The Rant

posted by Bob Clasen Here's my plan to end the red-blue rift I thought that in today's column I would heal the nation. The nation suffered a wound during the recent presidential election as a result of the rift between the red states - defined as "states where 'foreign cuisine' pretty much means Pizza Hut" - and the blue states, defined as "states that believe they are smarter than the red states, despite the fact it takes the average blue-state resident 15 minutes to order a single cup of coffee." Some blue-state residents are so upset about the election that they are talking about moving to Canada, which is technically a foreign nation. In my view, this would be a mistake. Canada is not the paradise it is often made out to be. FACT: Every year, 43% of all Canadians - a total of eight Canadians - are eaten by polar bears. Besides, running away is never the answer, unless you are a teenage boy who has just blown up a mailbox. We need to

__________________________ post by Bob Clasen A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910 ____________________________ I note that the current crop of Democrats always seem

From Jeff Abouaf: What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal By ADAM COHEN Published: December 14, 2004 The New Deal made an unexpected appearance at the Supreme Court recently - in the form of a 1942 case about wheat. Some prominent states' rights conservatives were asking the court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn, a landmark ruling that laid out an expansive view of Congress's power to legislate in the public interest. Supporters of states' rights have always blamed Wickard, and a few other cases of the same era, for paving the way for strong federal action on workplace safety, civil rights and the environment. Although they are unlikely to reverse Wickard soon, states' rights conservatives are making progress in their drive to restore the narrow view of federal power that predated the New Deal - and render Congress too weak to protect Americans on many fronts. We take for granted today the idea that Congress can a

posted by Bob Clasen ________________________ Google to Scan Books From Big Libraries By Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. is trying to establish an online reading room for five major libraries by scanning stacks of hard-to-find books into its widely used Internet search engine. The ambitious initiative announced late Monday gives Mountain View, Calif.-based Google the right to index material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities — Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford in England. The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners. The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works. Oxford wants Google to scan all its books originally published before 1901. Scanning book