I realize that most people don’t have my commitment to the Constitution, and that they probably think I go overboard when I perceive threats to it. I understand that most people have spent their lives in the US, or, perhaps, have traveled to Europe, but have never really lived in a country where the rules are decidedly different.

I have spent too much time in places like Spain under Franco, Greece under the colonels, most of Asia, here and there in the Middle East. I have “interviewed” people who have made it to the West from the Eastern Bloc countries. I know what life is like without the protections of the Constitution. Accept in your soul: you really wouldn’t like it.

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Happy fourth blogiversary™ to Fallenmonk, now with improved signage.

Not a great weekend: RIP George Carlin, Dody Goodman, and Stan Winston.

The “Words”, the voice, and the magic have passed to another place.

Millennia ago they knew how to recognize and deal with false prophets:

When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

Deuteronomy 18:22 KJV

They were stoned to death back then, while these days they get newspaper columns, and appear on news shows.  Some of them get elected to office.

From McClatchy, the only news organization that remembers we have wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: In a first, court says military erred in a Guantanamo case

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned as “invalid” a military tribunal’s conclusion that prisoner Huzaifa Parhat is an enemy combatant.

The court directed the Pentagon either to release or transfer Parhat or to hold a new tribunal hearing “consistent with the court’s opinion.”

This is the first time that a circuit court has overruled a finding by a so-called status review tribunal, the Pentagon panel of military officers that determines whether a captive at Guantanamo meets the definition of “enemy combatant.”
…

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The BBC reports on proposed changes: ‘Shake-up’ for internet proposed

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net’s regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

A point on style, first: the Internet should always be capitalized and technically only refers to the physical network and the system software and protocols.

What they are discussing are the Top Level Domains [TLD] like .com, .net, etc. If you have the cash and the equipment you could establish .blog and become a registrar for that domain. [I would expect Google to grab that puppy if this goes through.]

EBW at Wampum is at the meetings as a participant, and has been making techo-snarky remarks about the proceedings.

… because the guano is too deep for boots.

The CNN Money site put out a relatively sane article on America’s untapped oil

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Oil companies and many lawmakers are pressing to open up more U.S. land for drilling. But the industry is drilling on just a fraction of offshore areas it already has access to.

Of the 90 million offshore acres the industry has leases to, it is estimated that upwards of 70 million are not producing oil, according to both Democrats and oil-industry sources.

If all these areas were being drilled, U.S. oil production could be boosted by nearly 5 million barrels a day, up from about 8 million barrels a day currently.

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