Cafe Posting

Well, my fair town of Franklin now boasts an Internet Cafe, from which I am now posting. The place is called HOBNOBR's Internet Cafe and Computer Repair. I guess I'll be a regular until I get my internet problem fixed.

Here are what some of my favorite people have been posting lately:



Dymphna has an interesting post on crime rate stats in what I thought were very civilized places. Hmmph. Who new?

Over at Winds of Change, a poster I hadn't noticed before intrigued me. Good writing and good peanut gallery activity in the comments.

There was also a WoW Team briefing that I miss reading since my old, decrepit machine decided to ignore any modem I installed...even a back up 14.4k I had hidden away in the dungeon.

Click here for The Star Spangled Banner via The Northeast Intelligence Network, which has a report that Iran may already have nukes. I hope that's not right.

Here is an intewresting letter reproduced below in full because The Asheville Citizen-Times deletes articles after a period of time.

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A fox in the ethics hen house?

Bill Lack
AC-T
July 3, 2006

I was shocked and amazed recently when I received Rep. Susan Fisher’s
latest e-mail “Report from Raleigh.” While I commend her for
communicating with her constituents, I was astounded at her gall to even
raise the subject of legislative ethics.

Fisher’s chairmanship of the so-called “House Ethics Committee” is a
farce. The Committee doesn’t meet unless Fisher, appointed by Speaker
Jim Black, calls them together. If you consider the last session as the
Legislature’s Season of Scandal, with everything hovering about Black,
you’d think Fisher would have had her committee in session full-time, or
at least would have called for televised hearings into the speaker’s
obvious conflicts of interest.

But you’d be wrong. While investigators looking into allegations
subpoenaed all of Black’s campaign and personal files, Fisher’s
committee was conspicuous by its silence. The committee she chairs was
bypassed by Speaker Black, who hand-picked a separate Select Committee
on Ethics and Government Reform that is cranking out proposed
legislation by the bucketful. In effect, they are proposing to pile more
ethics rules on top of existing rules that are rarely enforced. The last
time the House Ethics Committee took any action against a member was in
1995, when former Representative Ken Miller engaged in inappropriate
conduct with a House page.

It gets worse. Fisher recently joined all of her Democratic colleagues
in a unanimous vote of confidence to return Black as Speaker for this
summer’s Short Session. As of May 22 Fisher’s committee had not met to
discuss Black’s problems with his political director Meredith Norris.
They had not met to discuss Black’s problems with the state lottery.
They had not met to discuss Black’s total conflict of interest with the
bill he inserted requiring all children have an eye exam by an
optometrist or ophthalmologist prior to enrolling in kindergarten.

Instead of rooting out the corruption in Raleigh, Fisher’s response to
the scandal is to recommend a big pay raise for legislators. As reported
in the Raleigh News Observer, Fisher said, “We need to pay legislators
better, clean up lobbying, and look seriously at public financing of
campaigns.” She argues that paying lawmakers more would reduce their
temptation to let lobbyists buy them meals or provide gifts. What a
novel idea — that taxpayers should fund campaigns and then pay their
elected officials not to be corrupt. Sorry, but I don’t follow her logic.

It appears that Speaker Black could be indicted, tried, possibly
convicted and in the slammer before she would wake up to smell the
coffee. Or the stench of corruption.

The people of Western North Carolina are not being well served by Rep.
Fisher. She should be replaced in November.

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Everyone have a safe and Happy Independence Day on America's 230th Birthday, and we have the oldest continually operating government on the planet. Not one national government exists now that is older than ours! Or does the Vatican count?