» This recent news story (about a 23-year-old resident of our town being hired by his uncle to kill his aunt but aborting the mission when one his cousins was also in the house when he arrived to do the deed) really got me somehow.  You hear about stuff like this all of the time on TV and in places far the way, but it felt strange thinking about someone in my community being hired by his uncle to kill his aunt and acting on it.

» What little confidence I had left in the financial guys calling the shots in the current and previous administrations is dwindling quickly (e.g., this and this)

» I don't accept that whether or not torture "works" is the main issue in determining whether or not we should torture, but if you do: how bothered would you be if it was true that the real "...ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections" (link) ?

» Unless you're a Marine, please stop with the "Ooh-rah!"

Last week our paper, the Midland Daily News, published a letter to the editor by Jeffrey D. Behr titled "World changing."  After alluding to childhood trauma and thoughts of suicide, his reasons for writing letters to the editor despite the negative impact they might have on his business, and the ways he believes that the United States has become "perverse," Jeffrey ends his letter with with this fascinating paragraph:

We have elected Barack Hussein Obama to be our president. He and his wife are actually haters of America, bent on punishing anyone who disagrees with them and punishing America for slavery. My greatest prayer these days is that God will rise up our founders and give them a chance to make up for that terrible and evil mistake, giving them the power, utensils, equipment, command of animals, insects, viruses and bacteria. Their mission being to move over our great country and destroy all adult human beings who do not have authentic, good, honorable American spirits. When the smoke clears there would only be a remnant few still standing. People of all colors, sizes and shapes. Christians, Jews, Islamics, Catholics and agnostics too. We would at that point be the most powerful nation in the world in spite of the human loss.

The Founding Fathers raised from the dead and controlling the insects! Wow.