snippets: on a rainy morning…

I hope everyone out there is having as lovely a morning as us DC folk are. The rain, she’s a comin’ down and showing no signs of stopping!

I wish I had the option of these fine city workers to just hang out at a nearby coffee shop and wait out the rain–the rain that’s showed no signs of slowing down since starting, that is. Considering that pedestrians and traffic are a bad mix at the best of times, when it’s raining, I’d hope they’d suck it up and get out to the crosswalk where people could use their direction and help. Still, like I thought as I tried to juggle my umbrella and morning coffee, “Must be nice to have that option!” Not that I can really blame them. I looked out the windows this morning and thought “Hell to the naw, Bobby!” But you gotta do what you gotta do, and as a result I’m still soaked from the knees down. At least the bag carrying the iPhone and iPad is bone dry. 😉

Guess who uttered the following priceless sound bite?

I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry or some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent.

Did you guess it? Why that was none other than Dr. Laura Schlessinger speaking on reasons for ending her radio talk show. She’s still vacillating between saying that she was wrong and saying she was trying to make a philosophical point, likely depending on which media outlet she’s speaking with. I haven’t listened to the audio, but my friend did and could only remark, “Okay, she said the N-word more in five minutes than I have in my entire life.”

One of the comments on the CNN article gets it exactly right and this is something that I’ve tried to explain to people myself. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, yes, but it isn’t a shield to be thrown up to both deflect criticism and absolve all responsibility for the things you say. So when Dr. Laura says she’s ending her show to “regain [her] First Amendment rights,” what she means is she wants to be able to say anything she wants to say without the repercussions of it going to a nationwide audience and having to perform damage control afterward. Perhaps FOX News should hire her…

And if the above news didn’t make you smile, here’s a cute animated political cartoon from Mark Fiore: Beware Those Activist Judges!*

We’ve reached the hump, y’all, so let’s get over it and roll on down towards the weekend!