Since Mike Norton, of Layton, began displaying the pictures of American soldiers killed in Iraq on an illuminated sign in his front yard, his home has been vandalized, cars have stopped in front of his home and honked horns in the early morning hours and he has received anonymous harassing phone calls.
Now the city of Layton has gotten into the act.
Norton, who was told by a city official last winter that the sign in his yard did not violate zoning ordinances, received a letter from the Layton City Attorney's Office recently informing him that, upon further review, the sign does violate the ordinance and he would have 10 days to take it down.
The sign currently contains 1,715 postage-stamp-sized pictures of each dead soldier that Norton downloads from CNN's Web site. The number is updated whenever there is a new casualty. Above the pictures is a large bold-faced headline denoting the latest number of Americans killed in Iraq. Next to the sign is an American flag.
Norton says that by day, many people, including veterans, stop by and thank him for keeping the sacrifices of the soldiers and their families in the public eye. But by night he is harassed by anonymous antagonists, including one who shined a spotlight into his 6-year-old daughter's window.
The letter, from Layton Assistant City Attorney Stephen Garside, said the city inspector who told Norton six months ago that his sign was OK used the wrong code section in reviewing the sign.
Norton responded by telling the city to cite him, because he could find nothing in the code to indicate a violation and, he noted, the city code specifically exempts memorials. His sign is a memorial to the soldiers.
Norton has obtained an attorney and is prepared to fight. "I will go to jail before I will pay a fine for displaying a sign that honors the war dead," he said.

Link: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000963211

Here is a very neat example of how a White House Presidential spokesperson can persistently avoid answering a very simple pointed question from a member of the White House press corps...
This is not anything that I haven't seen and heard many times in past from press secretaries when they cannot or will not answer a question...but it's nice to see that some media outlets are now remarking on it....

Link: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/columnists/zeeck/v-printer/story/4940567p-4521174c.html

When I lived in London in the late 70's, the Iranian Revolution was in full swing, and exiled supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini used to hold marches in London to protest the Iranian Regime of the Shah. On more than one occasion I saw protesters setting fire to a Union Jack as a means of showing their displeasure with the policies of the British government. At the time, such displays did not cause much comment in the UK. Most people in the UK would regard the flag as a symbol, see the burning as a symbolic gesture, and go about their daily business.
Not so here in the USA, where the US flag seems to function as a connector to the heart and soul of many people's feelings of what it is to be American. The first thing that happened after 9/11 was an explosion of flag display, and waving the flag is more than a habit - it seems to be almost a social requirement.
So...it is no real surprise that burning the flag is seen as a Really Bad Thing. So bad is it, that, in the midst of all of the other weighty issues that affect US society and governance, it seems to be more important for DC legislators to be asked to discuss and debate...yep you guessed it...legislation to outlaw flag-burning.
A Seattle-area newspaper has an excellent article on why this a monumentally stupid waste of time here.
Folks, the US flag is NOT the United States of America. It is NOT part of your body, or your identity as a citizen. It's a pretty piece of cloth. If somebody burns it, they do not necessarily deserve capital punishment and eternal damnation. There are more important things to work on. This is a focus on empty symbolism at the expense of substance. Time for people to wise up and get their priorities straight.

The Sanate in DC yesterday passed (by a voice vote only, with no dissenters) a symbolic "apology bill" for the hate lynchings that occurred in a number of southern states in the 1960's as the USA struggled to codify anti-discrimination statutes and embrace the concept of equal civil rights for all (a concept which it would appear some pressure groups are now trying to abandon...).
Anyway, the list of sponsors did NOT include either of the 2 Texas senators (John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison). I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not. Yet another example of why neither of those individuals will ever get a vote from me once I get the vote next year.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html?gusrc=rss

...in which it is revealed that the White House and Exxon were in lockstep on the inadvisability of the USA signing up for any variant of the Kyoto Treaties.
(Note for those just landed from Mars: Exxon is one of the principal suppliers of hydrocarbon products in the World i.e. products that produce carbon dioxide as one of their many by-products).
There is being too close to an interest group, then there is being in bed with an interest group, then there is having your head so far up the posterior of an interest group that you cannot see anything, so that the interest group can pass anything off to you as truth. I think I know wich of those 3 scenarios we are dealing with here...further proof, if any were needed, that the relationship between political leaders and business in the USA is way too cozy to be of any strategic benefit to the USA or the future of mankind.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/22147/

In which Molly Ivins takes her usual pointed and witty hatchet to the weird and ultimately pointless goings-on in the just-concluded Texas Legislature session.
Frankly, between this analysis and the stunningly stupid "one two three four you can't shake that any more" bill (aka House Bill 1476), plus the attempt to disqualify foster parents on the basis of sexual orientation, I have become convinced that this shambles of a representative democracy process has become the proverbial broken-down racehorse that needs to be dispatched with all haste (and due process? Not likely. That, folks, is for wimps and furriners).
I am seriously thinking of campaigning for the Texas Legislature to be abolished.
Wait! I have a better idea. Let's outsource them!
I am sure that we can find a competent collection of legislators in, say, Bangalore, that can do a much better job than this idiotic shower for a lot less money. And outsource the Governorship while we're at it. If we're going to have to tolerate a Governor with the presence of a treestump and the excitement level of a block of concrete, I'm sure that we can find a cheaper substitute.
Maybe Kinky Friedman can breathe some life into this decaying apology for state democracy...

1. This was a good race from a spectator viewpoint. Having Danica Patrick come back from the rear of the field to almost win has to be good for public “buzz” and viewing figures.
2. Buddy Lazier put up an excellent performance in a one-off drive with Chevy power. The Chevy cars looked to be almost the equal of the Honda cars on race pace, and much quicker than all of the “factory” Toyota teams.
3. The Penskes were the only Toyota-powered team to show any competitive qualifying or race pace. Sam Hornish looked set for a good race until he fell foul of Bourdais drifting up from the low line. Every other Toyota-powered car was down among the dead men on race pace. I wonder exactly what Chip Ganassi has been saying to TRD recently (perhaps all of the money they paid him in 1999 to run their engines was intended to compensate him for the current-spec TRD engine…)
4. Despite all of the bloviating on the discussion boards, the Hornish-Bourdais incident was not Sebastian’s fault. It was a racing accident. Hornish was trying to pass on the outside, which is a high-risk manoever at the best of times, since the no-grip zone is just above you on the race track. Those of us who have watched IRL races in the last 4 years know that Sam Hornish loves outside passes, and he had already passed several cars on the outside in the race. This was one pass that went wrong because the driver on the bottom started drifting up the track, pushing Sam into the marbles. Any pass on the outside line on a narrow superspeedway is a calculated risk – you are relying on the driver below you to hold his line to allow the pass to succeed. Sam gambled and this time he lost.
5. AJ Foyt IV may be a nice guy who helps old ladies across the road, takes out the trash and can drive fast, but based on his post-accident interview, he should not be anywhere near an IRL oval race right now. He appeared to be unable to comprehend that he should have done his best to disappear in the situation he found himself in. He is an inexperienced rookie driving a dog-slow car for an uncompetitive team, and he was already several laps down when Bruno Junqueira came up to lap him.
On a superspeedway like Indy with a fairly narrow racing line, you need to stay out of the way in a situation like this, and AJ IV didn’t get out of the way enough. It all reminded me of the 2004 incident when Greg Ray tried to pass Darren Manning coming out of turn 4 despite being umpteen laps down, resulting in the spectacular pitlane pile-up that also claimed Sam Hornish. If his name was AJ Smith he wouldn’t be anywhere an Indycar, and he needs to stay away until he can be competitive and safe. He could start by moving to another team, but I fear that blood ties may be too thick for an objective decision like that…

Luckiest Driver ….Danica Patrick
a. Stalls the car on a pitstop and still stays on the lead lap
b. Spins the car under yellow, taking out two-thirds of the Panther team, and only suffers a damaged nosecone
c. Gets enough yellow flag laps to allow her to make one less pit-stop and still race for the lead for a while
d. Starts to run out of fuel but manages to stay in fourth place when the final accident ends the race under yellow

Unluckiest Driver…Bruno Junqueira
Running solidly in the race, Bruno gets tagged by AJ Foyt IV (who was several laps down and should have at least been prepared to give him racing room) and crashes heavily, suffering broken vertebrae. He will be unable to make a run for the OWRS championship, and Newman-Haas has a race car converted to an expensive pile of scrap.

Unluckiest Team
#1 - Newman-Haas
Bruno Junqueira was running well until he was tagged by AJ IV in mid-race (see below), which appears to have cost him 4-5 months of convalescence time from a broken back.
Sebastian Bourdais was running well, despite suffering from understeer for some of the race and getting tangled up with Sam Hornish, until he suffered mechanical gremlins right at the end.
#2 – Panther Racing
For whom Tomas Enge and Thomas Scheckter were removed from contention in the space of 100 yards when Danica spun her car under caution and looped down into the infield…

Needless Hype Award winner – ABC
ABC did everything except announce that Danica Patrick had won the race. Part of the problem was that Dan Wheldon either ran out of fuel after his doughnuts or stalled the engine, and had to be pushed all the way down the pit road. This, however, left the ABC team with all of the time in the world to ignore the second and third place finishers and focus on the girl who finished fourth. They finally got around to talking to Vitor Meira and Bryan Herta after the Victory Lane celebrations, but then Vitor had to grit his teeth while the ABC crew again gushed about Danica.

Doofus Comment Competition Winner
#1 Prize goes to…Bobby Rahal for his breezy dismissal of Danica’s spin under yellow as “no harm no foul”. Bobby clearly hadn’t spoken to anybody from the Panther team…
Honorable mention – Dr. Jerry Punch trying to talk to Kenny Brack after he had parked his car. Punch launches into some long-winded pseudo-meaningful drivel about “leaving on your own terms”, only to have Kenny respond, totally seriously, “I can’t hear you”, forcing Punch to repeat the speech. Priceless.

Stupid Comparison Competition Winner
#1 Prize – whoever it was who suggested that Danica Patrick could be the Tiger Woods of auto racing. The comparison is horseshit. Tiger Woods was the leading amateur golfer of his era. He won (among other tournaments) the US Amateur title three times. When he turned professional he had been winning championship tournaments for several years. He has always cited that as the main reason why he started winning on the PGA Tour almost immediately. He knew how to play, compete and win. He was the complete competitive package.
When you look at the racing records of top-flight drivers, one thing that generally sets them apart from their peers is that they won in all of the lower categories in which they competed. Many of them dominated in those lower categories. Danica Patrick has not won an auto race since her go-kart days. She may be quick, and a good racer, but she has not yet shown that she knows how to win. This worries me. My opinion is that the odds are against her becoming a dominant driver because of that lack of a winning background.

Last Thursday, in a speech before a Washington conference sponsored by the "Campaign for America's Future," Dean told the audience that many Republicans "had never made an honest living in their lives."
This was not exactly the smartest way to phrase his central point, that many senior Republicans came from privileged backgrounds and had no understanding of daily reality for the majority of Americans. I can think of several ways in which he might have phrased it differently.
Predictably, the GOP jumped all over the speech, claiming that it was proof that the Democratic party "lacks leadership and is overflowing with anger". (I will leave it up to readers to try and deduce which emotions are surfaced by the theocratic pressure groups' attempts to ban same-sex marriages).
What is more disappointing however, is the reaction of Joe Biden and John Edwards to Howard Dean's speech. In the last 3 days both men have been interviewed by a number of media representatives. They had the opportunity to do things in those interviews: set the record straight by qualifying Howard Dean's remarks, and to turn the spotlight back to the GOP. Instead they did neither, allowing questioners to trap them into disavowing Dean's remarks. John Edwards went so far as to utter a statement "he's wrong" when asked about the Dean speech.
Joe Biden and John Edwards are showing why I cannot support the Democratic party right now. They flunked the most elementary test of party cohesion and message discipline. They allowed the media to place them on the defensive, and failed to take advantage of an opportunity to turn the spotlight to the current administration's failings. This is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/04/opinion/04miller_oped.html?incamp=article_popular

I especially liked the line "alienation is the only response to a political culture that insults our intelligence"...

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/3/14231/64405

In which the advert agency for a GOP campaign (wait for it) lifts a photo of Howard Dean standing in front of a crowd at a meet-up, extracts several people from the photo (miraculously managing to remove all evidence of banners etc. supporting Dean and the Dems) and uses the resulting image as a backdrop for their GOP paymaster's campaign.
The results aren't even particularly good, but the copyright owner of the photo is not amused:

FYI I am aware of the image (I got email about it and a phone call). I've spoken to Tom Frank at Big Fish and I'm waiting for a call back from his lawyers regarding the copyright violation. I'm also waiting for a call back from the campaign on the same issue (I'm not holding my breath on that one).
I am strongly protective of my copyright on the my images - I do routinely grant permission for free use by Democratic organizations (you do have to ask) but commercial use (which this was) is prohibited by my contract with the Dean campaign, by copyright law (without permission which I'm not going to grant) and because none of the people in the image signed releases.

John Pettitt (owner of the image in question)
http://www.cloudview.com