I've taken the liberty...

Recently, the Maryland General Assembly was debating a few new legal provisions that have nothing to do with one another. One bans the reading of text messages while driving. The other would legalize gay marriage. Completely unrelated, right? One has to do with the safety of our streets and highways. The other ensures that the state will recognize the right of two taxpaying and consenting adults to enter into a contract with one another.

Far too many accidents, fatal and otherwise, are the product of distracted driving: putting on makeup, eating, trying to find your favorite CD on the floor behind you, yelling at misbehaved children in the backseat, trying to hide narcotics from the cops. Your eyes leave the road for a second or two, and suddenly you find yourself rather uncomfortably positioned underneath a tractor trailer. Or maybe you veer over the double yellow line momentarily. When it comes right down to it, there isn't much difference between driving impaired and driving distracted, especially when one considers the often grisly end result.

There is no text message worth my life. I'll let you decide about yours. This new law will no doubt save lives and make our roads safer; opposition to the bill would seem counterintuitive and perhaps downright irresponsible. Be that as it may, my senator, EJ Pipkin, and a lot of other GOP state senators have decided to oppose the text message ban as an unmitigated attack on civil liberties. A sweeping intrusion of the nanny state government brought to you personally by that notable bete noire, Martin O'Malley. The audacity! I do know this: checking a text message while you are driving is many things, it is not a liberty.

Which brings us to gay marriage. One might reasonably expect good ol' EJ to support gay marriage, you know, as a reaffirmation of civil liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. The ability of two consenting adults to do what they like, provided it causes no harm to anyone else. Heck, it's practically what George Washington fought for at Yorktown, right?! Who needs more laws telling people what they can't do, right?

No?

It appears that liberty has its limits, which happen to extend to just this side of the GOP's collective comfort level. EJ and the vast majority of the GOP state senate caucus are opposed to gay marriage. They, along with their religious right accomplices, cite scripture, "God's law," and the ability to procreate as foundational principles in the definition of marriage.

First of all, God's law has no place in the laws of the United States, or the several states. Perhaps that is sacrilege to some, but your God might not be my God, and if a few Qur'an toting fundamentalist came to Annapolis and started firebreathing a lot of rhetoric about God's law, you bet that EJ would be apoplectic; spewing Jefferson quotes about the separation of church and state. It's a slippery slope.

Secondly, 'marriage' as defined by the state has nothing to do with God, love, sex, kids, bridal veils, garter belts, plastic cake toppers or apron dances. A marriage is simply a state-recognized contractual bond between two people. Pretty easy to get into, a little tougher to get out of.

Legalizing gay marriage will have virtually zero impact on anyone who isn't gay. But lots of politicians tell us that gay marriage undermines traditional marriage, or that a gay couple raising a child means that child will be prone to interior decorating and tend to use overly expressive hand motions. It's all hogwash, undeserving of a response. And do Republicans really have a problem undermining anything, anyway? The tax policies they advocate undermine the state's fiscal health, and the natural resources policies they espouse undermine the state's environmental health.

So let's throw the theory that Republicans are truly concerned about the future of traditional marriage out the window. The real issue is that gays give Republicans the heebie jeebies. The idea that two people who have the same anatomy get together and have fun with one another behind several sets of closed doors makes people like EJ Pipkin supremely uncomfortable.

The two positions that Pipkin has taken are woefully untenable. They are irreconcilable. They represent the starkest of contradictions. But no one seems to notice; the Republicans can keep on pretending to be the party of personal freedom while they deny personal freedoms to a significant portion of the American population.

Go West Young Man!

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Emigrant, Montana about 90 miles outside of Bozeman for a week of team building and communications workshops at the B-Bar Ranch. Politically it's a tough time to leave Capitol Hill, as the GOP brings an appropriations package (some are wrongly calling it a 'continuing resolution') for the rest of 2011 to the House floor this week. There are bound to be lots of environmental shenanigans, but I will miss them as I will be mired in the technology void that is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. To be sure, there are fewer places I'd rather be than in the Rocky Mountains, but perfect timing, this ain't.

While I'm gone, keep an eye out for my letter to the editor on Ordinance 11-02 in this week's Queen Anne's Record Observer and Kent Island Bay Times.

Keep it Rural.

Can We Afford Democracy?

The following was submitted as a Letter to the Editor to the Queen Anne's Record-Observer.

At their meeting on February 22, the Queen Anne’s County Commissioners will be considering ordnance 11-02, which changes the way commissioners who have vacated their office prior to the completion of their term will be replaced. Current law requires a special election, providing registered voters in Queen Anne’s County the opportunity to properly elect their representation in Centreville.

In the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ ordnance 11-02 turns good democracy on its head. It usurps the power of the people, and places that power with a small group of partisans whose names most voters wouldn’t recognize. Under ordnance 11-02, special elections would be eliminated, and instead the respective Central Committee would have the power to replace a vacant commissioners’ seat. In the 2010 elections, a scant 10% of the registered voters in Queen Anne’s County voted to elect members of the Central Committees; these should not be the people tasked with choosing our representation in Centreville.

What’s more, as of this writing, the Queen Anne’s County Board of Elections has no available estimate of what a special election might cost the county; which means that the commissioners are not aware of what it might save the county.

There are many programs and projects that our county could reduce or eliminate to save taxpayer dollars. But cutting elections to save money is an untenable and undemocratic idea that must be rejected.

Steven Kline lives in Centreville and serves on the Queen Anne’s County Task Force on Government Sustainability.

Everyone Loves a List!

1. Favorite childhood book?
Does childhood include my time in high school? If so, the book I found most enjoyable back then was Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If I have to go back further than that, I would probably say those "choose your own ending" books, I can't remember specific titles.

2. What are you reading right now?
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen.

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
I haven't been into a library (aside from Election Day) since I was in college. I buy most of my books on Amazon, or at local bookstores. I am trying to build a library; and I want my kids to grow up surrounded by books and, more importantly, to have the curiousity to find out what is in them.

4. Bad book habit?
I am obnoxious about taking care of my books, which might be considered a bad habit.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
As stated above, not a thing.


6. Do you have an e-reader?
I'm sorry, a what? There is something timeless and essential about holding a book in your hands, feeling it's weight, the finality of turning each page. I am anti-gadget, and anti e-reader, for sure.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I am constitutionally unable to read more than one book at a time.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
I cannot say that they have.

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)
It is early yet, so I will go back to last year. The least favorite book I read last year was probably Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. I can't stand when so-called historians tackle a subject with an academic air, and yet bring their unadulterated bias to the party. Perlstein blamed Nixon for every problem of the last 60 or so years, and I find that kind of hubris silly and amatuerish. (You can read more about my thoughts on The Nixon Dilemma in the post by that name below).

10. Favorite book you've read this year?
Again going back to 2010 one more time, I will give those honors to Conrad Black's Richard Nixon: A Life. It is everything Perlstein's book isn't, although at a thousand pages it is a bit of a bear. Honorable mentions go to Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior, and On the Run: An Angler's Journey Down the Striper Coast by David Dibenedetto.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Essentially never, my backlog of books inside my comfort zone is so extensive that I will probably never get out.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
US political history with a particular focus on the nation's founding and the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon; please don't mistake this for thinking I read partisan drivel, which these days seems to be a dime a dozen. I won't touch it, I don't have time for someone else's invective.

13. Can you read on the bus?
I ride a bus from the Eastern Shore to Washington most days of the week. If I couldn't read on the bus, I am not sure I could get much reading done.

14. Favorite place to read?
In our living room, with a fire blazing in the woodstove.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
It is a strict no-lending policy. And in turn, I don't borrow books from others. Two of my favorite books of all time, The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (in first edition hardback, mind you) have not been seen in years since they were "borrowed."

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
When I was writing my masters thesis I did, but I don't make a habit of it. And if I do dog-ear the pages, it is a small fold, not half the page.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
No.

18. Not even with text books?
That would require reading the text books in the first place, now wouldn't it?

19. What is your favorite language to read in?
The only language I know how to read in, Engrish.

20. What makes you love a book?
A unique perspective on a familiar topic that uncovers new information and presents the story in a refreshing way. I also like when a book covers something thoroughly, and comes across as well-researched and detail-oriented. In history often times the smallest things can make the largest impact. A good book will do the research on the small things, not just on the big things that have already been covered a million ways.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
I don't often run up to someone, even someone I know, and tell them what I think they ought to be reading. Mainly because I don't want them to do that to me, and also because I I realize that most of what I read does not have broad general appeal. But if I know something about you, and think something might appeal to you based on your interests, I'll recommend something I thought was good.

22. Favorite genre?
Strictly non-fiction US history

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)
This is a diffcult question, becasue generally if I like something, I'll read it. I wish I had more time to read classic American literature, guys like Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut.

24. Favorite biography?
Oh boy. I read, and have read, a lot of biographies, including some great ones like Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Those two rise to the top of a long list.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
To parahrase a master, George Carlin: Why do I need to read a book on self-help, written by someone else? That's not self-help, that's just help. What the hell is self help, anyway? If you did it yourself, you didn't need help.

26. Favorite cookbook?
I usually get my recipies from the food network website; can't say I make a point of buying cookbooks.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
Probably Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior. A lot of those folks who were conservation leaders in the early 20th century were inventing the movement by themselves, and they laid a great foundation for future conservation successes.

28. Favorite reading snack?
Coffee.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I am trying to think of the last time I read a book that was hyped in any way, and am drawing a blank.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I will look at the most recent reader reviews on Amazon before I make a purchase, but that is about the extent of my effort to see what others think. Some of those readers have halfway intelligent things to say, most of them don't...it's kind of like life like that.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
Generally speaking I don't write reviews, because I just assume that most people don't (and shouldn't) care much what I think; but yet here I am writing this blog post.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?
French, I suppose.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, a thousand page tome about Korea during the Kim Dynasty (Kim Il-Sung, and his son, Kim Jong-Il). It was long, the font was small, the names were tough, and like Communist logic, it was hard to follow. But I got through it.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
I have two massive biographies on my bookshelf, one about Winston Churchill and the other FDR. "Intimidated" probably isn't the right word, but procastination might be.

35. Favorite Poet?
Thomas Lynch. Check out Still Life in Milford. You don't hear much about good American poets these days, but Lynch is one of them.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
Zero. Not a fan of libraries.

37. How often have you returned book to the library unread?
I believe we've worn the library line of questioning out.

38. Favorite fictional character?
I read very little fiction, but I do like the Connecticut Yankee of Mark Twain.

39. Favorite fictional villain?
Again, not much fiction in my repertoire, but Captain Ahab has to be up there, right?

40. Books you're most likely to bring on vacation?
Vacation is where I will do my lightest reading, because the book has to travel well (i.e. be light enough to throw in a small bag or backpack. I will generally read books about travel, social histories (think Mark Kurlansky's Salt) and other things of that nature. This is when most of my Bill Bryson gets read. Bryson is just a fanastic writer, with a great sense of humor.

41. The longest you’ve gone without reading.
A few hours is usually about as long as I go without at least reading a page or two.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
A book would have to be pretty awful for me not to finish it, because that would leave me with a gnawing feeling forever, every time I saw it on my shelf I would get pissed. Although I once got a manuscript from an aspriring writer, and it was dreadful. This might be why I don't read fiction. Pulling off good fiction is tough, and so much of it is bad.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
I start to think about what I just read, and I wander off in to space...

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Not a novel, but without question, not even close...All the President's Men. By Woodward and Bernstein, of course.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Not sure I have one, we don't see many movies.

46. The most money you’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
I will frequently spend $50 at Amazon.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Skimming seems pointless. I have no expectation of flipping to a random page, and finding some passage so profound that I must buy the book. I read the publisher's summary on Amazon, and go from there.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Death? I don't know, if I don't think I can finish a book, I don't start it.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Not really.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
You can't build a library to be proud of if you go giving your books away, can you?

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
The aforementioned Churchill and FDR biographies.

52. Name a book that made you angry.
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
What on earth? If I don't think I will like a book, why would I start it?

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House.

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
Hmm, David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. Those fellas make me laugh.

The Lessons of Tucson

It has been nearly a month since Jared Loughner opened fire at a Tucson Safeway, targeting Representative Gabrielle Giffords and anyone who had the misfortune to be standing nearby. Like everything else that happens in the world, we have moved on from this tragedy with all deliberate speed; Giffords is rehabilitating in Houston much faster than expected; Loughner is now in the hands of the criminal justice system; the news cycle must now progress to the next crisis du jour.

As a writer I have not commented on the attack that left six people dead, including a nine year old girl. After having watched the reaction of the news media and the opinionated masses rise, crest, and recede over the intervening several weeks, I thought that there might be a few relevant observations that had yet to be made, and perhaps it is well time someone made them before this tragedy, like so many others, passes completely from the harried American psyche.

Every major news outlet got the story terribly wrong as they announced that Giffords had succumbed to her gunshot wounds, when she was still very much alive. In their rush to "scoop" the competition, journalists forewent any notion of integrity and instead went with the story that was the most tragically enticing. Once one news outlet falsely reported Giffords death (the supposedly august NPR), the rest fell in line quickly. The press were essentially fumbling over themselves to be the first ones to report that a member of Congress had been shot and killed, so focused in fact that they missed the obvious: the tragedy didn't need to be fictionalized, didn't need to be sensationalized.

It seems there was an unspoken hope in the media that a story could progress something like this: Congresswoman Giffords (a fairly moderate Democrat from a generally Republican state) gets killed by a crazed right wing lunatic, whose apartment would ideally be plastered with Tea Party paraphernalia, NRA magazines, and maniacal rantings about Obamacare and the Constitution. That story would practically write itself, and permit the media to declare open season on perennial whipping posts like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. But that narcissistic bubble burst when Giffords pulled through the worst of the worst, and Loughner turned out only to be seriously mentally ill. The sense of letdown one got from the media was nearly palpable.

As it went, many talking heads started to simply assume that Loughner was driven by a political agenda. Even when the facts started to become clear about just what it was that inspired this 22 year troubled soul to kill, they stuck with the implication that somehow, somewhere, Sarah Palin's fingerprints were on this attack. The media was chomping at the bit to make associations that simply were not there, and had no basis in reality.

Ownership of this tragedy belongs to Jared Lee Loughner alone.

As the media made us all aware, Sarah Palin's political operation put out a map that had a rifle scope's cross hairs on Gifford's district, symbolically targeting her for defeat in this past November's election. Sarah Palin did not command her disciples to start shooting members of Congress. She didn't purchase a pistol and a box of ammunition, nor scheme and plot with Loughner to pull off this dirty deed. In fact, no meaningful connection has been made between anything that Palin has ever done and anything Loughner has ever done, including this killing. It is not even clear that Loughner ever even saw Palin's 'target map.'

Sarah Palin and Glenn beck have done much to perpetuate the erosion of civility in this nation. They are by no means alone, nor are they pioneers in that field. However, that erosion was more evident in the actions of the bloodthirsty media than it was in the twisted mind of the accused killer.

I sincerely hope that Gabrielle Giffords continues her miraculous recovery. I hope that those who lost their lives in this catastrophe rest in tranquility, and that their surviving family and friends can get at least a modicum of peace as the tremendous pain loosens its grip over time. I hope that we can get those with mental illness the treatment they need before they arrive at the doorstep of violence towards others, and I hope that justice is served on behalf of Christina Taylor-Green, John Roll, Dorothy Morris, Dorwan Stoddard, Gabe Zimmerman, and Phyllis Schneck.

The Failure of the Free Market

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has long been gone from the front pages. It isn't mentioned in the crawl at the bottom of the television screen during whatever monotonous cable news programming you watch. Given our collective attention spans, this is by no means a surprising outcome. Even the Obama administration has moved on, set to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in short order. But there is one outcome of the Deepwater Horizon spill that bears remembering that I do not think I've heard put precisely into words, namely that the free market failed all of us in the Gulf.

Now many will say that the former Minerals Management Service (MMS) at the Department of Interior had regulatory responsibility over BP's Gulf exploration program. This in theory is accurate, but as has been proven time and again, MMS was at best an absentee landowner, and at worst a willing conspirator with the oil companies. In Alaska, the former Director of the MMS had to issue a formal apology for ordering a cake for an office party adorned with the catchphrase Drill Baby Drill. Needless to say, effective oversight wasn't a priority for MMS in Alaska, in the Gulf, or anyplace else.

In the Gulf, after the Horizon spill, we learned that BP's oil spill response plan was a house of cards, prioritizing of all things the protection of the Gulf walrus population. If MMS was doing it's job they could have pointed out that a plan to protect a species that does not occur within a thousand miles of the Gulf of Mexico isn't bound to meet with much success. And while each individual oil company is required by law to submit an oil spill response plan to MMS for approval, it has now become clear that the plans were all the same baloney, only the corporate logos had been changed. Alas, the Gulf walrus, much like the unicorn and the abominable snowman, has nothing to fear.

So the Gulf of Mexico was turned into a libertarian play ground. A perfect workshop for testing one of the main tenets of free market economic theory, namely that the corporate disincentive for making mistakes negates the need for government oversight and that word that keeps Libertarians up at night: regulation. The logic being that mistakes cost money, and that is incentive enough to avoid them.

But the Gulf spill proves that the pull of profit is a much stronger force than avoiding costly mistakes. Profits are easily quantifiable, and they are the indisputable yardstick for corporate success; on the other hand, an avoided mistake is something almost theoretical, and certainly intangible, a deadly combination for the profit driven corporate decision making model.

BP was left by the federal Minerals Management Service to police itself in the Gulf of Mexico. Free market advocates would have us believe that this was an ideal situation, that the assumed costs of a spill like Deepwater Horizon would assure that the unregulated corporations would do everything they could to avoid a disasterous oil spill. But the the free market model failed us in the Gulf. Corners were cut, laws were ignored, mistakes were made, all in the name of profit. Mistakes were little more than an accepted risk.

Every free market anti-regulator that you can shake a stick at will spout endlessly about the high cost of government regulation, like horses adorned with blinders, they fail to see the high cost of no regulation. Now, BP, the Gulf fishing and tourism industries, and human and environmental health are left to pay the piper. The free market failed the Gulf of Mexico, and proved once again that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.

Today's Generosity: Tomorrow's Unfunded Mandate

Not too long ago, the American people were asked to bail out a bevy of large financial institutions whose names we all recognize. Shortly after that, our wallets were raided once again, this time in the name of large American automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler. We were told by talking heads that these giants of the global economy were simply too big to fail, and that if they did fail, large scale economic ruin would surely follow. Many people now think the 'too big to fail' moniker was spurious; that there is no business deserving an eternal guarantee of solvency pledged on the back of American taxpayers.

These days, another heir to the too big to fail throne has appeared, with a much more legitimate claim to that dubious honor. It has become clear that state and local governments across the country are dangerously in the red. We have become accustomed to hearing elected officials bemoan tight government budgets, all the while increasing government expenditures with a devil may care attitude. These budgets, however, aren't just tight; they are downright frightening. The very financial future of state and local jurisdictions is in serious doubt, and business as usual is a surefire recipe for fiscal failure.

One of the major culprits for this impending financial disaster is the extravagant benefit packages offered to many public sector employees, such as teachers and agency bureaucrats. The company-funded pension system is well nigh extinct in the private sector. Companies long ago determined that funding pensions was far too costly over the long run, and instead opted for making much smaller contributions to retirement investment accounts such as a 401k or a 403b, that are mostly employee funded. The critical hang up of pension systems if of course that companies remain responsible for pension payments long after, sometimes decades after, that employee was last engaged in gainful work on behalf of the company.

Many American manufacturers, such as Bethlehem Steel, and the aforementioned GM and Chrysler, were led nearly to financial ruin thanks in large part to benefits package that seemed like a good idea at the time, but that proved utterly unsustinable over the long term.

It is safe to say that the retirement paradigm has shifted. Individuals now bear the responsibility for saving enough money for their own retirement. The options for acheiving this are seemingly endless. While you can certainly bemoan the fact that pension benefits have evaporated, you better be saving for retirement while you whine; it's just a fact of life.

A fact of life for everyone except public sector employees, it seems. The state of Maryland currently has $33 billion in unfunded liabilities related to it's pension system for state employees. To put that in perspective, the entire operating budget for the state in 2011 totals $32.1 billion.

Unlike businesses, those who hold the purse strings of taxpayer funds don't have to worry about profitable bottom lines or even fret much about accountability, because while today's generosity is tomorrow's unfunded mandate, the challenges of the future will fall to someone else. And generally speaking, a local government jurisdiction probably isn't going to go out of business or go bankrupt; but as the bills for these extravagant pension plans come due, the likelihood of that unthinkable scenario, namely massive government defaults, increases dramatically.

Now in Maryland, there is a movement afoot to transfer responsibility for these pension benefits to local county school boards; a wildly irresponsible passing of the fiscal buck. If this were to happen in already cash strapped Queen Anne's County, it would more than likely put the county out of business.

Public employee unions like AFSCME, SEIU, and the NEA have made these benefit packages an untouchable 'third rail' issue for elected officials. This simply cannot continue to be the case, politicians must stand up to public sector employee unions and take back control of state budgets.

The Nixon Dilemma

The summer and fall of 2010 have been, in terms of my literary tendencies, devoted to the life of Richard Milhous Nixon. The 37th President of the United States, of course, and a man unfortunately but unavoidably known best for his resignation under intense fire for a host of scandals and cover-ups commonly lumped together under the term Watergate.


The grade school history we all know doesn't tell the story of Richard Nixon. For a full four decades historians, scholars, politicians and the general public have approached the presidency of Richard Nixon, and the man himself, as utterly devoid of principle or accomplishment. "Corrupt" is as much of a fundamental descriptor of Nixon as saying he is a Duke Law graduate, or a Californian. The words Nixon and unethical have become virtually synoynmous. This is a grossly naive oversimplification of a complicated man serving his country in complicated times.



We judge the entirety of Nixon's body of work in the harsh light of Watergate. I am not prepared to argue that this is avoidable, or even unfair, but rather that it limits our perspective and paints a woefully incomplete picture of a man who was a intregral part of American political thought for half a century.



Most of Nixon's public life occured long before Watergate became front page news in the Washington Post. Of course, nearly the entirety of the scholarship dealing with the Nixon life and presidency was done after Watergate. As a result his life before Watergate is judged using an ethical standard guaranteed to fit the scholars' idea of Nixon as completely corrupt and without moral compass or core beliefs.

With Nixon we assume the worst, always. If he compromised on a policy issue, it was because he lacked a principled positon on the issue. If he took some action that Democratic politicians supported, it was a callous attempt at preemption and stealing votes from the opposition. Reading the collected library of Nixon biographies, one quickly determines that Nixon was not devoid of fundamental core beliefs. He believed strongly that the United States could be a tremendous force for good in the world. He gets little credit for his robust commitment to civil rights, including school desegregation. He rejected the conventional wisdom of the Republican "China lobby" by forging ahead with relationship building with communist Peking. Civil Rights and normalized relations with communist China weren't exactly vote-getters in the early Seventies. Nixon did these things because he thought they needed doing.

But moreover, historians judge Nixon's entire career using a rubric that no politician could ever meet. Because of the stain of Watergate, every other accomplishment of his long public career must be proven beyond reproach; an impossibly high bar even for those politicians we tend to deify. Nixon's biographers are some of the most unapologetically biased scholars one can study, mostly because they believe themselves to simply be reinterpreting a well-established part of the Nixon story, as fundamental as his birth and death. No Nixon biography should ignore Watergate, but none should ignore Nixon, either.

The Harsh Glare of the Voting Machine

The "final ballot review" screen on the Electronic Voting Machine gave me an interesting moment of pause yesterday. As anyone who knows me well knows, it isn't very often that technology does anything but frustrate me. But in the voting booth at the Centreville Free Library, the better part of a decade involved in politics came sweeping back to me.

I went door to door in St. Mary's County for George W. Bush in 2000. Was a proud member of the College Republicans when it seemed liked me and my roommate were the only GOPhers on campus. I was selected by my peers both Democrat and Republican to defend the War in Iraq at a well attended campus forum.

I went door to door in St. Mary's County for Bob Ehrlich in 2002, and again in 2006. In 2004 I was heavily involved in Sportsmen for George Bush and Young Professionals for Bush. And the coup de grace? I served as an environmental advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign of 2008, and went to St. Paul, MN as an elected delegate to the Republican National Convention.

After the Convention, I became an alternate member of the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee, and President of the East Baltimore County Republican Club. I was an unofficial candidate for Maryland's House of Delegates...as a Republican.

To say the least, my GOP bona fides were in good order.

Until yesterday.

I looked at a completed ballot that was overwhelmingly Democratic. For the first time in my life I had voted for a Democrat for Governor, Congress, and Comptroller. For County Commissioner, my ballot was 3-2 in favor of Democrats. For State Senate, Democrat. Two out of three votes for the House of Delegates went to Democrats (and the other was more than likely wasted on a write-in).

When someone used to ask me, "Who are you going to vote for?" The answer was always easy: Republicans. This time around, it is easier to list the Republicans I voted for individually, because the list is so short. Eric Wargotz for US Senate, David Dunmyer and Bob Simmons for QA County Commissioners, a write-in for Dick Sossi for House of Delegates, and a vote for Gary Hofmann for Queen Anne's Sheriff. That's the long and (rather) short of it.

I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with not only the Republican talking points, but with the way they were being delivered. It seemed that anyone who disagreed was looked at with a tinge of hatred. As if 235 years of American democracy had come to this: we couldn't disagree with one another in a civilized way. Which is pretty scary, since it is the fundamental basis of the American system of government. We do not run into the streets (with a few exceptions) with pipes and torches. We instead run into the voting booth.

One ballot does not a Democrat make. But certainly now more than ever, I sit at the crossroads of politics with no clear direction.

Comprehensive (?) Plan

Queen Anne's County boasts one of the lowest tax structures in the state of Maryland. Many wrongly believe that without large-scale new residential and commercial growth, our favorable tax structure is in danger. History, experience and economics indicate otherwise. To infer as many do, that the County has been exclusively anti-growth, or that economic activity has suffered a real contraction as a result of an anti-growth mentality, is misleading at best, and downright fraudulent, at worst.

We are, along with the rest of the nation, suffering from a general economic downswing, caused in some measure, by exactly the kind of spastic development that some are currently seeking to jumpstart again in Queen Anne's County. As the cliche goes, those who fail to remember history, are doomed to repeat it; and this history doesn't require one to look back too far. Of course many who advocate for a policy of unfettered growth and development do so for political or personal pecuniary reasons that should not have a role in the development of planning policy.

There is absolutely no more short-sighted public policy than to attempt to meet the challenges associated with past growth (and they are manifold) with more growth. This is akin to the proverbial dog chasing his tail. All this ensures is that our quality of life will suffer, our favorable tax structure will erode as new demands on County services become unavoidable, and our County will slowly but surely come to mimic the Western Shore and much of the Eastern Seaboard, with the problems inherent in those locales. Problems that each Queen Anne's County citizen is attempting to avoid, on some level, by choosing to live in the County.

The Citizens Advisory Committee on the Comprehensive Plan made five recommendations that I believe speak to the desires of our County's populace to direct growth to where it is most appopriate, and protect the rural character and the quality of life of Queen Anne's County. I believe that it would be unwise to trump those citizen recommendations at this juncture, and would encourage the planning commission to include those recommendations (pasted below) in the Comprehensive Plan.

1. No more major subdivision development on Kent Island until transportation issues are resolved and until affects of rising water levels are understood.2. No more major subdivision development permitted in AG zoned land. (The visioning report identified "loss of farmland" and "rural sprawl" as a primary county threat or weakness.)3. Direct Growth to Existing Population Centers / Towns, where there is infrastructure to support growth.4. No New Business Parks or Commercial Centers until existing commercial areas are built out.5. Establish policies that protect streams, waterways, forests and sensitive areas from development by establishing a county wide Priority Preservation Area.

Save a raptor, hold on to your wrapper.

My wonderful wife Kim, who works as a veterinary technician in Easton came home from work with a disheartening story for anyone who enjoys wildlife.

Someone came rushing through the doors of the animal hospital in quite a state of panic, holding a Great Horned Owl, wrapped in a blanket. Now this is not a bird that one is likely to encounter on the average daily commute. Yet here is one, barely alive, in the patient waiting area of an animal hospital that gets most of its business from Labrador Retrievers and horses. Turns out this particular owl had been hit by a car.

Now you might be thinking, an owl? Getting hit by a car? I've never even seen an owl in the wild, how could I hit one with my car?

Well, owls aren't particularly rare; it is just rare to actually see them, which is sort of the whole M.O. with owls in the first place, I suppose.

The kind folks at the hospital told this good Samaritan that she should take the Great Horned Owl to a nearby wildlife recovery and rehabilitation facility, although there has been no word on whether the owl survived it's incredibly unfortunate collision.

But the larger story here is one that goes far beyond a single beautiful owl and an automobile. That is but one embodiment of the often destructive crossroads of human activity and the natural world. We humans like to think that our everyday actions do not have a direct impact on other species that are forced to try and exist in the sometimes minimal spaces we leave for them. This is unfortunately rarely the case.

Owls and other raptors are attracted to roads. More specifically, they are attracted to median strips and the grassy areas just beyond the shoulder that are often littered with trash. It is on the side of the road that so many burger wrappers and cups sticky with soda find themselves at the end of the line. The roadside seems like a convenient place to toss apple cores, banana peels, and even chewing gum remains; things that appear harmless and hardly qualify as litter.

But not so fast.

It is this very road trip refuse that leads to dead falcons, hawks, eagles, owls and ospreys. You toss the crust from your tuna sandwich out the window, and it lands just the other side of the rumble strip. It quickly becomes the next item on a veritable buffet for small rodents like mice and rats that get all they need in the way of food from side of the road trash that originates in the driver's seat. It is the feasting rodents that attract the birds. These epic raptors swoop in from telephone pole perches for their own idea of lunch amidst the wastebasket that is the roadside and they instead wind up in the grill of a semi truck, or on the windshield of a minivan. In a fight between a ten pound bird and a two thousand pound car, the owl rarely wins.

So next time you roll the window down to toss something out, remember the chain of events you are initiating, and take your wrapper home to the trashcan in your kitchen.

Doublespeak on the Chesapeake

This Letter to the Editor was sent to the Baltimore Sun on January 13, in response to an article in yesterday's paper titled "EPA's new rules to limit development, farm runoff into Bay."

The Chesapeake Bay at its deepest is about 174 feet. The rhetoric about cleaning up the bay runs to much more impressive depths. Every politician, of every partisan stripe, has spun the same campaign tale about saving the Chesapeake. For decades, decades, Maryland politicians have been saying all of the right things about cleaning up the Bay, yet still here we are, with nothing but speeches.

In an Executive Order from the spring of 2009, President Obama fell in at the back of an august line of chattering Chesapeake politicos. The Executive Order cites the many failures of various state policies to make much of a difference in the Bay’s health, as the impetus for the federal government taking a leadership role in restoring this “national treasure.”

Now the EPA has begun creating new rules and regulations for storm water management, a commendable goal to be sure. But out of the public eye, the administration is actively taking steps to undermine its own so-called commitment to the Chesapeake.

In one of Maryland’s few remaining rural counties, near the headwaters of Tuckahoe Creek on the Eastern Shore, the Obama administration has decided to convert 2000 acres of open space into a diplomatic security training facility. At a time when the Bay struggles with pollution and the impacts of development, this facility would add to the already immense burden.

This development undermines on the one hand what the Obama administration seeks to do on the other. The Chesapeake has always taken a back seat as nearly unfettered growth elbowed even the best intentioned protective measures right out of the way. As we’ve seen for years, words will not restore the Bay. If the Obama administration is sincere about cleaning up the Chesapeake, it might start by holding itself accountable, and pull the plug on the Ruthsburg-Centreville training facility.

The Politics of Ruthsburg

In its infinite wisdom and omnipotence, the federal government has decided to site a tactical security training facility on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The secure campus would sprawl over more than two thousand acres of land that for a hundred prior summers grew a bounty of grain. At a public hearing on Tuesday, 1/5, it appeared that the overwhelming majority of this facility’s neighbors in the Ruthsburg-Centreville area are concerned over having Big Brother in their backyard, and rightfully so.

According to the federal bureaucrats on the podium Tuesday night, this is an economic no-brainer, a gift of the highest order from the vaunted stimulus bill. After all, what are a few bombs and high-powered rifles, when we come bearing jobs? Yet even the most peripheral review of their job claims finds them over-exaggerated at best, and downright fraudulent, at worst.

Somewhere in the government’s copious files there is a classified list of thirty potential sites for this facility. Our little hamlet of Ruthsburg, tough to find on a county map, somehow rose to the top. It is mere coincidence of course that out of thirty potential sites, only the one in the most vulnerable Democratically-held congressional district became the ‘preferred’ site.

With groundbreaking scheduled to begin right around election time this fall, it strikes some that this is more than just coincidence. A vulnerable member of Congress can boast about bringing federal dollars to his district, and the voters will be eternally thankful at the ballot box just as the golden shovel enters the Ruthsburg soil. This isn’t about keeping embassies safe; it’s about keeping Democrats safe. Where did political considerations fit in the site selection process? Maybe the better question is, was that the only consideration?

Behind closed doors, Frank Kratovil supported this project before it ever became public. He thought that the promise of some pork would help his chances for a second term, but what he failed to realize is that we aren’t willing to sell our community down the river for a few jobs.

The message is abundantly clear. This was never about jobs for the good folks of Queen Anne’s county. It has only ever been about one job: Frank Kratovil’s. Yet it might just prove to be his pink slip right out of Washington.

Credit Card Regulation

The House is currently debating legislation that would accelerate further regulation of the credit card industry. Essentially Congress is telling the industry when it can and cannot charge you for using their services.

Let's be crystal clear about what exactly a credit card is: You spending someone else's money. Whether it is because you don't have the money on you at that very moment, or won't have the money until later in the month, or won't have the money for several years, a credit card allows you to borrow someone else's money to buy the things you want today.

Now Congress wants to regulate how and when credit card companies can impose fees. This is viewed as 'consumer protection' but I fail to see how it qualifies. How does assisting already overspent Americans in running up their personal debt, by making it less costly to use their credit cards qualify as 'consumer protection?'

Aside from the invasion upon a corporation's ability to interact with its customers on its own terms, so long as those terms are lawful and forthright, why can't credit card companies charge whatever they want for the use of their services? Why does the government feel the need to get involved at all?

In an arrangement between a lender and a borrower, the lender sets the terms, and the borrower agrees to those terms in exchange for the money. But protection for the borrower comes in the ability to not accept the lender's money, in which case the terms, however onerous, get thrown out the window. This holds true for credit card companies and their customers just the same. If you don't like the fee structure, don't use the credit card.

A Stimulus for the Ages

Our nation finds itself standing upon a truly frightening threshold, looking out upon an abyss of debt and deficit. This is the burden with which we have saddled our children. Through no fault of their own, they will be forced to labor under the heavy yoke of liberty-stifling taxation. Thanks to our fiscal indiscretion we may very well be the first generation to renege on that sacred American dream, that our children will have access to a better life than their forebears enjoyed.

It is not terribly difficult to see how we got here. The facts cut a clear path to a housing sector that was rife with corruption and rancid with greed. Homeowners who had visions of grandeur they could ill afford, met with creditors who foolhardily provided them the credit they wanted, regardless of their pecuniary fitness. Now we find ourselves afflicted with a financial cancer that has brought our economy to its knees. Our government, now entirely in the hands of Democrats, seeks to ignore the tumor and treat merely the symptoms, with a bill whose costs increase daily. The trillion dollar price tag associated with the current stimulus package is a dizzying sum; and like the stimulus and bailouts that preceded it, will prove to be a foolhardy lesson in futility, the costs of which we cannot begin to imagine.

We have arrived at a profound economic crossroads. The American people have borne the weight of job losses, cut wages, and reduced savings, by tightening their belts and revaluating their financial priorities. The government wants no part of that prudence however, and instead proposes to shower federal programs with money taken from the pockets of those same taxpayers. Throwing caution to the wind, Democrats are embarking on a path that will succeed only in shackling our children with a debt obligation that we can hardly fathom.

Inevitably, the day of reckoning will come. The buck will reach a point where it can no longer be passed, and the piper will seek to collect. Let us err on the side of restraint and good sense, because while our collective attention span is often brief, the reverberations of our actions will be felt for decades hence.

The Fallability of Trends

Recently I found myself reading an opinion piece by Ron Brownstein in the National Journal that somewhat snarkily portended that recent demographic trends would ensure Democratic electoral success long into the future. Republicans would do well to close up shop, and waste away their days burning money and cigars while lounging on the sterns of nameless corporate-sponsored yachts. Brownstein's contention was that traditionally Democratic voting blocs are growing, and traditionally Republican voting blocs are shrinking. He even goes so far as to predict how much Obama would have beaten McCain by in 2016 if current demographic trends were extrapolated

Brownstein's prognostication, we hold elections in this country not to validate demographic trends, but rather to assess and judge the validity of thoughts and ideas. To use a sports analogy, this is why we play the games. This is why a nation that elected Jimmy Carter can a mere four years later turn around and elect Ronald Reagan, and why a nation that elected George W. Bush twice can give a resounding victory to Barack Obama.

We are, simply put, a nation of moderates; a middle of the road electorate that tires quickly of one ideology or the other, particularly when that ideology and its standard-bearers perform poorly and fail to deliver; and in American politics this tends to be the rule, not the exception. Elections are the collective results of millions of individual actions; when the voting booth curtain closes, we make decisions not based on the collective wisdom of a group, but on our own perceptions of the candidates and their messages. To oversimplify elections to the point of group think, demeans our democracy.

Indeed, the Democrats have already done much to get the pendulum of public opinion swinging. Impeached Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich and his scandal-tainted selection for the US Senate; Indicted Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon; Indicted Baltimore County Councilman Ken Oliver; disgraced New York governor Elliot Spitzer; Bill Richardson and Timothy Geithner, Obama Cabinet nominees who have been dogged by scandal (Richardson even went so far as to withdraw his name from consideration for the Commerce slot) all help to paint a none too flattering picture of the majority party; and their indiscretions will lead to their relegation as the minority part of the future.

A Commuter's Nightmare

I remember a few years back, at the height of the national real estate boom that saw prices in the Washington metropolitan area reach the stratosphere, a concerted government-run campaign to attract those working in Washington to consider laying down roots in Baltimore. I don't remember the precise messaging, but it was built on the premise that your dollar would go farther in Charm City than in the Capital City. The signs presented Baltimore and its surrounding environs as some sort of idyllic commuter's paradise, where the quality of life was high, housing was affordable, and the commute to DC was akin to a Sunday drive through the country.

As a Baltimore native, who does in fact chose to live in Baltimore and work in Washington, there is not much I won't defend my city against. When compared to Washington and the Maryland/Virginia suburbs, our housing is affordable. In terms of community spirit and livability, my hometown doesn't want for much. But when it comes to that commute, and to the transportation options available to its citizens, Maryland has dropped the ball.

I ride the MARC train every day, and it is a nightmare. The Maryland Department of Transportation and the O'Malley administration have left MARC riders standing at the platform with no train in site.

As paying customers, MARC riders deserve accountability and a reasonable level of reliability; time after time they are left wanting in both departments. The constant mechanical failures and shortages of equipment make the MARC schedule a hodge podge of tardiness, canceled trains and lost productivity. As riders we are offered little more than half-hearted apologies fed to us over the crackling loudspeakers. Day after day trains are late, and MARC riders often spend hours hamstrung between stations on halted trains with no hope of reaching their destinations at the appointed hour.

This level of service simply isn't acceptable; particularly in light of the fact that MARC riders pay handsomely for the opportunity to waste valuable time that could otherwise be spent at the office or at home, sitting on stranded trains . In this economic downturn, when employees are under increased scrutiny, too many late arrivals might mean the difference between job security and a layoff, the MARC system must be made to be more reliable. MARC riders voluntarily relieve rush hour highway congestion, contribute Washington income to the Baltimore economy and reduce carbon emissions; yet we are treated like second class citizens. We demand better treatment, more of the same is simply not an option.

If you spend enough time wading swift moving water in search of rascally smallmouth bass, you are going to have some pretty interesting, and sometimes fascinating stories to tell. I had one of these experiences not even a week ago, and while at the time I was hardly laughing, I now sit back and have myself a hearty chuckle.

It had been quite some time since I had fished or even laid eyes upon the Upper Potomac. Work and other endeavors that I had foolishly deemed more important than fishing had been keeping me busy. Up until this trek through the mountains of Western Maryland, my fishing season had been made up of trying to pluck stocked trout out of a tiny creek, and offering bugs to whatever might be hungry on any number of crowded Chesapeake Bay tributaries. Unfortunately, this is the life of an urban fisherman. Weekdays spent in Washington DC rarely give way to weekends in scenic locales chocked-full of wild fish, so I take what I can get, when I can get it.

So I was incredibly anxious to put the soles of my wading boots on the bottom of an old river that I had been fishing since I was a very small boy. Over the icy winter and the flooded spring, I begin to wax nostalgic about fishing the Potomac, as if every foray into its waters was a scenic, dew-laden, postcard picture of a morning. It’s not like that at all, but we tend to remember the best and forget the subpar. The best is a river loaded with smallmouth, all of whom seem to have a predisposition towards fighting. And it is indeed a beautiful river, arguably one of Maryland’s finest freshwater varieties. But the worst is a riverbed lined with boulders, the most imposing of which just happen to come to rest where the water is at its deepest, making them hard to see and almost impossible to avoid. The river tends to beat you up, tires you out and makes you begin to wonder if your time wouldn’t be better spent elsewhere.

But in fact there is no better way to spend a warm summer evening, than trying to entice a smallmouth out of whatever rapid or riffle he calls home, and then releasing him to return to his chosen spot and to fight another day, maybe once again on the end of my line. So on this particular day, I stepped into the cool river, and immediately began to work my fly across an underwater ledge that was creating a small waterfall. I had caught many fish there in previous years, and it’s always where I focus my first casts. Sure enough, on the third or fourth cast, my line went tight, and my Wooly Bugger disappeared into the current. It was my first smallmouth since the previous summer, and I felt as if I was at the only place on earth that I wanted to be, standing in that river, fighting this fish.

My trips to the Potomac always follow the same game plan, me walking about a mile of shoreline up and around an unnamed island, which separates the Maryland and West Virginia shorelines of the river. The formation is kind of like a lap around a race track, only that the island is large enough to prevent me from seeing the opposing shoreline, and is sufficiently covered with enough gnarly looking flora (and quite possibly a great deal of interesting, and rather unhappy species of fauna, as well) as to prevent me from having even the faintest desire to cross over it, for any reason.

As I continued to cast and walk upstream, a light drizzle began to fall, bringing a slight degree of relief from the humidity and the air, which had been stagnant since mid-June. The rain progressed from a drizzle to a rather steady stream, but it was by no means enough to make me leave the river and drastically cut short my first smallmouth trip of the year. Yet things that go downhill often do so quickly. In a matter of minutes the rain achieved torrential proportions, and I was soaked through and rapidly acquiring a severe chill. It didn’t take long for the sky, which had darkened ominously, to flash with a white-electric bolt, followed quickly by a thunderous clap. It took even less time for me to realize that I was standing in the middle of a river, holding what was effectively a lightening rod in my hand, so I quickly stumbled onto the rocky shoreline of the island’s upriver end. I stood there, freezing, when suddenly it dawned on me that I was still taller than everything around me, and my eight-foot fly rod didn’t help matters much, so I decided to lay down just like I was told to do by the Boy Scout handbook I grew up reading. As I lay there uncomfortably, with river rocks gouging my body, a new concern arose.

Lightening is a fairly predictable beast; it will strike what attracts it and ignore everything else. In order to avoid getting struck, all one has to do is make oneself unattractive, which I find to be relatively easy to do. However, one aspect of this downpour that could not be so simply avoided was the potential for the river that I happened to be in the middle of, to begin rising, quickly, making it impossible for me to make it back to shore, and essentially trapping me on this island, until the waters receded, or until the island itself was flooded, in which case I would be swept down river.

So I looked out into the river, and found a rock about twenty feet off the shoreline that rose above the water about a foot. I made a mental note of the water level on the rock, and kept looking back every minute or so to see if the water had come up or not. I was laying there, face in a cold puddle for a half hour, but it seemed more like the better part of a day. The rain was cold, and I was frigid and still worried that I might be stuck on this island if the river came too far up. Luckily, after about thirty minutes the rain ceased.

I stood up, confident that the lightening and rain had passed, and hopeful that the sun would come out to warm me and dry my drenched clothes. Still I had no desire to stop fishing, despite the now-apparent message from God that today probably wasn’t the best day. I again started to cast, off the West Virginia side of the island, into some fast moving water that had always proven productive, but the water was now slightly discolored by the previous deluge, and the fish had gone from cooperative to wary. On one particular cast, when my Wooly Bugger hit the water, it coincided with a tremendous crash, not usually associated with the silent approach technique utilized by most anglers. The terrible tandem of thunder and lightning were again blazing a path right down the river, with only a drenched fishermen meagerly standing in the way of their progress.

Having already ignored plenty of obvious signs pointing me toward the relative safety of the shoreline, I finally took the hint the clouds were attempting to give me, and began to circumnavigate the island, hugging the shoreline. Of course, the speed of my movement was severely impaired by the fact that I was walking in a moving river lined with slippery rocks. The harder I walked, the more I tended to stumble, and the more I stumbled, the more the rains came. I knew I still had to cross back over the river to get to the shoreline, where my car and a change of clothes were parked, but what was an a hour ago merely a simple task of walking through waters that were clear enough to keep track of the bottom’s intricacies, was now a challenging slog through angry and chocolaty water, complete with a minefield of now hidden boulders lurking just below the surface. The river was rising noticeably now, and it was clear that my window for crossing was closing, and as I stepped out into the main stem of the Potomac, daring the lightning bolts and foolishly fording the surging water, I put my well being into the hands of nature.

Claps of thunder made me jump, and the lightning crashed all around, but as I took that last step out of the river and onto dry ground, I couldn’t help but think that nature was on my side that day. Maybe Mother Nature escorted me safely across that irritated river so that I could return to my desk in Washington, because she knows that she needs all the allies on Capitol Hill she can get.

We Are Free To Be Dumb

Fourth of July, that summer holiday that brings to mind hamburgers and hot dogs burnt beyond recognition, humidity percentages reaching far into the triple digits, and amateur-launched fireworks that turn drought-charred brush piles into epic conflagrations. I find the Fourth to be a highly ironic celebration, since few Americans seem to even know why they have off work. A lot of Americans could very well think that the Fourth is when George Washington cut down the cherry tree and used it stave off the German U-Boats from attacking Gettysburg. We are a country of inveterate simpletons, as is firmly evidenced by our popular fascination with things that light up the night sky and go “boom.”

Even what little Americans do know about the Fourth is wrong. We didn’t declare our independence on July 4th; we did it on July 2nd. John Adams, writing to his wife Abigail, even wrote: “The Second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival." If anyone ought to know when to celebrate our Independence Day, it would be John Adams, he happened to be there.

Like any good American folk story, the list of falsehoods relating to Independence Day goes on. The belief that the Decleration was signed on the Fourth is imprecise, to put it mildly. The formal signing, with all Delegates to the Continental Congress dressed in their gilded finery depicted in John Trumbull’s painting, never actually occurred, Trumbull just made it up for dramatic effect. In reality, the Decleration was signed on a walk-in basis, with the last signature being added somewhat later in the summer of 1776, and the names of the signers not being made public until January of 1777. As it turns out, contemporaries viewed the Decleration of Independence for what it was: namely, a document that dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s, of liberty. The newly minted Americans rightly knew that the act itself was worth celebrating, not some ink-laden piece of parchment.

Because of these momentous events, whenever they may have happened, it seems we are free to know next to nothing about our history. I don’t think that’s what the Founders had in mind.

Truck Nuts

It seems as though the latest craze in automotive accessorizing is the dangling of a set of testicles from the hitch of your truck or SUV. Twenty-five dollars is all a pair of "bumper nuts" will set you back, of course there is no telling how far this disgusting display of obnoxious machismo sets back humankind.

Most men seem to be revolted by the barest glimpse of male reproductive organs, save of course their own, so it is baffling to me that those same men would pay good money to tack a sack to their vehicles. Of course, buying a set of nuts for your truck makes your most decidedly inanimate pickup "tougher," never mind that the truck lacks the other half of the male reproductive equation, without which a set of balls is practically useless.

While no studies have been completed as of the time of publication, there is sure to be a negative correlation between the distance these pseudo-testicles hang from the bumper, and the IQ and incomes, of those from whose trucks these balls are draped.

Why any straight male would want to adorn his vehicle with this very symbol of homoeroticism skips my mind. Its not enough that most pickups and SUVS never tow anything heavier than their drivers' massive and unwarranted egos, make the road dangerous for drivers of more fuel efficient automobiles, and contribute more than their fair share to our growing dependence on foreign oil; now they are festooned with a part of the male anatomy that tends towards sweat and stink. Let's hope these nuts for trucks get testicular cancer, and fall off.