From Pine View Farm

(Boy, I love reading the AP wire!) If they didn’t deserve to be arrested for pot, they deserved to be arrested for stupid:

A pair of pot smokers picked the wrong day to use the drive-thru window at a KFC restaurant in Buffalo. Two men in their 20s pulled up to the restaurant’s window and asked for the Wednesday special.

Meanwhile, a couple of narcotics detectives were inside ordering their food. That’s when a cloud of marijuana smoke wafted into the restaurant. The detectives then spotted the two men smoking what one of the cops called “the biggest marijuana cigar your ever saw.”

Our energy woes would be cured:

It’s long been the milk that pays, but now the Audets have figured out how to make the manure pay as well. They’re using it — actually, the methane that comes from it — to generate electricity.

With the help of their power company, Central Vermont Public Service Corp., the Audets have devised a way to extract the methane from the manure and pipe it to a generator.

From today’s local rag:

Drivers who talk on cell phones may be just as dangerous as those who drink.

That’s the sobering conclusion of a study published yesterday by University of Utah researchers who monitored 40 men and women on a driving simulator.

The story is pretty–er–sobering.

Those who would lightly dismiss the tactics used to “interrogate” persons held in U. S. hands would do well to listen to this.

I would especially recommend today’s interview:

Former Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis talks with Steve Inskeep about the tactics he used on Iraqi detainees, such as isolating them for weeks at a time. Lagouranis says that, overall, very little intelligence was gained through stressful interrogation tactics.

Especially chilling is Mr. Laguouranis’s description of how he gradually lost touch with his own standards of conduct.

The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions are unconstitutional.

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized under U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion in the case, called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recused himself from the case.

[Basso Profundo Mode On]Criswell predicts[Basso Profundo Mode Off]–well, actually, I predict–the current Federal Administration will attempt to find some twisted interpretation of the commander-in-chief’s powers to justify ignoring this ruling, because, after all, as they so frequently remind us, we are at war.

“What did you do on your vacation?”

“I got my truck fixed, I got my lawn mower fixed, I got my hot water heater fixed. I should have stayed at work.”

Update: “Oh, yeah, let’s not forget the emergency root canal.”

Percoset rocks.

They need a guard cat:

“I came around the corner and into the kitchen and instead of seeing two cats on the counter, I saw a big, brown bear, a third of the way coming in through the kitchen window,” Yates said. “My instincts kicked in and I raised my hands and yelled, ‘Get out! Get out!’ And lucky for me, it did.”

Oh, my.

Serving on the jury in an indecent-exposure trial unfolding in this conservative Oklahoma town has been a giggle-inducing experience.

Former Judge Donald D. Thompson, a veteran of 23 years on the bench, is on trial on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others.

Update, 6/30/2006

Something fishy this way comes:

Marshall and Lyon county grand juries on Tuesday indicted Dwayne E. Nesmith, 43, of Island, and Brian K. Thomas, 31, of Dawson Springs on nine counts of theft by deception of over $300 in Marshall County, one count of complicity to commit theft by deception of over $300 and one count of attempted theft by deception of over $300 in Lyon County.

An investigation of the pair started April 30, when the men allegedly stashed five live bass in a fish basket in the water, then picked them up to weigh in at the Relay for Life Buddy Bass Tournament at the Lake Barkley State Resort Park, state police said.

Nothing I can say beats the unvarnished facts:

In a scandal that has shaken the state’s Republican-dominated government, four Ohio politicians pleaded no contest Wednesday to ethics violations.

Lucas County Commissioner Maggie Thurber, Toledo City Councilwoman Betty Shultz, former Toledo Mayor Donna Owens and former state Rep. Sally Perz were fined $1,000 each on misdemeanor charges of failing to report gifts worth more than $75.

They were accused of receiving money from prominent GOP donor Tom Noe, then contributing it to President Bush’s re-election campaign in their own names in an alleged scheme by Noe to skirt laws limiting individual contributions to $2,000.

It’s the GOP’s Contract on America.

A conversation over at Opie’s place led me to look this up:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“”Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Ahh, the lamp is lowered, the light is dim’d, the welcome gone.

And the hope of the world—

oh, never mind.

Two and a half more inches in my rain gauge overnight, making a total of seven inches since Friday. Rivers cresting today. (Update, 6/30/2006: Here’s the actual crest times and heights.)

Brandywine Creek crested at about 2 p. m.. I took some pictures from Brandywine Park in Wilmington between 2:30 and 3:00 p. m.

Looking upstream towards the Washington Street bridge. The trees to the left center marks the normal bank.

Looking downstream towards the Market Street (US 13 business) bridge.

Well over the banks.

There! by the tree! See them? Picnic tables. And to the right, the “No Swimming” sign.

Oh, yeah, that’s the grill that goes with the picnic tables.

This little dam ain’t doin’ a damn thing any more.

No jogging on that trail today:

Looking upstream from the “Swinging Bridge” (it doesn’t swing anymore, but, at one time, it was a rope suspension bridge which struck fear into the hearts of children throughout Wilmington).

Looking downstream from the “Swinging Bridge” to the Washington Street Bridge:

With good reason, today. In minutes you’d end up in the Christina.

Limbaugh’s on pills again.

Bob Cesca asks the question:

Rush is one of the most visible representatives of the right-wing’s moral values platform — the same values that include abstinence and strong words about the immorality of premarital sex. (Wait for it.) Intercourse and marriage are supposed to be all about procreation, right? I mean, that’s one of the reasons why Republicans like Rush and Sen. Santorum support an amendment banning same-sex marriage.

So if Rush isn’t married, why would he need Viagra?

Nah. It couldn’t be. It’s just not possible that . . .

. . . he’s bloviating hypocrite who thinks he’s above the rules he proscribes for others?

Surely not.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master–that’s all.”

Humpty Dumpty lives.

Four inches in the last 36 hours, leading to this and this and this, among other things.

Spotted yesterday heading down the Delaware, one tug in front and one amidships on each side. As best as I can figure, it’s the Ammunition Ship Butte.

It’s looks as if it’s going to the last home port.

From the Quotemaster.

Mario Cuomo:

We must get the American public to look past the glitter,
beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of
things. And we’ll do it not so much with speeches that will
bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people
to their senses.

Well, the American public won’t find this at Faux News, that’s for sure.

More on the Enronization of the current Federal Administration:

Former Bush administration procurement official David Safavian has written an email to family and friends saying he plans an appeal (likely to last through July, 2007) and describing himself as “angry, scared, disappointed and hurt,” according to today’s edition of Roll Call.

Scared and disappointed.

Yeah.

He got caught.

Another Bushie learns he’s not above the law.

His signing statement didn’t take.

And he is just a small fry.

Again.

The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgent gunmen set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The court decided they wouldn’t stand for this.

As Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up.

Check out my friend Opie’s story about it.

A child-welfare worker was clocked at 142 miles an hour on his motorcycle while leading police on a two-state chase, authorities said Thursday.

Opera 9 has been released.

Here’s a screenshot showing two of the new Opera widgets–the Opera clock and the “Touched by the Sky” weather widget.

I missed this, but Phillybits caught it:

Pointing out that North Korea test firing a missile would end a moratorium in place since 1999 means absoltely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

Why?

Because. The US is about to welch on agreements against landmines.

But, then, we all know that whatever the current Federal Administration does is always right, just because they are doing it, now, don’t we? Because they are always right and never wrong.

Just look at their track record.

Optimist that I am, I keep expecting that people remember that the work computer is the work computer and the home computer is the home computer:

Workers at Oregon’s department of revenue have been banned from using their PCs for “non-business” purposes after a porn-hunting employee accidentally downloaded a Trojan which spirited away personal details of over 2,000 taxpayers.

Well said, Paul Lewis:

Two seemingly unrelated stories – the flap over Ann Coulter’s characterization of 9/11 widows and the suicide of three Guantanamo Bay detainees – highlight what our linguistically challenged president might call a “misunderestimated” feature of Republican rhetoric: the use of angry ridicule in defense of ruinous policies. With some historians concluding that G.W. Bush has descended to the ranks of our very worst presidents, with more people saying that Republicans have misled the country, we need to focus on how the right sold its flawed initiatives.

Of course, they are just following the leader. Eugene Robinson:

The Decider’s decision to whip up a phony crisis over same-sex marriage — Values under attack! Run for your lives! — is such a transparent ploy that even conservatives are scratching their heads, wondering if this is the best Karl Rove could come up with. Bush might as well open his next presidential address by giving himself a new title: The Distracter.

Chris Satullo:

The only bullets Karl Rove has ever dodged were legal.

Last week, after learning he would avoid indictment for his role in the sliming of an Iraq war critic, Rove had this to say about two men who risked death in service of country, John Murtha and John Kerry:

“Like too many Democrats, it strikes me that they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult they fall back on that party’s pattern of cutting and running.”

In any sentence with the names Kerry, Murtha and Rove, there is only one possible coward. It’s not the Pennsylvania congressman nor the Massachusetts senator.The only combat for which Rove ever volunteered was political. In that realm, he’s mastered the coward’s way, the sly attack from the hidden place, the anonymous flier full of innuendo, the invective by surrogates, the timely leak to the friendly writer. The shiv goes in the back, but the fingerprints are smudged.

Of course, this is a tactic the right-wing follows pretty coherently, as opposed to incoherence of the center and left. David Broder:

Judging from the amount of publicity they gleaned, the liberal bloggers who gathered in Las Vegas recently for the first annual YearlyKos convention represent the cutting edge of thinking in the Democratic Party.

But the blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought. The candidates who have been adopted as heroes by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the convention’s leader, and his fellow bloggers have mainly imploded in the heat of battle — as was the case with Howard Dean in 2004 — or come up short, as happened to the Democratic challengers in special House elections in Ohio and California.

Fortunately, there are others than these “net roots” activists working on the challenge of defining the Democratic message. I do not include the Democratic congressional leadership in the hopeful camp. The new legislative “agenda” that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Co. trotted out last week was as meager as it was unimaginative.

Of course, I have often observed that persons in error proceed with certainty into deeper error, while those who recognize the error are uncertain as to how to correct it.

Mistakes become obvious while things are still in process; successes often aren’t recognized until processes complete.

I will preface this by saying I have a gun and, when I’m in practice, I’m a pretty damned good shot. Guns don’t scare me, but gun nuts do, because they don’t just like guns, they idolize them. And that’s just plain spooky.

From U. S. Newswire, from a press release from the Second Amendment Foundation (okay, they haven’t fallen as completely off the map as the National Rifle Association, I will grant them that).

The U.N. Conference on Global Gun Control, scheduled June 24- July 7, poses a direct threat to our constitutionally-protected individual right to keep and bear arms, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). Gottlieb will attend the conference, but he suggests that this may be an opportune time for Congress and the White House to reconsider this nation’s level of financial support for an international organization that now wants to write a treaty that specifically attacks a cornerstone of our federal constitution, and the lynchpin to our liberty.

More lies. The facts are here:

The UN Programme of Action is focused on the illicit trade in SALW (Small Arms and Light Weapons–ed.). The programme was agreed to in 2001 by the 191 Member States of the General Assembly including the Permanent members of the Security Council. They committed to collecting and destroying illegal weapons, adopting and/or improving national legislation that would help criminalize the illicit trade in small arms, regulating the activities of brokers, and setting strict import and export controls.

But it’s typical of what I spoke about here: the Big Lie. And folks who chose not to think critically will, no doubt, buy it.

Consider what the inventer of the Kalashnikov has to say about his invention. This is the stuff the conference is about, not whether some old American guy can go target shooting with his Glock.

“Whenever I look at TV and I see the weapon I invented to defend my motherland in the hands of these bin Ladens I ask myself the same question: How did it get into their hands?” the 86-year-old Russian gun maker said.

“I didn’t put it in the hands of bandits and terrorists and it’s not my fault that it has mushroomed uncontrollably across the globe. Can I be blamed that they consider it the most reliable weapon?” he said.

The detention policies of the current Federal Administration dishonor it, dishonor us, dishonor the blood and ideals of the founders, and dishonor the sacrifices and ideals of our soldiers:

This political and administrative mess stems directly from Mr. Bush’s decision in the weeks after Sept. 11 to take extraordinary measures against terrorism through the assertion of presidential power, rather than through legislation, court action or diplomacy. His intent was to exclude Congress, the courts and other governments from influencing or even monitoring how foreign detainees were treated. Senior officials, led by Vice President Cheney, argued that this policy would give the administration the flexibility it needed to fight the war effectively. Instead it has done the opposite: Mr. Bush’s policies have deeply tarnished U.S. prestige abroad, inhibited cooperation with allies and prevented justice for al-Qaeda.

An acquaintance of mine is upset tonight.

One of her co-workers sent her an email that was apparently an amagram of this and this.

Both of these are examples of the tactics of the current Federal Administration and their sycophants: the Big Lie. If they cannot or dare not respond to the message, they attack the messenger.

What a nice example they set for our progeny.