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.

the power of the future

As the Senate debates the energy bill this week and next, it makes sense to take a minute to examine where our energy policy is in this country, and where we want it to be in the future. It is only through this timely self-examination that we can hope to make any real forward progress with anything, especially energy policy. Little has changed over the past century as far as how we consume energy. Oil and coal, two fossil fuels that conjure up mental images of smog and soot, are still the common sources of our energy, they power our cars, they heat our homes, and they power our bread machines. In a time when technology changes almost daily, one would think that our technology for harnessing energy would have developed over time, too. Well, it hasn't. Ever since colonial times, COLONIAL TIMES! We have used three main fuels for energy, wood, coal and oil. That's it. In four hundred years of development and progress, we are essentially still starting fires to power our blowdryers.

There are other alternatives out there, but at this point they are about as viable as a Ralph Nader presidential campaign. But they have potential, if only we would commit dollars to finding a way to making them more user-friendly. Solar power, wind energy, hydrogen, carbon-based petroleum conversion, and a host of other sources that could help to make our country less dependent on foreign oil, and also make our environment just a little cleaner. Some Senators don't like wind energy because it ruins the scenery. Isn't a little obstructed scenery better than fire-fights in the streets of Iraq?

Our lawmakers can't continue to window-dress this issue. They support renewables at town hall meetings, and on the campaign trail, but when the hammer drops, where are they to be found? Why of course they come down on the side of clean coal initiatives, and drilling for oil right here at home. I am all for those things in the short term, but the key there is short term. But with them, we must also develop a long-term energy strategy that moves AWAY from coal and oil, and towards harnessing other cleaner and renewable sources.

The way this is to be done is by requiring utility companies to use 10% renewables in their energy output by the year 2020. That gives them 15 years to research and develop ways to m

Bric-a-BRAC

Senator John Thune is fighting tooth and nail to keep Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota from closing. He's not alone in his fight, as Senators from a bevy of states including Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are all rather upset at the recent decision by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission to close military bases in their respective home states. And these Senators are certainly not alone in their fury, either. The military and civilian personnel that would be negatively affected by the base closures are also up in arms (pun not really intended). The folks who oppose these closures are from every walk of life, from United States Senators down to mechanics and janitors, but these individuals all share one thing, their motivation. No matter what they say, each one of them are in this fight because of self-interest.

The politicians want to get reelected, and that's really the bottom-line for why they are involved at all. They might say something loosely related to the "war on terror," or the "compromising of America's security," but that is all just cover. If this were the movie Liar Liar, then Thune and the rest of this roving band of base closure opponents would have to say that "We have to stand up tall to save these bases, because regardless of their relevance to America's security, if they close, I won't get reelected." Sorry if this seems coarse, but I am just trying to inject a little honesty into this debate.

The soldiers and civilian employees who work at the base are also driven by self-interest, and they aren't really trying to hide it, unlike our friends on Capitol Hill. I feel for these folks, really I do. The military personnel whose families have to be uprooted as they are moved to another base somewhere else in the country, that's certainly a shame and I wish it didn't have to happen. What's worse, are the civilian employees who won't be transferred, but instead are forced to find totally new employment, in places like South Dakota where the economy isn't exactly booming, its mooing.

But these self-centered, if somewhat justified, concerns aside, the Federal government cannot, and should not, be required to keep every base across the globe open ad infinitum just because people have jobs there. This is reality, and keeping bases open when they don't need to remain open isn't reality, it's communism. Government continuing to fund programs just because people rely on them for income isn't healthy. These bases no longer fit into the security paradigm, which shifted 180 degrees on September 11.

We are no longer fighting the Cold War, for which most of these bases were built in the first place. The War on Terror isn't going to be won because we keep a base in rural South Dakota open, and that's not the issue anyway, lets be frank. The issue is jobs, and in a market economy, sometimes people lose their jobs. Even federal employees.

No Time To Go Nuclear

Talk of the "nuclear option" or, as the Republicans prefer to call it, the "constitutional option" has been swirling around Washington for about the past two months. In those eight weeks the nuclear fire has spread like a well-watered Kudzu vine, with the Majority and Minority leaders in the Senate exchanging verbal jabs at one another on the floor of the chamber, in press conferences, and back home in the district; yet they always play nice when they appear together, "we are in constant contact, trying to come up with a solution to this problem that will satisfy both sides of the isle" is a common phrase heard when the players on this issue need to sound bipartisan and willing to compromise.

But they really aren't willing to compromise on this, and thats the whole reason we are here right now, discussing it at all. Basically, the nuclear option would remove the judicial filibuster from the aresnal of obstructionist weaponry that the minority party has been more than willing to use in the past three years. They have withheld 10 of President Bush's over 200 judicial nominations, which might not sound like a lot, until you consider that no judicial nominee in the over 200 year history of the Senate has been denied an up or down floor vote via filibuster.

The bottom line here is that the Republicans are the majority party, and the Democrats are in the minority, and the minority can't obstruct just for the sake of obstructing. The Republican majority (in both Houses of Congress, and in the White House) is the majority for a reason, because a majority of the American electorate put them there, ergo a majority of the American electorate agrees with the principles of the Republican party. Logic tells us therefore that the Democrats are thwarting the will of the people, and thats never beneficial, particularly in a representative democracy.

Needless to say, the Republicans shouldn't change the rule, they shouldn't kill the judicial filibuster. I just don't think its worth it, because one day, maybe not too far off in the future, the Republicans will be in the minority, and they might want to fire up a judicial filibuster to stop someone like Michael Moore from becoming a Supreme Court justice. And just as they start to reach into their aresnal, the Democrats will gently remind them "ah-ah-ah, there will be NONE of that." As my dad always said, pick your fights wisely.

Shock And Awe: The First Wave of the War on Allergies.

It has begun the same way it begins every year. When the temperature outside slowly begins to rise, the days become longer, warmer, and infinitely more enjoyable; that is when they strike. The enemy I speak of is allergies, and the battlefield where the war will be played out over the coming months is from my neck up. The pollen, rag weed, and other undesirable will ruthlessly attack my nostrils, eyes, head, and sinuses; they will burn villages, and take the women as spoils of war. They have the element of surprise, but I have weaponry of my own. It is on these days when the pollen count skyrockets that I commence with chemical warfare of the highest order.

While I certainly don't use Mustard gas or nuclear warheads, the munitions that I resort to are equally effective, if somewhat less apocalyptic. My first-strike is a carpet bombing of known allergenic hideouts with a double dose of Claritin-D, all the while paying no mind to the dosage recommendations on the back of the box. I then saturate the caves of my nostrils with Nasonex, halting the allergens' progress and essentially freezing their Swiss bank accounts and taking away their ability to fund future attacks. Once the Allergy regime has fallen, the urban assault team comes through (in the guise of Vicks Vapo-Rub) to clear the streets and rebuild critical infrastructure.

It is not long before my nasal passage is appointing a transition leader, and holding free elections, and drafting a constitution. The spread of nasal freedom, a beautiful thing.

Honk! If you're single.

My office in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. overlooks a medium-sized pond that boasts a resident goose population of about 25 cantankerous birds. They are a somewhat raucus bunch, never quiet for very long, and always adding a less than pleasant background noise to my conference calls and meetings. I can't tell you how many times the person on the other end of the line has asked "Is that noise real?" If they only knew how real it is.

They are there all year long, and never move very far. Maybe they will fly to a nearby field for a midday snack of alfalfa or grass, but they never fail to return, usually as I am settling in for an afternoon of hard work. But with Spring right around the corner, the geese have reminded me that this is the time of year for renewal and fresh starts; yes, thats right, its mating season in the goose world.

They have never been louder. At lunch I will often take a walk around the pond for a breath of fresh air, and the geese make going into the office with its ringing phones and beeping faxes seem like a great alternative. They are paired off, and the males spend the better part of the day with their heads down chasing the females around the pond. The females are collectively playing hard to get, all of them honking in displeasure at the males' advances. I think to myself, "Keep at it fellas, they'll give in." And given nature, I am sure they will.

But over in the corner of the pond there is a lone goose, who is swimming around a drain culvert that sticks up about a foot out of the water. Its about 15 inches round, and is a rusted-brown color that vaguely (and let me be very clear: VAGUELY) resembles a goose. The goose swims around the culvert, honks, and continues to swim. The cycle goes on for hours. I leave for the day, and the single goose is still trying to convince the culvert that he's the one. But as you can presume, the culvert doesn't respond to the goose's advances. The goose is getting the cold shoulder, and he knows it, and it doesn't please him.

But I don't feel bad for the goose, because once his hormones calm down, he will forget about the culvert that wouldn't put out, and will move on with his life. He'll swim around the pond for another 12 months, free of worrying about keeping up a nest, or sitting on eggs, or waddling around with 6 or 7 goslings in tow. No, I don't feel sorry for the goose at all.

Lets try this again.

So I learned something incredibly useful when I started my first blog, The Mud Room, a little over three months ago. Mainly I learned that keeping a blog or website up to date is tough business, especially when other, more important priorities crop up and restrain you to an office chair, or in my case the Hart Senate Office Building. Meetings, lunch and dinner appointments, and the Federal budget season tend to make unnecessary musings irrelevant, and this blog is certainly an unnecessary musing.

Now having said that, I wouldn't have given this another go if I didn't at least want to try to keep a blog updated with fresh and exciting material. So unlike when I haphazardly built The Mud Room, I have put a fair amount of time and thought into Kline Online. Instead of just throwing something together and posting it online, I have tried to be thought-provoking and to use incisive wit with reckless abandon. Unfortunately, sometimes I lack the ability to think myself, and at times like these there is little hope that I will provoke thought in others. And sometimes, despite my best efforts, I lack any wit at all, let alone incisive wit.

But I hope that times like these will be few and far between, and I look forward to providing anyone who might be interested with my views, opinions, and limited (and I do mean limited) knowledge of world events and current affairs. If I ever upset you with my writing please let me know, and in an attempt at fairness, if I ever impress you with my writing please be kind enough to let me know about that, too. I invite you to check back often, and to let us all know how you feel about what I'm writing, or about anything else, in the comments section of the Blog. Thanks, and be sure to come back and visit real soon.