They say that idle hands are the Devil's tools...

Man, if that's the case, the Devil must have had a heyday with me this past week. I have accomplished almost nothing useful. I took the week off from work. Well, let me make that last week and this coming week. It's been a great time to just chill out...

I know I was extraordinarily chilled last week at this time. My next-door neighbor was having a bon voyage party. Unfortunately, he'll be visiting here for the next year. All of us here in the 'hood are wishing him the best...

Truth be known, there was not a great deal of excitement during the week. This evening, the Wife Unit (1 each) had a hankering for catfish. We tried to go to Catfish Cabin II. Unbeknownst to us, the restaurant took an extended holiday from 2 July to 8 July. We'll have to go back. Next stop, Greenbrier Restaurant. As expected, there were a whole lot of people so we decided to check out Greenbrier Bar-B-Que. Amazingly, we were seated immediately. Mmmmm, catfish and hushpuppies! Both of these Greenbrier restaurants are mighty fine!

I suppose I'll end this with a "public service announcement". Given my political inclinations, I believe the federal government is entirely too big. But, since it's not going to get smaller anytime soon, you might as well get some of the information your taxes pay for. Here are two decent sources of information that we all pay for:

The U.S. Government RSS Library from usa.gov
Podcasts from the U.S. Government from usa.gov

One other interesting source of information paid for by the taxpayer but not easily accessible to the taxpayer is reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Fortunately, the Center for Democracy and Technology has seen fit to compile many of the CRS reports that have found their way into the public domain into a more or less centralized clearinghouse.

Y'all have fun now! I know I will...

Happy Birthday USA!

Even though we have our problems, we're still free to try and change the way things are. We're free to earn lots of money, drink lots of beer, go to whatever church we want to and still live among each other even when we don't agree. We're even free to criticise leaders who say they respect our system of justice and the decision of a jury one day and then talk about leaving room for a full pardon the very next day.

I occasionally bring up Libertarians and libertarianism here. I mention this because I think people often have misconceptions about exactly what that means. I've mentioned libertarian to some people and the inevitable "Oh, so you want to legalize drugs?" question comes up. For some reason, that seems to be the only understanding of the principles (and the political party) held by at least some people. Here are some links that might provide a better understanding of libertarian thought:

What is a Libertarian? and other FAQs(from the Libertarian Party website)

The rest of these links have a large amount of in depth info covering many practical aspects of libertarian thought:

The Cato Institute
The Ludwig von Mises Institute
LewRockwell.com
The Reason Foundation

Last but not least, a follow-up from the other day...

The whole e-card scam thing is nothing new, but since I received several in a short time period, I figured that type of scam might be on the rise. The immediate key for me recognizing the scam e-mails I received (in addition to the bogus looking e-mail headers) was the links the e-mails invite you to click. In all of the instances, the link was http://XX.XX.XX.XX where the Xs were numbers to form an IP address. Most places with e-cards will have a domain name as the link. Oh well...

Y'all watch out...

I've received a couple of junky e-mails (just today) saying that someone had sent me an e-card. Just out of curiosity, I clicked the link and my suspicions were confirmed. I was taken to a page where there was a nifty executable file for download. I think I'll go back for further investigation, but I'm sure the executable file is probably viral. Keep a close eye out for that junk, folks...

It's not surprising that the one individual found guilty in the Plame case received a commuted sentence. I won't complain too much because it's perfectly within the President's power to grant reprieves and pardons. The speed with which this one happened is just so suspect. So many of the pardons, reprieves, or sentence commutations granted by this President are from cases that are at least a decade old. It just gives the appearance that no loyal parties who had a part in the little political "Plame game" were going to really be subject to hard time. I'm sure this would have happened in just about any administration...

Speaking of administrations, we were approached by some early supporters of Ron Paul at the weekly Concert in the Park this evening. I'm just waiting to see the Libertarian Party candidates. At least I can thankfully say that Ron Paul does not have the appearance of being a Bush-style Republican. Here's a brief synopsis of Ron Paul's votes on various issues.