Over the past few weeks we've accumuated a bunch of miscellaneous stuff we thought might be useful some day, and then threw it in a corner. But it's done nothing there except gather dust.
Gotta get rid of it, but it won't sell on Ebay. So here it is. Pick through it. Take what what you want. It's all free, but there's no guarantee the links will work:
"The oldest victim to date? Ninety-five. The youngest? A 6-year old boy. The most recent? Fifty-six year old [wheel-chair bound] Emily Marie Delafield of Green Cove Springs, Florida died on April 24 when police, who were called to settle a family spat, used a stun gun to subdue her."
- Pensacola Beach Elementary Scores 100%
"100 percent of the third-graders [at PBES] tested in math and reading met proficiency levels for the second year in a row.
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'I am pleased,' Principal Jeff Castleberry said. 'I don't want the public to not feel like that's good, but we personally know we can get better and we will get better.' " - The Pensacola News Journal editorializes that FCAT exams may have little to do with sound education but we should celebrate our children's success at them, anyway.
- "One Chicago Guy Pointing His Car South" to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity started a blog in April he calls "Lo and Behold." There, he posted photos of the recently-concluded weekend New Orleans Jazz Festival. Included is one of an airplane someone rented to fly overhead towing an "Impeach Bush" banner. Chicago Guy says, "It received a standing ovation from the people in the seats... ."
- CT Blogger has photographic evidence (as if any were needed) of Congressional hypocrisy: House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) arrives in a hybrid car at a press conference staged at a gas station. He yammers on about how the Republican majority is going to do something about high gas prices. Then, he leaves in the hybrid but just to go around the corner. Then he surreptiously switches cars -- and climbs into his own gas-guzzling S.U.V.
- Stuff Happens is playing in the round at Washington D.C.'s Joseph Papp Theater. The play, which has been revised to paint Colin Powell as a tragic figure, is drawing good reviews:
The overarching thrust of "Stuff Happens" is a portrait of an administration -- led by a Bush wilier than most of his critics give him credit for -- that swaggers into a war while seemingly incapable of contemplating the consequences. Although that thesis will not strike every theatergoer as revolutionary, it's the mixing of personalities -- and the ways in which the work portrays the high-stakes psychological gamesmanship among the politicians, statesmen and strategists -- that gives it its most surprising moments.
- For those who were wondering if Donald Rumsfeld plans on vacationing in Europe after leaving office, here is a straight-forward summary of The Nuremberg Principles, for which "the Greatest Generation" fought so valiantly in World War II:
Principle I. Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.
Principle II. The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III. The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV. The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes Against Peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War Crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave-labour or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes Against Humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII . Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law. - Florida Leads Nation in Taser Deaths
"The oldest victim to date? Ninety-five. The youngest? A 6-year old boy. The most recent? Fifty-six year old [wheel-chair bound] Emily Marie Delafield of Green Cove Springs, Florida died on April 24 when police, who were called to settle a family spat, used a stun gun to subdue her."
- Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recently penned an opt-ed worth reading:
"The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War:
'Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'
This is precisely how George W. Bush sees his presidential prerogative: Be silent; I see it, if you don't.
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There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war."
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