#37 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• The Great John Edwards Disillusionment. He should have stayed in The Law. After a little research, I learned that he was a really bang-up lawyer, one of the best "plaintiff attorneys" in the region. He won some celebrated and it seems highly-principled civil suits for the "little guy" before leaving for politics. I guess THAT was his first mistake.

• Former astronaut (Apollo XIV) and moon-walker gives credibility to UFO-nuts and adds fodder to the somehow influential sub-culture of irrationality in demon-haunted America. He says that "little people with large eyes and big heads" (phone home ET?) have been been walking among us for decades, though he admits not seeing any. The "gubment" is of course covering up, he says, ever since Roswell. This kind of "evidence," along with fuzzy photo/cinematography and eyewit(less)ness accounts, just won't wash, and can be easily explained. He should know that no hard physical evidence has ever been discovered. He should know even better that our high-tech surveillance can pick up a space-borne object the size of a pencil. Walk on the moon, become an old luna-tic.

• Waste-of-taxpayers-money dept: FOUR law-enforcement agencies(state and fed) and about 50 people and vehicles and flying machines coordinate a field-eradication of $12 million worth (they say) of MARIJUANA in nearby Harnett Co. NC. No arrests made. As usual. However, they can be proud that they have put a dent in the ONE BILLION dollars' worth produced in NC each year. The Weed beats out tobacco and cotton for the #1 cash crop in the state (as in 12 others) year after year. There's so much wonderful foolishness here that I want to get back to it a little later, where I will also present some other Libertarian bona fides.

Whatever of the Week

• Today is Parents Day. Across the nation. No kidding. In 1994, Congressional Resolution #36, para. 135 proclaimed the 4th Sunday of July as a day for "recognizing , uplifting, and supporting the role of parents in the rearing of children"...and to "celebrate our dedicated parents." It further exhorts us "not to let life's problems and concerns [like kids?] take precedence over our responsibility as parents." Woops. Oh well, despite the questionable logic, I'll celebrate anyway. It's the law.
  

Best of the Week

• The Obama trip. While evidently providing no big "bounce" at home, all agree that he accomplished a great deal well-needed image-building abroad.

• Tennis is back on the Tube (sorry). The US Open series for is on every week now right up to the main event. And here's a little heresy to be appreciated only by the idle aficionado--I like the 2-out-of-3 men's matches over the best-of-5 played in the Grand Slam events (except for the women). They do tend to go on at times, as if the players WERE in need of a more concentratedexperience. Besides, the men have complained that the women shouldn't get equal money in the Slams because they're never called upon to play 5 sets. Problem solved: 2-out-of-3 for everybody, all the time.

• Habitat for Humanity. Had no idea (shoulda) that they are GLOBAL, until I saw a report last week on a local senior-high-school girl who went to Africa for a couple of weeks to help build HUTS! of all things. That's what they wanted and that's what they got. Just great. Here are those better angels of the American character that I was talking about.
  

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