Some people tend to get a little worked up about libertarians and, to tell the truth, I sometimes get a little confused about Max’s claim that he’s a libertarian because I have watched him in action and I have given ear to his philosophy. When I asked him about his political beliefs, he suggested a letter he had written to someone who was highly suspicious of anyone who wasn’t a registered Democrat. He said that the letter was probably the closest thing he had to a libertarian manifesto. I asked if I could use it and he agreed only as long as I did not use the original recipient’s name. So here it is. I don’t know whether you’d call it a manifesto, an essay or a rant, but he makes his point.
RW

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My Dear Mr. X:

I oppose a government that attempts to pry into my personal life, decides whether I weigh too much, if I let my children watch the wrong television show or if I join the wrong protest group. Above all, I reject a government that pries into my private medical matters or sexual practices.

Before I go any farther, let me tell you how I define government. Government is not a foster parent, it is not a nanny and it isn’t a rich uncle; government is force! If we live together in communities, we must agree on what degree of that force is appropriate for our community and accordingly elect our representatives to that government by secret ballot. If our representatives assume more authority than given them, they must be removed from their offices forthwith and by whatever means are available to the citizens, preferably legal and nonviolent.

I believe that as government grows, our freedoms diminish.

Now, having made that clear, allow me to clear up some misconceptions. I am not a liberal on steroids! I do not believe that “anything goes.” I believe in states and municipalities writing and enforcing their own standards and laws. Other than alcohol, I don’t use drugs and I don’t collect pornography. But if someone does do those things, I think it’s his own business as long as that practice does not injure other people. I believe in separation of church and state, religious freedom and strong families. In addition, I believe in a strong military and above all, I am a first amendment absolutist.

Our Constitution may not be the most profound and error–free document in the world for governing a country, but no one has been able to show me one that’s better. I believe in a competent government large enough to carry out its Constitutional responsibilities and wise enough not to interfere in matters that the Constitution leaves up to the states.

I believe in limited Constitutional government in both the economic and social spheres. In plain words, I support economic conservatism and classic liberalism. I unashamedly admit that I favor the capitalist concept, knowing that if the market presents an economic opportunity, a veritable phalanx of eager, bright entrepreneurs will respond with alacrity. I fear monopolies in direct proportion to my fear of totalitarian government simply because monopolies cannot long exist without the backing of government force.

I object to a government that is constantly on the hunt for new ways to buy the votes of constituents and therefore must constantly raise taxes. We have been too long cursed with a surfeit of out-of-control spending and “earmarks,” congressional-speak for the more straightforward Mafioso expression of “dipping our beaks.”

I am opposed to government subsidies for any product or service used by the people of the country. This applies to farming and industry. If there isn’t sufficient demand for a product to allow the producer to make a profit from producing and marketing it, then it’s obvious that people can do without it. I believe the marketplace should determine prices while sound management and competition should determine profit. While I’m talking about profit I’ll say I do not believe making a profit is theft, a conspiracy, collecting tribute, ripping off the middle class or unfair to the poor. Let me make this clear: profit is a quid pro quo. It’s that simple. If you think someone’s profit is too high, go into competition against him and take away his customers with a lower price or higher quality, but don’t sit around and whine about it or try to get a socialist-leaning government to mediocritize him.

It is my position that the only people on this planet qualified to exercise censorship are parents involved in the rearing of their children. This is extended to school teachers under the principle of in loco parentis in that teachers, by virtue of their professional training and by gauging the intellectual maturity level of their charges, make informed decisions about the material used in their instructing.

As an American, I celebrate the establishment clause of the first amendment which blesses us with freedom of religion by prohibiting the government from establishing a religion or favoring any denomination, movement or cult over others, thus giving us the freedom to practice any religion we choose or not to practice one at all. Further, freedom of religion means exactly that, including freedom from religion. The followers of any religion do not have license to force their practices upon another person who does not assent. I regret that some individuals who detest organized religion for real or imagined reasons attempt to suppress any religious expression. When any entity has the power to prevent an individual from personally worshipping his or her deity or to admonish and punish a school child who says a silent prayer of thanks over a brown bag lunch in the school cafeteria, we do not have religious freedom.

At the same time, I believe those who campaign to have religion taught in the public schools are admitting they are incapable of teaching religion, or providing for a recognized religious authority to teach it to their own children in a venue other than the public school. If any family holds their religion in such low regard that they would casually transfer teaching of its traditions and values onto the shoulders of government, they are making a mockery of the religion practiced by legitimate religious factions throughout the early history of this country.

On questions of abortion, while I personally deplore using such a procedure as a birth-control measure, I am of the belief that decisions in such matters are to be made solely between the affected woman and her physician. Under our constitution, I do not believe the federal government has the authority to make laws concerning these matters.

On same-sex “marriages:” These unions are not a Constitutional concern and therefore not the business of Federal Government The official licensing of such civil unions is a prerogative of the individual states. The term “marriage” with respect to these unions should be left up to individual churches as set forth within their own catechisms.

The government, in its almost frantic desire to appear to do the right thing has established prohibition against certain drugs and, as happened during the prohibition of alcohol, the demand for what is prohibited is driving a multi-billion trade in smuggled drugs and, like alcohol prohibition before it, has established a new criminal class that feeds on our society. This criminal class that has taken control of our “inner-cities” and some neighboring countries. At the same time, our so-called “drug war” has been so ineffective that virtually any student on any college or high school campus or individual on the street can obtain his or her drug of choice with only casual effort. It is painfully obvious to all but the most obtuse or mentally disadvantaged that criminalization of drugs has not prevented anyone who wishes to obtain them from doing so and therefore is a colossal and enormously expensive failure. For this reason, I believe the “drug war” waged by federal, state and local authorities has already been lost and continues wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on an exercise in self-deception, in other words a “feel good” measure. I believe marijuana should be decriminalized and sold by state-licensed companies under state control and taxed as is alcohol, the deadliest drug known to us. I believe that “hard” drugs should be medicalized and controlled. This is one place where the government can and should take control of a trade. The government’s buying and controlling hard drugs will reduce the cost of a “fix” to a level that obviates the need for drug addicts to rob, kill or sell their bodies to support their habit. In one fell swoop, we can eliminate an illegitimate trade that costs untold lives, costs billions of taxpayer dollars and needlessly packs our prisons.

The Constitution does not give the federal government responsibility for education, so why should it take control of our schools? The “No Child Left Behind Act,” which has led to administrative deceptions, flagrant frauds and loophole abuse, is a demonstrable reason for federal government to stay out of the education business. Again, education is the responsibility of the individual states. The Department of Education teaches no children, trains no teachers and serves no purpose except inject itself into state affairs. It should be abolished, reducing the national budget accordingly.

The value of the Department of Energy, a bureaucracy that neither discovers nor vends energy, is of doubtful value to the nation. It should be evaluated under the strictest terms and reduced to a size required to conduct only the most essential services, thereby reducing its budget to a minimum consistent with good government.

I do not delude myself. To live a truly libertarian existence would require the seeker to isolate himself from any community. But when one chooses to live in a community for the obvious reasons of safety, health and services, he or she must make allowances for community standards. Holding these restraints to a minimum, eschewing rules for the sake of rules, is the nearest we can come to true libertarianism. In actuality, we must forever seek a balance between individual freedoms and the responsibilities we choose to bestow on the community.

Wishing prosperity and freedom to you, I stand for a government that guards our shores and stays out of the classroom, the boardroom and the bedroom.

Sincerely,

Maxim Gross

Max and I were having coffee at the Barnes and Noble book foundry on Northwest Highway. We chose an outside table because the temperature had moderated and the sky was cloudless. From there we could watch the perpetually-in-a-hurry Dallas shoppers as they scurried about boosting retail sales in a least a small corner of the nation.

“Oh, by the way,” Max said. “The Pentagon released its report on the Fort Hood massacre. Did you hear?”

“No, I must have missed that,” I replied.

“You didn’t miss anything,” he went on. “The whitewash reached Olympic proportions.”

“You’re kidding me,” I gasped. “With everyone in the nation knowing all the salient facts, they whitewashed it?”

“Let me see,” Max said, raising his left hand and counting off the violations one at a time on his fingers. “In the 80-page report, there was no mention of the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim.’ There was no mention that Hasan’s business card described him as a ‘soldier of Allah.’ There was nothing about the fact that he once said, ‘Non-Muslims were infidels that should be set on fire and condemned to hell.’ And it failed to mention that he shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he shot his fellow soldiers to death.” All five fingers on Max’s left hand were extended.

I almost choked on a sip of coffee when Max told me the last one. “Good night nurse!” I exclaimed. “What did it say?”

Max grinned wickedly. “It explained that the rampage was caused by ‘low self-esteem, depression and anger.’ It went on to explain that what Hasan did was ‘workplace violence.’”

“So Hasan was just the equivalent of a poor disgruntled postal worker, huh? Man alive! Now that takes a gigantic load of chutzpah ,” I said in disgust. “Who in hell had the stones to sign such a thing?”

Max laughed out loud. “For all I know it was signed by the Tooth Fairy. You’ve got to give ‘em an ‘A’ for effort, though. They can claim that the facts never filtered up to them at the thinking level. 'Muslim, what do you mean, Mulsim? We didn't know he was a Muslim. We don't track people by their religion!'”

“I have a feeling some poor captain or maybe a major is going to serve out what's left of his career with an unaccompanied tour to a semi-operable radio relay station in Lower Slobovia.”

“That's a safe bet,” Max snickered. “It appears that the Pentagon does not always house our best and brightest after all.”

“I’ve been there, Max,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

I had dropped in on Max for a cuppa and to discuss the book I had loaned him, Freakanomics.

We agreed it was one of the most logical and informative books to come down the pike in a long while and we laughed about some of the author’s extremely apt statistical devices.

Max then brought up something I had not known about, but it was one of those things he takes an interest in. He had a package of several pages he had copied off the net, a summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. I wasn’t familiar with the work but he assured me it was totally objective and the surveying organization was strictly legit, not some PR hired gun firm.

“This summary contains a bombshell of sorts,” he said. “I doubt that few outside organized religion have taken note.”

“What’s that, Max?” I asked.

He thumbed through the paper, stopped at a page and said, “According to this, Americans who claim no religious affiliation have nearly doubled since 1990. The number rose from 8% to 15%.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That is significant,” I said. “I would have guessed there would be an increase but doubling in 20 years is surprising.”

“There’s a kicker,” he added. “You know that the Pacific Northwest has been the part of the country that has been the least religious, or at least, with the highest percentage of people who claim no religious affiliation.”

“Yes, I remember seeing that somewhere,” I answered. “I don’t remember the stats though.”

“According to this,” Max said, holding up the summary, “that has shifted to the Northeast, and that has caused some whiplash.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “I’ll bet it did. The Northeast has always been a stanchion of sorts for the country’s religion. Holy mackerel!”

“Yes, it has shaken some very high-level Christians according to something that John Meachum wrote in Newsweek,” Max said, thumbing through the papers. “Here it is. According to an interview , the stud duck of the Baptist Theological Seminary, fellow by the name of Albert Mohler, said, ‘Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society.’”

“Post-Christian?”

“That’s what he said.”

“He doesn’t mean God is dead. Does he?”

“No,” Max said, “according to Meachum, it means God is less important in our society now than in recent memory.”

“I suppose you are enjoying a certain amount of schadenfreude from all this?” I asked.

“No, not in that sense. It is satisfying to know I predicted a trend like this. However, I always enjoy it when the powers at the Southern Baptist Seminary get their knickers in a twist, them and their inerrant Bible. They are dinosaurs, still preaching the infallibility of their book when a reasonably bright eighth grader can read Genesis and find major contradictions.”

Max picked up a magazine. He opened it and said, “According to a Pew poll, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased fourfold from 1990 to 2009. It was one million, now it’s around 3.6 million.” He closed the magazine and smiled broadly. “That’s about double the number of Episcopalians in this country.”

“You’re enjoying this too much,” I said.

“Cut me some slack,” he shot back. “I’ve got it coming after what Bush 41 said.”

“What was that?”

Max’s eyes rolled upward at the ceiling as he recalled the memorized passage.

“He said, ‘I don’t think atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.’”

He grinned and said, “I’m glad I didn’t know I couldn’t be a patriot when I was out there in some vile armpit of the earth laying my ass on the line. I might not have been so willing.”

“Yes, you would have, Max,” I said. “After all, it has never been about religion. It’s always been about freedom.”

I was trying to figure out how I could put off making a quarterly tax payment and still avoid a penalty when Max came in and sat down. I was relieved because I wasn’t nearing my goal, so I closed the folder and turned around to see what he had to say.

“Nancy Pelosi said that the current congress was the most transparent ever,” he announced, smiling slightly.

“You came all this way just to tell me that?” I asked.

“No, not really,” he replied. “But I thought it was funny. They say they’re working on a health care plan behind those closed doors, but I think they’re building a Frankenstein’s monster out of old obligations, graft, tradeoffs, payoffs and buried bodies.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I said, getting comfortable. “It should make a dramatic scene when the monster first appears. Maybe they can have him back into the room like James Whale did, THEN turn around and scare the crap out of us.”

Max laughed at the image. “The townspeople running screaming back to their homes to get their torches and pitchforks.”

“What did you really come to talk about?”

The smile dropped from Max’s face. “Have you noticed that the price of gas is going up again?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied. “I’m just glad I don’t have to drive 30 or 40 miles to work anymore.”

“Well, if Ken Salazar has his way, it’s going to get worse, much worse.”

“You talking about the Secretary of the Interior?” When Max nodded, I asked, “What’s he done now?”

“With prices topping $82 a barrel, he’s making it tougher to drill. Yesterday he announced plans that, (he paused to make quotation signs with his fingers) "will require more detailed environmental reviews, more public input and less use of a provision to streamline leasing."

“In other words, more barriers to drilling,” I said.

“You broke the code,” Max said. “Remember how, back in November he got all excited over energy price increases? He blamed it on Bush, of course. He said that the “previous administration’s “anywhere, anyhow” policy on oil and gas development screwed up everything.”

I laughed. "I would like to see the algorithm that proves producing more of something drives the price up. Why not blame it on Bush? It worked for his boss.”

Max went on. “He said it threatened communities, carved up the landscape and started conflicts that created uncertainty for investors and industry. He went on to politicize the whole thing, even accused the oil and gas industry of behaving like an arm of the Republican Party.”

“Now that’s really insulting!” I cried. The oil and gas companies are a hell of a lot smarter than the Republicans. Where in hell does Salazar get off insulting people like that?”

Max ignored my question. He said, “What Salazar is doing is reversing the clear intent of a law that Congress passed in 2005 that would speed up and streamline permits for energy projects on public lands. Salazar said the companies were acting as if they owned the land.”

“They don’t,” I said, “neither does Salazar. The people of the United States own that land. But maybe Salazar has an outfit in his hip pocket that knows how to make cheap non-carbon fuel and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”

“Sure,” Max said. “That would make him king of the world. But in the meantime, we are sitting on a supply of oil and gas larger than anywhere else in the world. We have at least 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore; as much as 35 billion barrels of oil that hasn’t been tapped in Alaska and the Chukchi Sea; and probably 2.2 trillion barrels of energy in the oil shale deposits in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. By comparison, Saudi Arabia has just 266 billion barrels of oil. Who’s number one now, baby?”

“Funny you should bring this up, Max. I got an e-mail from a friend of mine today, a highly educated, scientific type of person. He was expostulating on what could happen in the Middle East . He pointed out a scenario where our supply of Middle Eastern oil could drop to nothing. If that happened and we haven’t started exploiting our own reserves, we are going to be in deep kimchi.”

“Yep,” Max said, nodding. “And on top of that, our energy consumption is going to grow by at least 15% over the next 25 years. The head of the Institute for Energy Research, I think his name is Pyle, said something like, ‘Now, when we should be developing more in the way of homegrown, job-creating energy resources, no administration in history has done more to ensure producers do less.’ And his outfit is non-partisan, for crying out loud. I wonder what they’re saying in Exxon’s board room.”

“Well now, it’s looks like oil prices will keep on going up, we’ll have higher inflation and lousy, or should I say ‘lousier’ economic growth.” I observed. “I just hope they’re good to people like me and you in the rest home.”

“Hey, the American people voted for change,” Max said, shrugging. “As the song says, ‘Be careful what you ask for.’”

Happy New Year One and All:

This year ends the decade of the naughty oughties, thank goodness! A new year is upon us, and custom calls for us to rue our past behaviour and make resolutions for bettering our moral character, improving our bodies and cultivating tolerance of our fellow humans.

Okay, enough humor! Let’s get on with it. This new year’s message is less of a rant than a running comment on the condition of homo sapiens. Bear with me, this one is achock with avoirdupois.

Update

Some of you are aware that I spent some time looking into the UFO and Satanist Cult milieu. Thought I'd bring you up to date on the little green men.

On June 24, 1947, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold saw the breakup of a meteorite over Washington State and reported the sighting as saucer-shaped craft flying through the atmosphere. A newspaperman immediately dubbed the alleged craft as “flying saucers.” In July, Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer from Roswell Air Base, supposedly found the wreckage of a flying saucer on a sheep ranch not far from Roswell , New Mexico . Later, at Fort Worth Army Airfield (now Carswell), examination of the “wreckage” revealed it to be a balsa wood and aluminum foil radar reflector commonly used on weather balloons.

To this date, January 1, 2010, not a single, solitary piece of scientifically verifiable evidence proving that extra-terrestrial craft have visited the earth has been discovered and/or examined by competent scientific authority. The “flying saucer” hoax has been one of the most successful and long-lived con jobs ever pulled on the American people. However, it has provided a living for any number of pseudo-scientists, marginally competent engineers and sexually imaginative females who have written books making extravagant claims, not only of alien contact but lurid stories of kinky intergalactic molestation.

Somebody Knows What They’re Doing

Some scientists at Yale and at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have succeeded in creating the world’s first molecular transistor. They actually trapped a molecule of benzene between two electrical contacts and can vary the power going through it Their paper describing it is in the December 24th issue of Science. It will be a few years before practical application but I mention it because of the spectacular ability of humans to imagine, visualize and create something most of us would regard as impossible. Perhaps there is yet hope for humankind.

Iran, Again, Still

We have been worried about the Iranian government in the hands of madmen setting off an Armageddon by sending an atomic-tipped missile into Israel . The people of Iran are rising up against that same government and sacrificing their lives in the interests of freedom. Let’s encourage them, tell them we’ve got their six. How ironic would it be if it is not Obama’s majestic eloquence, this nation’s firepower, the Mossad’s stealth nor Israel ’s war machine that tips over that government, but the Iranians themselves. How happy it would be for the Iranian people and the rest of the world!

Does anyone in Washington Remember It’s About People?

The fate of the two national health-care bills now going before the joint House-Senate committee is very much in doubt. It is in doubt because the documents were hammered together like earmarks, born of bribes, special interests, union wishes, socialist ambitions and secrecy. The polls show most of the American people don’t trust either of the two bills or what will emerge from the compromise. The supreme irony is, if any country on the face of the planet can provide a workable and practical health care program for its citizens, our country can. If the French can do it, don’t tell me we can’t! The bill will change the face of health-care and have an enormous impact on the economy and the future well-being of the nation. It is too important to leave entirely to self-serving politicians. There must be a better way!

Is the Homeland Secure?

I know we’re not supposed to use the word, but another terrorist tried to blow up an airplane at Christmas and kill 300 people. The would-be killer was subdued by passengers and crew of the aircraft. Janet Napolitano immediately said “the system worked.” On Monday morning she said “the system failed.” That’s okay, Janet baby, it worked before it failed. The Feds may be minus a pair but the individuals who grabbed and subdued that nut obviously still have their cajones.

As someone formerly involved in security matters, I want to make some suggestions.

The big problem is that our government is on a philosophical "nonwar" footing. That puts us at a disadvantage to our enemies. They know they are at war. If we were on a wartime footing, it would send a message to friend and foe alike that we, by damn, intend to defend ourselves.

The Czar of Political Correctitude has made profiling and using the word “terrorist” a no-no. It’s time to install unapologetic "profiling" at all airports, border crossings and wherever else travelers from abroad can be screened. Why not establish a separate passport line to scrutinize passengers from foreign countries? This is non-discriminatory because all the foreign countries would be included.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the ACLU’s gadfly value is needed in this country to keep watch on civil rights, but dictating security policy is not its forte. Let’s get the civil libertarians out of wartime security. We are trying to save American lives before the terrorists strike, not to react after the deed is done. If we have to hurt someone’s feelings to do it, so be it.

Ballot By Moving Van

I thought this was interesting and, instead of ranting about runaway taxation by some states, I just included it.

The state with the fastest population growth in 2008-09 was demographically tiny Wyoming , the nation's largest coal producer, which has had a higher rate of domestic in-migration than any other state. Just behind at No. 2 was Utah with the nation's largest birth rates and largest families.

Giant Texas was No. 3 in percentage population growth in 2008-09. It is the nation's second most populous state. Its population grew by almost half a million and accounted for 18% of the nation's total population growth. Texas had above-average immigrant growth, but domestic in-migration was nearly twice as high.

A few lessons for other states: For decades, Texas has had low taxes, no state income tax, low public spending and regulations that encourage job growth. Governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry (no matter their other faults) placed tight limits on tort lawsuits and we have seen an influx of both corporate headquarters and medical doctors.

Polidata, Inc. projects from the 2009 estimates that the reapportionment following the 2010 census will produce four new House seats for Texas , one each for Florida , Arizona , Utah and Nevada , and none for California for the first time since 1850.

Massachusetts, New York , New Jersey , Pennsylvania , Michigan and Illinois are projected to lose one each, and Ohio two. So, in recession, the voters are relocating to more economically favorable, and incidentally more politically conservative, climes.

Correlation or Cause?

Rank of Texas among states with the highest teen pregnancy rate: 3

Percentage of Texas school districts that teach abstinence as the only form of sex education: 97

(Per Harper’s Index of June 2009)

Correlation or Cause, Part Deux

We have been strongly informed, repeatedly, that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (currently .00038 % of the total), causes global warming. Interestingly, some fairly competent meteorologists and physicists are coming out of the closet (actually they’ve been out of the closet but no one would listen to them or print what they said) and claiming that the rise in the amount of carbon dioxide is caused by increased atmospheric heating. And others point out that we are still spewing CO2 into the atmosphere and the proportion is increasing but Mother Earth is now cooling and has been since 2000.

Not being a scientist, I know only what I’ve read, but I know it makes no difference with respect to the need for finding a carbon fuel substitute. Anyone out there have any ideas? (And don’t suggest turning food into alcohol, that’s been tried and is a miserable failure.) The fellow or company that finds a non-carbon fuel that is as cheap as gasoline or coal will make a bazillion dollars and homo sapiens of the 22nd century will breathe clean air and sing paeans to his name.

I want to give you something to think about. At the turn of the 20th century, there were 200,000 horses living and working in New York City , one horse for every seventeen people. The average horse produced about 24 pounds of dung per day. That’s almost 5,000,000 pounds of manure a day. (I’m not even going to mention the thousands of gallons of urine.) It was almost impossible to clear the dung out of the city. In vacant lots, horse manure was piled as high as 60 feet! The manure lined city streets like banks of snow. In summer, it stank to the heavens and bred billions of flies. Vermin such as rats plied the heaps searching for undigested oats. When it rained, a soupy stream of horse manure flooded the crosswalks and seeped into people’s basements. But what to do? The horse was the main mode of transportation and commerce. Seemingly, the people seemed doomed to be buried under mountains of dung.

But what saved them? The automobile and the electric street car. These devices were hailed as “an environmental savior.”

Of course, the auto and the street car carried their own negativities. The autos burned gasoline and the trolleys required electrical generation. So the 21st century has turned and we are facing a “dung” problem of another kind, but no less a problem. The population is growing, and with it, the demand for transportation and electricity. And it is a problem whether the globe is warming or not.

Do you see why I keep talking about a non-carbon fuel?

How Goes the Bureaucracy? Let Us Take a Look!


Stimulus At Work

As you know, Congress earmarked a portion of the stimulus bill for fighting wildfires. What you don’t know is that close to $3 million of it was slated for Washington , D. C. which is noted for its dearth of forests. But due to alertness on the part of Sen. John Barasso (R – Wyo) an amendment was written to kill the deal. This was historical in that it marked the first time Congress overturned a planned use of stimulus funds.

Gotta Control These Evildoers!

A Maryland state trooper gave Erik Bonstrom a ticket for driving too slowly. He had been doing 58 in a 65 mph limit zone.

Gotcha!

After a concert by the Dave Matthew Band, Travis Peterson knew he was too drunk to drive home, so he sacked out in his car in the parking lot. A Wisconsin state trooper woke him up and Dave explained his situation. The trooper ordered him to leave and when Travis drove out of the parking lot, the trooper busted him for DUI.

They Found the All-American Boy!

In California , a jury found postal worker Dean Hudson guilty of stealing money from children’s birthday cards.

Bureaucracy at its Best

Matthew Whalen is an Eagle Scout who takes the “Be Prepared” motto seriously. He keeps a sleeping bag, water, food and other camping supplies in his car in case he ever breaks down outside Lansingburgh , New York . But officials at his high school learned that part of his survival equipment was a two-inch knife, they suspended the honor student of 20 days because of their zero tolerance policy.

In Irving Township in Michigan , mother Lisa Snyder watched over a neighbor’s children for a few minutes each day while they waited for the school bus. The Michigan Department of Human Services threatened Lisa with legal action if she continued to watch the children. The agency said that she was running an illegal day care center.

And We Thought the Right Wing Nuts Were Paranoid

Ali Omar Abu Ali, a federal prisoner, twice requested permission to read Barrack Obama’s books Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Each time, he was turned down by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Officials said the books contain material “potentially detrimental to national security.”

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That’s probably about all you can stand for this New Year’s day. I’ll close with a quotation that contains nothing historical or heavily philosophical. It is by Bill Bryson, author of one of my favorite books, A Short History of Almost Everything.” I just love the image it conjures.

“ Copenhagen is also the only city I’ve been in where office girls come out at lunchtime to sunbathe topless in the city parks. That alone earns it my vote for European City of Culture.”
Neither Here Nor There, Chapter 10 (1991)