Monthly Archives: March 2007

Making Legislative History

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Along the highways and byways of this great land, we can find signs announcing historic sites and their connections with our country’s landmark events down through the years. Each marker tells what happened there, and when.

We are now in the midst of such a momentous time, and it is not too early to begin thinking about historic markers to set apart those places that are, even now, becoming historic sites.

The biggest pork bill in history, so we’re told, is in the “out basket” and those who passed it have staggered home to a short but well earned rest. The engine which pulls this new train is, of all things, a military appropriation bill.

The plans to celebrate this new twenty-first century approach in creative legislation include, so we are told, historic markers across the country to mark out for the traveling public the spinach and sugar beets fields and all the many other special places that needed, and got, protection under the financial wings of our military financial system.

Now comes the hardest part.

Somewhere a special task force is pulling out all stops to make sure that all of those new historic sites have those new roadside historic markers up and ready, by the time our troops come home.

The returning troops will be able to see for themselves these tokens of appreciation spread across the land.

Whose Money Is It?

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Well, it doesn’t seem to be your money. Judging by the way they’re passing it out, it seems to be theirs to spend.

So while they’re shoveling it out, try not to watch CSpan.

After all, you’re sitting there, putting the final touches on your income tax form. Just concentrate on that.

And don’t forget to enclose that check.

They’re counting on you.

Earmarks

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They said they were going to do something about earmarks. And they did.

They lifted them to a whole new level: payoff for voting the “correct” way on an unpleasant bill.

Somewhere on the web, there is reputed to be a contest for the best name for this new legislative device.

Look for a site with a name something like HoldYourNoseAndVoteYes.org, or something similar.

Secession?

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There is no basis to any rumors that California is thinking about seceding from the Union.

The rumors may arise from the Governor’s habit of referring to California as a separate country. One reliable source argues that these references can be traced back to old Austrian folktales; others consider them to be plot lines from a forthcoming movie.

Regardless of these theories, it seems clear that California is not seceding. Not on this Speaker’s watch, at any rate.

Churchill and War

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“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

“You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

From Winston Churchill’s First Speech as Prime Minister, May 13, 1940, to House of Commons

Listen to the whole speech:

Remember Him?

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He’s Richard Armitage, the leaker. He said so.

But he’s in the clear.

So how do you feel about special prosecutors now?

Once you launch one, a special prosecutor can go after whatever targets present themselves.

Would the presence of one in your neighborhood disturb you?

A Word of Encouragement

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In the fall of 1862, Lincoln invited to the White House a group of women who had come to Washington for a meeting of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. These were women who tended wounded and dying soldiers; they knew the Army and had seen more battlefields and casualties of war than almost anyone not in the military. The war seemed bogged down, and one of the women said she hoped Lincoln could offer them a word of encouragement.

“I have no word of encouragement to give,” he said bluntly.

His visitors were too shocked to respond, and Lincoln, too, fell silent for a while. Then he roused himself. “The fact is, the people haven’t yet made their minds up that we are at war with the South . . . they have got it into their heads that we are going to get out of this fix, somehow, by strategy! That’s the word–Strategy! General McClellan thinks he is going to whip the rebels by strategy, and the army has got the same notion. They have no idea that the war is to be carried on and put through by hard, tough fighting . . . .” A few days later, he fired McClellan.

From “Lincoln’s War”, by Geoffrey Perret, (2004), p.270-1.

Maybe It’s Time

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“It is just not Walter Reed,” Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. “The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again.”

Once upon a time in this land, the war that nobody seemed able to forget was the one that featured Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee, depending upon where you lived. Today, it seems to be the Viet Nam War.

For some folks, it is the yardstick by which all things are measured, a struggle which does not end.

Some believe that it was a defining moment in our nation. The trouble is, folks on both sides still believe that. That sounds like a civil war, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and let go of it.

The VA mess would be a good place to start.

Global Warming on Two Planets

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A Russian scientist, after studying temperatures on Mars, has suggested that something similar to “global warming” may be happening there too. He suggests that the current global warming on both Earth and Mars is caused by changes in the sun.

According to National Geographic News, the scientist’s work “has not been well received by other climate scientists.”

There has been little or no mention of yet another possibility: that Mars is inhabited, perhaps below the apparently empty and desolate planetary surface.

The Martian global warming provides the first crucial evidence that they may be there.