When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
June 27, 2008 - 2:01 a.m.
I forgot to update today so I'll do it now. I'll start off like Mort Sohl and read the newspaper to you. Well OK I won't read it but I'll discuss some articles and a column in the NY Times.
The Supreme court made two decisions, one I concur with and one I abhor. I'll start with the one I agree with. It decided that the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for the rape of a child was unconstitutional. I'm always happy and anything limiting the death penalty and that recognizes its special nature. It shows that the country as a whole recognizes it as this court is one of the most extremist courts in history.
The other decision show just how extreme. They decided to break the long history of restricting the second amendment, The right to bear arms to the rights of states to field militias and made it a general right of individuals. The amendment reads:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The court decided that the "well regulated militia" part was there just for show. This was at least as activist a decision as Roe vs Wade. When the right says they don't want activist judges they are lying. They want hyperactivist judges, just ones that will agree with them.
Oh yes; Thank you Ralph Nader. You were totally right, there was no difference between Bush and Gore. He would have appointed Alito and Roberts too. Well except that he wouldn't have and Nader knew that but decided that as neither was him that didn't matter. He should have realized that Bush was a kindred spirit, neither has any respect for the truth.
Now to something I bet most of you don't know about. How many Iraqi refugees are living outside of Iraq? Take a guess. The answer is 2 million. What is being done to help them? The answer is practically nothing. They are refugees from a war we started. How many do you think we've taken in? 1,608.
I'm not going to say more. Nicholas Kristoff put it so well. Read his column Books Not Bombs.
OK now on to me.
I'm feeling all better. I should have made that the lead. I ate today and had no ill effects.
Tonight I saw Red Molly at Sinatra Park in Hoboken. It was only 5 blocks or so from the PATH station. It was nice being able to get there with public transportation. The surroundings were beautiful, right on the Hudson. I'm so mad I forgot to charge my camera's batteries so I didn't bring it.
It was a strange show. I only knew two people there that weren't with the band, the usual Redheads were all missing. I hung out with Paul, Laurie's boyfriend at the merch table. We sold a lot of merch. Much more than we expected at a park gig like that.
Oh yes. There was something historic at the show. For only the second time Laurie played bass in public.
OK that's it for this entry. I am not feeling inspired. Sorry about. Maybe next time.
The Adventures with Pete and Pete - September 18, 2008
Catch the Reference - September 17, 2008
I have a date to get waterco-op boarded. - September 15, 2008
A Festival of Festivals - September 14, 2008
The Kennedy Residence (Not Hyaniss Port) - September 12, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile June 27, 2008
