Ten Lords a-Leaping. Or Not.

A few days ago, as part of my holiday-related blathering, I was going to propose that if the religious right really wanted to do some good for once, they ought to start a campaign to make all 12 days of Christmas legal holidays. It might focus people's attention on the supposed "real" reason for the holiday, for people who care about that sort of thing. Or at least it'd give everyone 12 days off in a row. The general public could really get behind a campaign like that, even unchurched heathens like myself.

On the other hand, we're on day 10, it still feels like it's the holiday season, and said season is really starting to overstay its welcome. The Monday legal observances for Christmas and New Year's Day just drag whole thing out. We were out around town yesterday, and people are still in a frantic holiday shopping mood. All those after-Christmas fire sales, I imagine. Enough, already. Get back to work.

On a not-very-related note, if you're not already feeling overfed after the recent month of mandatory mirth and merriment, there's now an RSS-friendly feed for Cyclotram. As usual during this time of year, some assembly was required. Well, not actual assembly, not yet, anyway, but creating it required me to sign up with a third party, since the default feed you get with Blogger is Atom-only, and then there's some cut-n-paste html to deal with.

Speaking of overfeeding, here's an article titled in part "Bush Pigs Out". Sadly, it's not the Bush that I care about, although I understand this guy is an excellent football player.

Speaking of Bush, here are a couple more fun articles I've come across about GWB and your civil liberties: "The Bush Family Coup", and one about GWB and the 4th Amendment. The second article points out that there's already a Supreme Court precedent about no-warrant surveillance in the name of "national security", and in that 1972 case, the Court plainly said ixnay on the iretapsway. To be sure, this was in relation to purely domestic surveillance, which the Glorious Leader promises up and down he isn't engaging in. Just like he promised us Iraq was full of WMDs.

It's very simple, really. Nothing happens in this White House without going through Karl Rove and the whole political operation. Is it even remotely conceivable that GWB & Co. would award themselves absolute power, and then not seek to abuse it for partisan advantage? In their worldview, anyone who doesn't buy the whole party line without question is actively helping the evildoers. They've defined "enemy" as broadly as possible, and so they see enemies everywhere. Further, when it's decided someone's an enemy, the administration feels it's entitled to do as it pleases against them. They can spy on anyone, detain them indefinitely, have them tortured or executed, entirely at their discretion, with no checks and balances whatsoever. We're supposed to accept vague promises to use this power "wisely", made by habitual liars, as a substitute for the constitutional protections we've enjoyed for over two centuries.

On a somewhat lighter note: I present to you the Lesser Bushbaby. (Awwwww...) You might think I'm still talking about GWB now, but I'm not. Honest. I mean, look at the picture. Look at those ears. It obviously spends a lot of its time listening, unlike certain people I'm not talking about right now.