Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

The King in Yellow (Act II, Scene ii)

Regnat non regitur qui nihil nisi quod vult facit

Feast of Saint Apollinarius
Seattle

Dearest Reader,

As we celebrate today the fortieth anniversary of what is undoubtedly the most significant human event of the twentieth century, let us pause to reflect that NASA's three decrepit space shuttles, Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour, will be will be decommissioned in 2010, leaving the United States with no ability to launch humans into space for the first time since 1961.

The replacement program for the shuttles, called "Constellation" (which looks to my amateur eye suspiciously similar to the Apollo vehicles) has been put on indefinite hold pending a "review" of the program, which by my count is the third such review.

As I have said many times before, humans require frontiers. Without exploration, without frontiers, the Human species will turn in on itself like rats in a cage. It's already begun. With the closing of frontiers, the twentieth century was the most violent in world history.

NASA's entire projected budget for human exploration of space for FY2010 is about $10 billion. That's less than three tenths of one percent of the Federal Budget.

So when you follow the "live" feed at http://wechoosethemoon.org/ today, ponder about not only the past, but also the future of human space exploration.

I have been reminded that today in France they celebrate the storming of the Bastille, an event in 1789 where 98 Parisians were killed while attacking a decrepit medieval prison, thus freeing four forgers, two lunatics, and the comte de Solages, whose own family and had arranged for his imprisonment on account of incest.

Why anybody would celebrate this particular event is quite beyond me.

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

("Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats)

There is an ineffable sadness to this day for me. By artillery and force of arms, the Sultan ended the ancient Empire and the life of its last Emperor. Sic transit gloria mundi.

St. Sebastian's Day
Pistachio House, Tacoma

My Dear Friends,

For eight years now, I have been constantly reminded, nearly every day, of the words that New York Boss Mark Hannah reportedly uttered of Theodore Roosevelt, "I can't believe that goddam cowboy is President of the United States". Indeed.

Today, the cowboy ambles home to Texas. Praise God.

I'm staying home today, with millions around the country and the world, to watch this moment. Of course, I've been watching Presidential inaugurals since 1977, so that's not particularly new.

However, (and however you feel about Mr Obama's politics) this is an amazing moment in the history of my country. For centuries his were a people enslaved, and then freed to poverty and powerlessness, a bloody stain on our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and they now celebrate - we now celebrate - the inauguration of one of their own as President.

It was only forty years ago that African Americans were allowed to march in an inaugural parade.

It is one of the miracles of genius of our democracy that we can have these peaceful transfers of power from one president to another, from one party to another, and now from one people to another.

It awes me.

And there are three million or more people in the bitter January cold of our capital to witness it.

This is the biggest party our country has ever thrown. I for one, plan to enjoy it.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

(Langston Hughes)

Edited to add: Aretha Franklin is sheer genius.

Edited to add: Congratulations, Mr. President.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.

From the Telegraph we have this bit of nineteenth century news:

A century-old mystery surrounding the fate of the “Mad King” who built Bavaria’s celebrated fairytale castles has taken a new twist after an historian claimed that he was murdered.

The allegation comes from an art expert turned sleuth who claims that contemporary portraits of Ludwig II prove that far from killing himself in a fit of melancholy, he was assassinated to put an end his extravagant spending.

Ludwig’s body was found on June 13, 1886, in the knee-deep waters of a lake not far from Neuschwanstein Castle, his most fanciful creation, whose soaring towers and turrets now draw tourists from all over the world.

After a cursory investigation, the death was declared suicide by drowning - a verdict fiercely protected by his successors, who have forbidden any modern scientific examination of his remains.

But art historian Siegfried Wichmann now claims that he can prove that Ludwig was murdered, after an investigation that has taken up half his life and has drawn upon his own wartime experience. “I can say that, professionally, I have never been wrong in all my career,” said Mr Wichmann, who is the leading authority on Bavarian paintings from the late 19th century. ...

A secret Bavarian society known as the Guglmänner, whose members dress in capes and hoods and claim to be guardians of the German monarchy, has long questioned the official version of his death. But the calls for Ludwig’s body to be exhumed and given a modern autopsy have now grown louder. Last month, Detlev Utermöhle, a Bavarian banker, made a sworn statement claiming that he had seen the coat Ludwig was wearing on the day of his death, and that it contained two bullet holes.

As far as I'm concerned, the only revelation in this article is the existence of a "secret" monarchist society with some gumption. Not to mention an incredibly bad sense of fashion.

Today I prayed the Office of the Dead.

Never forget.

Recently, I ran across Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal editorial A Separate Peace. Though it was published in 2005, I think the years since have only strengthened the evidence supporting her assertion:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.

As has become obvious in the past years, the Unitary Executive theory endorsed by President Bush differs little from the reality of Rome's Principate. The Republic is under assault from within. Although the Democrats in Congress are now trying to assert Congressional prerogatives, particularly in the US Attorneys scandal [AP], it may well be too little too late.

The White House defiantly stuck by Gonzales on the perjury matter and flatly denied that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller on Thursday contradicted the attorney general's sworn testimony on internal Bush administration dissent over the president's secretive wiretapping program.

This administration has such contempt for Congress, that they order their people to ignore Congressional subpoenas and laugh off obvious prevarication and perjury committed by their officers in front of Congressional committees.

Most telling is this final paragraph from the AP story I cited above:

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a contempt citation against two other Bush confidants, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers. The full House is expected to vote on the citation in the fall, but the Justice Department has said it won't prosecute the two.

The system is broken, so much so that Congress is considering adding inherent contempt back into its arsenal for the first time since the Great Depression.

[I note that Wikipedia's article on Contempt of Congress is listed as "unverifiable" since it "does not cite any references or sources". This, of course, is balderdash, as the article's primary source is Congress's Contempt Power: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure, a PDF written by the Congressional Research Service for the use of Congress that runs 65 pages with no less than 402 footnotes.

It seems pretty well cited to me.]

Our system has been battered before. Take a look at the Grant administration, or those of Harding or Nixon. Look at the Civil War, the Depression, or Vietnam/Watergate. Look at slavery and segregation. And on the cultural and civility front, we're miles ahead of the Andrew Jackson era. It's been simply decades since anybody was stabbed in the US Senate Chamber. You want yellow journalism? FOX is nothing next to the newspapers for which that phrase was coined in the lead-up to the Spanish-American War.

Somehow, we always bounced back. Somewhere, we always believed that the system could be fixed, and if we couldn't fix it there were men and women in our Constitutional Republic who could and would.

Yet, the feeling in much of the country this time seems to be - not so much. Why?


(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. [George, George]

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [Signing Statements]

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. [Immigration, Land]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. ["consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power"]

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. [DHS]

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: [Defiance of International Law]

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: [Extrajudicial Prisoners, Guantánamo]

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: [Extraordinary Rendition]

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: [Unitary Executive]

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, THEREFORE, THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. [Treason]

— John Hancock

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

---

How many more violations can you find? Enjoy your Independence Day.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

We are coming up on the Centenary of Airship flight in Washington State.



Surely we should do something to commemorate this event in June of 2008?

Ideas?

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

"In the [Constitutional] convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to 'pardon crimes which were advised by himself' or, before indictment or conviction, 'to stop inquiry and prevent detection.' James Madison responded:

"[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds [to] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty..."

Source.

Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Oh! This made me laugh. And today, I need it.



The scary part is, I've been both of those people at one time or another.

Well, that's just swell. The President of the United States has just told the United States Senate to get stuffed.

In short, here's the scoop: Attorney General Alberto "The Waterboarding Kid" Gonzales fired a number of US Attorneys for "poor performance", apparently with White House approval.

It turns out that that these particular US Attorneys all had very good ratings and almost all had good to great performance evaluations.

It also turns out that every one of them either refused to back down from ethical investigations against Republicans or refused to pursue unwarranted investigations against Democrats.

It's pretty clear that Gonzales lied to Congress when they first tried to investigate this stupidity.

The White House and the Attorney General's office are only handing over some of the papers requested by the Senate, and now the President has said that no officials of the Executive branch will respond to Congressional subpoenas.

And who pursues the scofflaws who refuse to appear before Congress? Why, that would be...




wait for it...




the Attorney General's office.

If this all plays out the way the principals are indicating they're going to play it, then Congress will only have one option remaining.

Impeachment.

Stay tuned.

This brightened up my day considerably.



(though technically we'll be at 554 years, come May)

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. [George, George]

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [Signing Statements]

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. [Immigration, Land]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. ["consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power"]

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. [DHS]

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: [Defiance of International Law]

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: [Extrajudicial Prisoners, Guantánamo]

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: [Extraordinary Rendition]

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: [Unitary Executive]

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, THEREFORE, THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. [Treason]

---

I'm sure I've missed numerous examples. A general overview of many of these topics may be found here: War!

Enjoy your Independence Day.

Edited to add: Here's a lovely little birthday present for you, America, from your Unitary Executive. C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden.

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush.

Source: Rolling Stone, article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Extensively footnoted and absolutely terrifying.

The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. (Josef Stalin)

Discuss.

In the Middle Ages between the Ancient Empire and the so-called Age of Reason, men of property and wealth typically took a motto to their arms.

In particular, the Holy Roman Emperors had some wonderful mottos. Charlemagne started it off with a particularly triumphalist bit, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus triumphat (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ triumphs).

Move along a few centuries to Otto the Great and you get Satius est ratione aequitatis mortem oppetere quam fugere et inhoneste vivere (It is better to die for a good cause than to flee and live without honour). A trifle wordy, perhaps, but a suitably noble sentiment.

From Konrad II we have the wise instruction Omnium mores, tuos imprimis observato (Watch the conduct of everyone, but watch your own the most), and Heinrich IV observes Multi multa sciunt, se autem nemo (Many know much, but no-one knows himself). Albrecht I has the pithy (if somewhat inaccurate) Fugam victoria nescit (Victory knows no retreat).

You can get quite a look into the personalities of these men through the mottos they chose, from Charlemagne's bombast to Konrad's caution.

But then you have Friedrich II.

Good old Friedrich, who has the dubious distinction of being the only person ever excommunicated by the Pope upon returning from a successful crusade. (I will note in passing that Friedrich negotiated the return of Jerusalem to Christian hands without a single battle being fought, which was generally not the way things were done in those days.) He is the only Mediaeval monarch to write a book (On Falconry). He spoke at least eight languages, and he was literate in Latin, Greek, and Arabic.

And what was the motto of this Mediaeval Stupor Mundi?

Comluriuum thiorium ego strepitum audivi (I have heard the wind in the fig trees).

I have heard the wind in the fig trees? Fig trees? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

The lame excuse given by modern historians is that this wistful saying recalls the Emperor's youth in Sicily.

I'm not buying it. Charlemagne's motto wasn't "The Seine scintillates in the springtime". Lothar II didn't opine "My, the cowbells in Bavaria sure are melodic" under his coat of arms.

So what's the deal?

For the record, I'm thinking of adopting "Jefferson never finished Monticello" as my motto. Can anybody put that in Latin?