must be destroyed — IF we can do that without fighting them in Iraq, we must do it; IF it takes another five or ten years to do it, we must do it; IF we can do it diplomatically, without open warfare, we must do it — I’m not a military tactician but I know that however it can be done it MUST be done, simply because we cannot coexist with people who feel that they have an edict from their God to destroy everyone who does not worship as they do and we MUST elect a president that understands that!!

While picking your poison however, don’t forget that the United States has other very serious problems besides the Middle-East. We have a government that is spending OUR money at an alarming rate; an income tax system that is too large, too complex and too inefficient; government regulations that strangle the free-market; existing and proposed legislation that puts the government smack in the middle of our private lives and personal business; and, of course, a still-unimpeded invasion of illegal immigrants who are, according to current plans, going to be allowed to continue draining our economy and destroying our culture.

Which of the current crop of candidates for President is likely to correct some or most of these domestic problems and still focus on the major international threat to our safety?

If the election was tomorrow, I would have to say that Ron Paul had the best chance of meeting that challenge . . . but I’m glad the election isn’t tomorrow . . . that I still have nearly 18 months to pick my own brand of poison.

Venezuelan Troops Fire On Protesters

Hugo Chavez, the socialist Venezuelan president so beloved by such Americans as actor Danny Glover and one-time singer Harry Belafonte, and whose big mouth and dearth of good sense has earned him the scorn of every decent American, is in trouble with his own subjects over the shutting down of the country’s only dissident TV station, RCTV, the most popular station in the country. And Chavez, ever the demagogue, explains that he took this action because he wants to democratize the airwaves by turning the network's signal over to “public use.”

Venezuelan National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of thousands of protesters angry over the shutting down of RCTV, which was critical of Chavez’ government. Recent reports say one person has died in the protests. Crowds of students demonstrated across Caracas, saying they fear for the future of free speech.

Maybe the students are right; none of the other TV stations in Venezuela carried news of the protests.

Chavez refused to renew RCTV's broadcast license because of its "subversive" activities and for backing a coup against him in 2002. The replacement public channel, TVES, launched its transmissions immediately after RCTV was shut down with pro-Chavez music, followed by an exercise program and a talk show, interspersed with government ads proclaiming, "Now Venezuela belongs to everyone."

Founded in 1953, RCTV regularly topped viewer ratings with its talk shows, sports, soap operas and comedy programs. But Chavez accused the network of helping to incite a failed coup in 2002, violating broadcast laws and "poisoning" Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism. RCTV's managers deny wrongdoing.

Technorati Tags: Freedom, Socialism, Thugs

Fred Thompson Remembers

To many, Memorial Day is just a day off work, or a day to laze around, or maybe work around the house and yard, or to get together with family and friends and grill out. But, of course, it's really about something more substantive, as actor and presidential candidate Fred Thompson notes:

"... Memorial Day is about remembering. It’s about remembering those who died for our country; but it's also about remembering why they believed it was worth dying for. Too many Americans, though, have never been taught our own history and heritage. How can you remember something that you’ve never learned?"

He's right. Too many people don't understand the heritage they have been born into, or that they adopted when they came here from another country. They don't know why the United States is such a great nation, even with all its attendant problems. They haven't learned the lesson of Pearl Harbor and, amazingly, they didn't learn the lesson of 9-11.

Our country has lost its unity, and is seriously, perhaps fatally divided. Maybe today will help draw us back together, as we honor the memory of all those that through the decades have given their lives to create and maintain our freedoms, and remember all of the good things about our country that are worth maintaining.

Pap as News

I have to tell you that my patience is wearing thin with Fox News, due to the mindless pap I see too much of on the news channel.

Entertainment reporter (a contradiction in terms?) Bill McCuddy laments the effects Lindsay Lohan’s infantile behavior has on his young daughter, a very real concern, to be sure. But, Bill, do you not realize that people like you, who report on the entertainment industry, and networks like Fox News, that air this garbage hours every day, are the reason this self-absorbed, under-aged, semi-talented girl has the opportunity to affect young girls? And Fox News is not the only network guilty of indulging in this dishonorable activity.

I’m sick of hearing about Lohan/Spears/Hilton and their self-destructive behavior, and I’m sick generally of the degree to which our culture immerses itself in crap like this. Too much news of the entertainment industry and its many miscreants distracts our attention from truly important things, and occupies far too much valuable air time.

Please, for God’s sake, news networks, climb out of the gutter and limit the news to things that are worthy of my time.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Entertainment, Journalism

Continuing the Creation/Evolution Discussion

What follows is a continuation of the previous article, Creation Museum Stirs Scientists’ Opposition, and is based upon a comment by Leo, a new commenter to Observations, which poses a thoughtful challenge to my original post. I chose to make the following exchange an article of its own because I think it will be interesting reading, and because it might have been “lost” if left in the Comment section. Leo’s comment has been slightly edited, and the unedited comment can be found among the comments to the original article.

Leo's Comment: I have a question for you, if you believe religious ideas of creationism are correct and you have faith in those ideas why attempt to falsely couch them behind the guise of science?

In other words, there are plenty of churches and Sunday schools where religious people are FREE to teach their children any theory of creationism they desire, so why would religious people feel the need to open a "museum" which is historically an arena reserved for purely intellectual/factual/secular teaching???

The only logical answer to this question that I can think of is that the said religious people wish to present their beliefs in a secular/factual type of setting in order to convey a false presumption that their beliefs are not based on faith, but on fact, which is backed up by science. In my opinion this is the same reason that some religious people want to tout "intelligent design" as a science instead of what it is, which is a purely faith based opinion/theory.

I'm sure you will not particularly enjoy my point of view on this subject, but before you jump to the conclusion that I'm some sort of atheist, I'll let you know I'm actually a weekly church-goer who has enough faith in my religious beliefs to feel comfortable continuing to use the mind God gave me to reason, and allow that while God created the universe there is plenty of evidence that evolution is factual and the Bible does not have to be taken completely literally when it comes to the seven-day time frame.

I think there is room in one's mind to believe that science and religion do not have to be diametrically opposed.

Response: First, it isn’t clear from your first sentence whether “you” refers to me, or whether it refers more broadly to believers. I frequently take science and scientists to task for its/their dismissive attitude toward people who believe in God, and quite frequently I am identified as someone who is a believer defending the position of believers. However, I actually am neutral in these arguments. This labeling of me as a believer with no more proof than a neutral argument is evidence, I believe, of the pro-science/anti-religion arrogance of many scientists and science advocates, and a hypersensitivity and hyper-defensiveness about their theory. Truth be told: I see the Big Bang/evolution theory and the Biblical account as compatible stories, not as mutually exclusive accounts in which one is right and one is wrong.

I haven’t seen the Creation Museum, so I cannot comment on whether or not it attempts portray religion as science, but I have to disagree with your characterization of museums as vehicles of “purely intellectual/factual/secular teaching,” as there are numerous types of museums: Museums of art, music, history, science, natural history, broadcasting, etc. I doubt that all of these are scientifically oriented, and the definitions of “museum” do not indicate this as a required characteristic. Therefore, the Creation Museum may be no more than a place where exhibits have been created to represent in concrete form the concepts portrayed in the Bible.

A couple of definitions of “museum”:

1 - A building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed. (Dictionary.com)

2 - A museum is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education, enjoyment, the tangible and intangible evidence of people and their environment" (ICOM definition).

As for intelligent design, it is not a new theory, having its origins hundreds of years before Charles Darwin was born, so I do not regard it as some recent effort to “legitimize” a God-centered view of creation by trying to make a science out of it. Instead, I see it as a third view of how things began that, while centered on an intelligent being—a supernatural creator—that some regard as God, represents a view as different from the creationist story as it is from the evolution story.

So, I maintain my position that science, for whatever reason or set of reasons, desires to stifle the efforts of religious people to advance their beliefs in an arena outside the traditional, and limited, arenas of churches and religion-oriented schools and media.

Technorati Tags: Science, Religion, Freedom

Creation Museum Stirs Scientists’ Opposition

The argument between science and religion has raged for a long time, and it rages still. How did the world begin? How did man come to be? Science tells one story; religion tells another. The science version of things is taught in schools, public and private; the religious version is not taught in public schools. Hundreds of museums tell science’s version to the public, but no museums tell the public religion’s version. Where interaction with the general public and children is concerned, science has a big advantage, as people are routinely presented with the scientific story in compulsory schooling and in routine public activities, but they must actively seek out the religious version by attending church or a church-sponsored school, or through other means. So, with such a great advantage on their side, you might think scientists would pay little attention when one museum based upon the creation story sets to open. You would be wrong.

A Creation Museum, the first in the United States, is set to open this weekend in Northern Kentucky, and scientists have reacted negatively toward this project. The Museum presents the literal Biblical story of a six-day creation of the universe, and is the product of Ken Ham, the head of Answers in Genesis, and who arrived in Northern Kentucky from Australia in 1994 with dreams of building the Museum. "We admit that in this place, our bias, our starting point, is the Bible," Ham says. The Bible, he said, "is the word of God, who knows everything." His organization rejects one of the cornerstones of modern science - the theory of evolution, a key tenet of which is that all life on Earth descended from a common ancestor, a process that happened over billions of years.

Scientists are apoplectic: Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said, "Everything science has taught us over the course of the last 200 years teaches us that this kind of literal, biblical, creationist notion is misguided at best, and just plain false at worst." "When they try to confuse (kids) about what is science and what isn't science, scientists have an obligation to speak out," said author and Case Western Reserve University physics professor Lawrence Krauss. "There's no doubt these are documented lies."

Ham noted that the vast majority of natural history museums and textbooks available to students are devoted to teaching evolution, "and they're worried about one creation museum? I think they're really concerned that we're going to get information out that they don't want people to hear."

"We're not talking about free speech. We would not protest the museum," Leshner said. "However, we are concerned that we not mislead young people inadvertently or intentionally about what science is showing."

Leshner makes one critical mistake: He operates from the position that the museum attempts to falsely portray a scientific theory, when in fact the museum is presenting a contrary theory to that of science. Leshner further appears to possess the arrogance that many scientists and science advocates possess, which results in a closed-minded belief that science is always right and every other theory is wrong. The fact is that even though evolutionary theory is widely accepted and believed true by a large number of people, it is incomplete; there are cavernous gaps in the theory that must be filled in for evolution to be an accurate and provable explanation for how things came to be as they are.

Scientists often gleefully ridicule religious adherents for hanging their beliefs on faith rather than fact, as if faith is inferior. Yet, being unable to prove their own theory of creation, scientists also are guilty of relying on faith.

The scientific community is indeed attempting to limit the free expression of people like Ken Ham. Perhaps this arises from arrogance, as I suggested earlier, or perhaps it arises from insecurity in the theory of evolution. It must be very frustrating for scientists to believe that their theory is correct, but be unable to prove it. But the upshot of all of this is that science is either correct in asserting evolution as the correct explanation of creation, or it is mistaken, and science is unable to prove absolutely that evolution is the correct explanation. So, objectively, the best science can claim is that evolution may be the correct explanation, and that is essentially the same argument that those who believe in God or a supreme being make.

So, if science and scientists are the objective truth-seekers they claim to be, they ought to abandon this humiliating effort to stifle contrary opinions.

Technorati Tags: Religion, Science, Freedom

Don't Think Press Bias Exists?

Here is but one of a multitude of examples of press bias in today's media, contained in a story by Associated Press Writer Deb Reichmann:

"President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target."

Just in case you didn't notice the bias, it was the phrase "trying to defend his war strategy," and the use of the term "asserting." That phrase and that word are not legitimate parts of a properly written news story; the phrase is the opinion of the writer, and the term is a loaded one, intended to give credence to the opinion.

Consider the sentence without those elements: "President Bush declassified intelligence Tuesday indicating that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target." That is a politically neutral and factual statement.

News stories should include nothing more than verifiable facts and information, and leave the consumers to determine for themselves what the information means. Was President Bush really "trying to defend his war strategy," by "asserting" that bin Laden did this or that, or was he merely making public information relevant to the issue of terrorist activity? Ms. Reichmann relieves readers of the responsibility of answering that question by telling them the answer: "Mr. Bush was trying to justify the Iraq war, and don't you dare think otherwise." Having delivered that message in the first sentence of the story, Ms. Reichmann has set the stage for readers to accept her premise that Mr. Bush is propagandizing the American people.

Now, Mr. Bush may indeed be attempting to sway public opinion to his way of thinking, and in fact I would be surprised to find that he wasn't. But if he is, it is not the job of a mere reporter to decide that for the rest of us, and both Ms. Reichmann and her editors are supposed to know better.

It would be perfectly acceptable, even responsible, for Ms. Reichmann to offer a contrary opinion from a legitimate source—a Democrat Congressman or Senator, say—and leave it to the consumers of her report to decide which side of the story they believe.

Doing that, however, may not produce the reaction that liberals in the media want, so dishonest reporters like Ms. Reichmann stack the deck in their favor by slanting the reporting. And if you think that there aren't many Americans who would be taken in by this tactic, you are flat wrong.

Technorati Tags: Press Bias, Iraq War, Journalism

Petition in Opposition to Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Please read the petition below, and if you agree and want to sign it, go here.



To: The US Congress

We the undersigned, citizens of the United States, petition the US Congress to reject any immigration bill that offers amnesty or otherwise rewards people for illegal behavior.

The United States of America is a sovereign nation of diverse cultures living in relative harmony and producing some of the greatest gifts to the world. This nation, while criticized by some, is a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world who risk their lives and their life's savings for the opportunity of a better existence. No where on this planet is there a better place to live where people enjoy freedoms unimagined in most of the world.

This nation was founded and built by immigrants who came here legally in hope of a better future. Those immigrants, inspired by the freedom of this nation and unbridled by oppression helped make this upstart country become the leader of the free world in a fraction of the time that many nations have existed. In just over 200 years America has shown what people who are truly free can accomplish.

This nation is at a crossroad and the actions of the Congress will likely determine whether or not America will continue to thrive. Illegal immigration tears the very fabric of our society and destroys us from within.

Therefore, we demand that the Congress of the United States reject any immigration bill that grants amnesty or rewards illegal behavior. We demand that immigration laws be changed so that the law enforcement of individual states may protect their state's sovereignty by enforcing the immigration law. We recognize that proper enforcement begins with a secure border and therefore demand that the Congress enact laws that require the closure of the southern border of our country by means of a wall and provide appropriate means to do so as well as appropriate measures to secure the remaining borders.

Be it known that the below signed individuals, being citizens of the United States, vow to reject the reelection of any member of Congress, regardless of party affiliation, who votes to allow those here illegally to stay or be otherwise rewarded for their behavior.

One of the greatest gifts a person in America can have is the title of citizen. Do not cheapen this honor by selling that designation for political gain.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Berger the Burgler Makes News

News Item: “Clinton White House National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, who was convicted of taking classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, has agreed to surrender his license to practice law. In a written statement issued by his attorney, Larry Breuer, Berger, 61, said: ‘I have decided to voluntarily relinquish my license. While I derived great satisfaction from years of practicing law, I have not done so for 15 years and do not envision returning to the profession. I am very sorry for what I did, and I deeply apologize.’”

“Agreed to surrender” his law license? What’s that all about? And don’t you just love the apology? Notice he doesn’t apologize for pilfering irreplaceable documents from the National Archives by stuffing them in his pants until after he says, in effect, “Oh, well, I don’t need a law license any more, so I don’t mind giving it up?”

What a schmuck!

Berger's "punishment" was a pittance of a fine—although $50,000 sounds big, it didn’t put a strain on Berger’s finances—former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin has been financially ruined and sentenced to 12 and a half years for passing along far less-classified information to unauthorized third parties. I won’t bore you with tales of the inequities of the press coverage of these two cases, but take my word on it, Berger got a pass.

Berger ought to have had his license taken from him, and be in jail, to boot.

On The Road Again

We left South Florida this morning headed back to the beautiful mountains of Virginia and I emerged from the darkness of my partial estrangement from the Internet. After we stopped for the night I learned three interesting things that I hadn’t seen on TV news, first that “megastar” Leonardo DiCaprio not only believes Al Gore’s picture of reality re: global warming, but Leo also has committed his ideas to film, as his hero Al did.

Well that seals it: If both Al and Leo think man causes global warming, it must be true.

While I think that both the actor and the politician have no clue what they are talking about, I do at least give them credit for having the courage of their convictions, although these days it takes little courage to advocate for the man-causes-global-warming theory.

The second interesting thing is that Internet censorship is growing worldwide, and 26 out of 40 countries block or filter political or social content.

The OpenNet Initiative listed six countries as "pervasive" filterers of political information: Myanmar, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam. They categorized seven countries, all of them Muslim, as "pervasive" social filterers: Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

What do you suppose the misleaders of these countries fear from unfiltered Internet viewing by their subjects?

And finally I read that former President Jimmy Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, criticizing Bush’s pre-emptive war and his Middle East diplomacy. The criticism from Carter also included Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding.

It is easy to understand Carter’s motivation, after all, he is almost universally regarded as the worst president in nearly every category in the modern era, and anything he can do to shift some of that heavy load elsewhere no doubt has great appeal to him. But I expected a former President of the United States to have more grace than that. And then I remembered that it is Jimmy Carter that we are talking about.

Well, starting sometime tomorrow I’ll be back home and back to, hopefully, an atmosphere that will allow me to get back to conducting blog business like I prefer to do it.

A Great Read

Determined while on vacation in South Florida to read what I expected to be a fascinating book, I set out reading Eric Burns’ Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism even before we left last week, and it is proving to be a great choice. Burns is the host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Watch,” a weekend program I have watched as often as I can since FNC was added to our cable system a couple of years ago, and which I enjoy because it analyzes the modern media, a force in American life badly needing critical analysis.

FNW’s cast includes, in addition to Burns, four journalists that pretty much span the ideological spectrum from Left to Right representing various walks of journalistic life, and includes: Jane Hall, a moderate Left educator; Neil Gabler, a solid Left media critic; and columnists Jim Pinkerton (moderate Right) and Cal Thomas (solid Right). Burns moderates sometimes-spirited discussions of the way print and broadcast media handle events and issues of the day, and it is, as Fox News advertises, fair and balanced. Although you get a sense of Burns’ writing style from his spoken words, he is much more elegant in print than FNW allows him to be.

Infamous Scribblers is a substantial book, more than 400 pages, plus copious notes and the bibliography. My progress has been slow, so far, given the realities of vacationing in a place with so many distractions accompanied by a wife and three people 21 years of age and younger. I am barely one-fifth of the way through it.

Infamous Scribblers is not my first foray into the origins of journalism; that came about when I began pursuing a masters degree in communications, a goal I abandoned when the opportunity to publish a newspaper came along. Nevertheless, Burns has added substance to the sketchy beginnings of American news journalism I had studied: It was a ponderously slow evolutionary process that began in 1690 with a single publication created not from a drive within the publisher to inform the public, but as a means of earning a living, and it was the product not of people schooled in how to objectively and fairly present essential information to a needy public, but of people looking to advance a personal agenda and make a buck in the process. And if you think about it, it could not have been otherwise, given the circumstances of the times and the state of journalism brought to the colonies from England. Unfortunately, efforts to increase readers, and thus advertisers, meant that early news organs were often sensationalistic and not infrequently blatantly untruthful, and more than three hundred years of practice has not moved the profession very far in that regard.

Today’s news journalists are mostly the product of J-schools and communications programs where the evolved state of the journalistic art includes a set of ethics and standards intended to instill objectivity, honesty, forthrightness, fairness and balance in their students, qualities that did not exist, and could not have existed, in Colonial American news journalism. It is disturbing to find so great an inability of reporters and news organs to adhere to those standards today that so resembles news journalism in the years after 1690, when no standards yet existed.

But regardless of the poor state of journalism today, Burns’ Infamous Scribblers gives an interesting view of the days prior to the first newspaper and the early developments, and his descriptions of the first colonial publisher, Benjamin Harris, and a later publisher named Benjamin Franklin, and a few notables in between, give us a lively perspective on the origins of our current media. I’m looking forward to the rest of the book.

Greetings From Smoky Florida

We came here as the result of a weird process. The private college where Diane works held a fund raising auction and some of the Trustees had donated a week at their timeshare, and in order to help the school and also hopefully help us get a week in Key West, we bid on and won one of those. After nearly two years of trying, we were unable to book a week in Key West; apparently no one wants to give up their week there. So, we settled for a week in Pompano Beach, FL, where I had vacationed with my parents.

Well, we drove down Friday and Saturday, and checked into a nice room. We didn’t encounter any smoke from the wildfires at the Georgia border like we expected, but Pompano had a smoke cover until Sunday. Not so bad.

However, the facility wi-fi connection has been down the entire time, and they don’t know when or if it will be fixed, so communications from me will be sparse.