Category: We the People

It is no secret that one of the things that elected officials do is pat each other on the back. But they also pat other people on the back. If you have spent any time looking around, you’ve undoubtedly seen a resolution of some sort of another that in the end does nothing more than waste a bunch of time.

The state legislatures are especially fond of these. When I lived in California, you could find these resolutions about anywhere. I was pretty young, and I’ll admit to not looking into it much, but I think you can get a resolution passed by the state for just about anything if you know the right person to ask. It seems that this even extends to the county level, if you live in Mecklenburg.

I’ll admit that I’m a white guy who is all too rapidly approaching middle age and doesn’t get a lot of things, and at the risk of sounding even more clueless than usual, one of those is why so many people are against an official language for the United States. Unlike a lot of people, I really don’t have a problem with it and why it makes news when people want to create an official language really baffles me.

Of course my support comes from the assumption that the official language is English. If the official language is Albanian, I might take issue. Nothing against the Albanians, mind you – I just don’t speak the language. It would also seem to make sense that the language of the majority would be the most logical choice, but then our government and logic don’t always go together, do they?

A bill has been introduced to kill the penny, mostly because it actually costs more than a penny to produce a penny. That makes sense, and I’m all for it. It’s not like you can do much with pennies these days anyway, so I say go for it.

I’ve always thought the idea of an amendment to ban the burning of flags was a bit idiotic, since you’re actually supposed to burn flags in order to appropriately destroy them. But Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert, don’t you know) stepped up to the plate recently to set forth why it really makes little sense. Perhaps our “dedicated public servants have finally solved the problems of crime, drugs, war, poverty, terrorism, healthcare, immigration, and the mystery of why our children are such idiots compared to Norwegians”. Yay!

Hrm. Perhaps I’m not a Libertarian after all. Maybe I’m a Pirate*.

*No, probably not. But at least if we’re going to be giving up all our money we can talk well and have eye patches and good parties and the like.

In the latest twist of the Iraq saga, Army officials have apparently banned the use of any armor other than that issued by the military. That’s just stupid.

I appreciate that you don’t want someone to feel that they are safe when they are not. I appreciate that something defective may cause some sort of harm. But when you can’t provide the armor, you can’t tell them that they’ll just have to do without.

I am so proud. I just received a message from Congressman Robin Hayes. Who would have thought that he would called me personally? I sure wouldn’t have expected it! Even stranger, when he called, the caller ID came up as a Private Name and Private Number.

I heard that America was founded for the people. I don’t think that’s true now, and I don’t think it’s been true for a long, long time.

We have odds on American Idol. We have groups of people who band together every week to buy lottery tickets in the hopes that they are the ones who will strike it rich. Yet gambling is bad, says our leaders. Don’t they work for us?

Marty wants to know how I feel about the draft. Well, Marty, unfortunately, I don’t know. Or perhaps that is fortunately, because the draft has not been active in my lifetime, at least not to that point where I was able to talk. So I don’t really have an opinion on the matter. But I’m sure I can come up with one.