Judge Zatkoff, who had just sentenced an illegal immigrant on narcotics charges, made clear his disgust with the Rapanos prosecution. “So here we have a person who comes to the United States and commits crimes of selling dope and the government asks me to put him in prison for 10 months,” he said.“And then we have an American citizen who buys land, pays for it with his own money, and he moves some sand from one end to the other and government wants me to give him 63 months in prison. Now, if that isn’t our system gone crazy, I don’t know what is. And I am not going to do it.” A three-judge appellate panel unanimously reversed Judge Zatkoff and ordered him to sentence Mr. Rapanos to prison.
The land in question is in the middle of a corn field, and apparently meets the definition of a “wetland” as one that’s occasionally under water. I’m pretty granola for being a conservative, but this, especially the prison time in question, strikes me as extremely excessive, and as a “taking” of private land by the government.
I don’t know about you, but everyone in our house has been eagerly awaiting the premiere of Colonial House on PBS. Last night’s introduction was great, and had some high drama, both contrived and real-world. So far, I think that Henry is my favorite colonist.
I can’t wait for tonight’s episode – luckily, the Wyers family didn’t give much away in the way of spoilers in their online chat today at washingtonpost.com.
Read more!Several high-tech innovators have signed up in support of Bush’s re-election campaign. Yes, it galls me to see Michael on this list, but it’s a good reminder that I admire him only for his business savvy. (I will leave alone the absurdity of one of these high-tech social idiots spouting his support by touting Bush’s Leave No Child Behind and other programs that Bush never actually got around to fully funding.) My biggest problem is that every one of these innovators saw their meteoric rise to riches sprout during the Clinton presidency, yet somehow they think keeping Bush around is a good thing. My Chomskian gut tells me the real reason they support Bush now is that when the economy was bad he made it easier for them to keep more money in their mattresses.
Today’s reason: an internet icon borrowed my idea, and he’s better than me.
T.McSweeney has started a little column called DAILY REASON TO DISPATCH BUSH. and I’ll take today’s reason (#38) to fill in for any original content I might have developed.
In January, 2003, the Bush administration chose Jerry Thacker to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.
Thacker has described AIDS as the “gay plague,” homosexuality as a “deathstyle” rather than lifestyle, and explained that, “Christ can rescue the homosexual.”
To be fair:
Due to the controversy over his appointment, Thacker withdrew from the Commission shortly after his nomination.
Still, the fact that man in the Oval Office either (a) didn’t vet his candidate enough to find this glaring jackhole’s public comments or (b) he didn’t care makes him a bad president.
This guy used the Lego Mindstorms© robot system to build a Rubik’s Cube solving robot. If it weren’t for the Catch-22 behind quitting your job to spend all day buying, building and programming your own robots, I think I would have done this project…ok, maybe not.
more thanks go to Engadget for the link
Thanks to EnGadget for a release that announces OmniFi is about to release the DMP2… I didn’t know there was even a DMP1=, but that’s probably a good thing since I would have bought it. The DMP1 is a car MP3 player with WiFi, so you can pull up in your driveway, login to your network and download all your MP3s to your car. (I was going to design a system like this a couple years ago and gave up due to the amount of work needed.) The best part of the upgrade for the DMP2 is a 60GB hard drive over the previous 20GBs, plus 802.11g over 802.11b.
Bob Cook writes an article about the TV show ‘Freaks and Geeks’ for Flak Magazine and makes it really deep.
“It was always my joke [to call the show] ‘McKinley Alexanderplatz,’” Feig said, referring to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s masterful “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” which aired on West German TV in 1980 and chronicled life among the outcasts in 1920s-era Germany. It looks and plays out more like a 15-part movie than the TV show it was. But Feig’s joking aside, “Freaks and Geeks” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz” have striking similarities: a sympathetic view of outsiders; a spotlight on the difficulty of changing yourself and your social circle; a lot of actors cast as whores; a main character going insane and primed to join the Nazi party… OK, maybe not so much “Freaks and Geeks” on those last two.
So, when will they be releasing “Berlin Alexanderplatz” on DVD?
Thanks to Uncle Grambo for the link.
