One Nation and Countless Careerists, Under God.


“Oh my name it is nothin’, my age it means less
The country I come from is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there the laws to abide
And that land that I live in has God on its side.”

Bob Dylan, “With God on Our Side”

A Federal Court declares the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, and all Hell breaks loose, with editorialists, Senators, and even our Fearless Leader lining up to decry the decision. (For their part, the House scurried out onto the steps of the Capitol to recite the Pledge en masse.) I dunno. I know I’m not the mean in these particular instances, but as a kid forced to recite the Pledge every morning in elementary school, I always found the name-dropping of God a bit strange and superfluous. I guess the lesson here, folks, is don’t vote against God in an election year. Speaking of which, the GOP are latching on to the decision as a centerpiece to their fall campaigns. Hmmm…corporate malfeasance still seems a higher priority to me than this judicial slighting of our national deity. Somehow, I think He can handle it. (But, just in case, the Supreme Court today ensured that everyone’s tax money can be used to pay Him tribute.)

End of the Worldcom.

Joining Enron and Martha Stewart in infamy, Worldcom cooks the books for $3.8 billion. It’s not like either the telecom industry or the economy at large need another hit right now, and this one’s going to be a doozy. Good news for the Dems, at least, but I wonder what this’ll mean for UUNet. Update: Bush vows a probe into the situation. Hey, let’s not forget about Enron there, bud.

A Dad’s Best Friend.


Turns out Dubya talks more about his dogs these days than he does his daughters. Hmmm…maybe it’s because his dogs don’t get blitzed every weekend, and because they don’t seem to mind when he, ahem, “chokes on a pretzel” during an afternoon football game. As a prof of mine noted, any dog owner’ll tell you that if your dogs don’t freak out when you suddenly hit the ground, they’re just used to seeing you pass out in strange places.

Card-carrying members of the public library.

Armed with the Patriot Act (what a wonderfully Orwellian name) signed by Dubya last October, the FBI begins scouring libraries to check “terrorist” reading habits. Good news for your local Barnes and Noble, I suppose, who’ll probably be selling a lot more copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook from now herein. I’d love to see a sample list of what books make the FBI’s red flag list.