7 July 2013, JOHNSTON ATOLL, PACIFIC OCEAN - What better place to celebrate the Fourth of July than back out here on the old Atoll fond memories of C-130s passing wingtip-to-wingtip day and night ferrying napalm and agent orange, corpses, top secret mixed radioactive-hazardous waste in decaying drums (now if readers wish to give themselves a real do-it-yourself brain workout on the law, NOLO-style, get yourself a used group of pertinent sequential copies of the parts and sub-sections of the Code of Federal Regulations, any edition will do, and try working yourself through just exactly what qualifies for the "definition" for purposes of pick your federal law -- even the D.C. Circuit Court of Federal Appeals which used to be the breeding ground for the U.S. Supreme Court before the Republicans just started grabbing the highest bidder directly from the John Birch Society University of Chicago chapter, yes even the D.C. Circuit when trying to work its way through the fifteen or so page maze analysis which also kept looping back on itself in top federal drafting style did finally reach the end, its only judicial comment was "Now that we have completed that part of the mind-numbing analysis. . . .")
Yes as we were saying what better place for the editorial board of the Ninth Amendment to meet for some deep contemplation on the Fourth of July in a place where one really could not forget for a moment what they have been doing at breakneck speed to our "from sea to shining sea", okay land where our fathers died, that was one thing, but land where our grand-children die from strange food additives, mercury in their fillings, crap in their vaccines, Texas, you name it, this is all getting to be a little too much. It's right there, well, here in the link that directly follows this sentence, we meant to put the Declaration of Independence in for sure on the Fourth, but well it is a long story and we no doubt will tell it at some point. www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Anyway as we were saying we can all see it right there for ourselves, the Founding Fathers expounding on the "Pursuit of Happiness" as a bedrock justification for throwing off the yoke of (English) oppression and really getting down without even a tax on those party-time commodities we are live and will die for but, man, could they have had even less on their minds than we, and they having just taken on the biggest superpower in the world with a bunch of guys with varmint rifles and pitchforks, since as we see it we now have a lot more people just worrying about the "life" and the "liberty" parts than too much about some right to pursue happiness. . . . do they not always show up to rain on our parade, you know who we are talking about, the ones who have been showing up and doing that all our lives since we finished the first treehouse or, uh, decorated the first dollhouse, the ones who, well, are like that guy who got on "Further" and started bumming everyone out big-time getting in their face until he tried it with Ken Kesey towering over him who just said, "Take your bad trip, man, and go someplace else." End of story.
These are the times that demand the good doctor. We knew it. We knew it, and we told you so. It has gotten to the point where we just must have the red convertible screech up burning rubber in a wide 180 degree turn and Dr. Thompson stepping out over the door and telling it like it is. These are sick and dangerous times. This Fourth of July has been not just a time of celebration but a time of deep reflection.
Where we were on the Fourth they were blowing them off until dawn, and they were not the City's fireworks which sputtered out into the sky hours before, these were MUNITIONS coming out of crates stamped for the Colonel's letter (that is an extra credit reference), they were shaking the glass in the windows and rumbling all around for miles with nothing at all to see just the voices of people running around in the night, jumping between rooftops, drowning out those deafening new sirens developed from the ATF ones used on Koresh before they burned and gassed them out of Waco, using helicopter and ground-mounted automatic weapons shooting the women and children as they tried to run for safety out the back of the "Compound", were they would not let the media go. No, you never shoot a . . . .
Hey, so some wonder what we are doing celebrating the Fourth a few days late. Well you try to get a civilian seat into the Atoll, chances are you too may find yourself with a few days to burn in Agana, watching the Air America flights come and go in the night, sitting up sitting sipping a giant rum with your hunting knife jammed in a grapefruit waiting for the sun to come up "Where America's Day Begins".
Kudos to the interns, this time we did not change a thing on their post, readers can see it all still there, typos and all, as it happened that last post did pull in a new record number of readers to the Ninth Amendment log, and who wants to go messing up a good thing, that is unless you are in Government, military defense contracting, or food "manufacture". As they say on the license plates and in greeting on Guam, "Hafa Adai". In other words, "What?"
Copyright 2013 BigM All World Rights Expressly Reserved
Yes as we were saying what better place for the editorial board of the Ninth Amendment to meet for some deep contemplation on the Fourth of July in a place where one really could not forget for a moment what they have been doing at breakneck speed to our "from sea to shining sea", okay land where our fathers died, that was one thing, but land where our grand-children die from strange food additives, mercury in their fillings, crap in their vaccines, Texas, you name it, this is all getting to be a little too much. It's right there, well, here in the link that directly follows this sentence, we meant to put the Declaration of Independence in for sure on the Fourth, but well it is a long story and we no doubt will tell it at some point. www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Anyway as we were saying we can all see it right there for ourselves, the Founding Fathers expounding on the "Pursuit of Happiness" as a bedrock justification for throwing off the yoke of (English) oppression and really getting down without even a tax on those party-time commodities we are live and will die for but, man, could they have had even less on their minds than we, and they having just taken on the biggest superpower in the world with a bunch of guys with varmint rifles and pitchforks, since as we see it we now have a lot more people just worrying about the "life" and the "liberty" parts than too much about some right to pursue happiness. . . . do they not always show up to rain on our parade, you know who we are talking about, the ones who have been showing up and doing that all our lives since we finished the first treehouse or, uh, decorated the first dollhouse, the ones who, well, are like that guy who got on "Further" and started bumming everyone out big-time getting in their face until he tried it with Ken Kesey towering over him who just said, "Take your bad trip, man, and go someplace else." End of story.
These are the times that demand the good doctor. We knew it. We knew it, and we told you so. It has gotten to the point where we just must have the red convertible screech up burning rubber in a wide 180 degree turn and Dr. Thompson stepping out over the door and telling it like it is. These are sick and dangerous times. This Fourth of July has been not just a time of celebration but a time of deep reflection.
Where we were on the Fourth they were blowing them off until dawn, and they were not the City's fireworks which sputtered out into the sky hours before, these were MUNITIONS coming out of crates stamped for the Colonel's letter (that is an extra credit reference), they were shaking the glass in the windows and rumbling all around for miles with nothing at all to see just the voices of people running around in the night, jumping between rooftops, drowning out those deafening new sirens developed from the ATF ones used on Koresh before they burned and gassed them out of Waco, using helicopter and ground-mounted automatic weapons shooting the women and children as they tried to run for safety out the back of the "Compound", were they would not let the media go. No, you never shoot a . . . .
Hey, so some wonder what we are doing celebrating the Fourth a few days late. Well you try to get a civilian seat into the Atoll, chances are you too may find yourself with a few days to burn in Agana, watching the Air America flights come and go in the night, sitting up sitting sipping a giant rum with your hunting knife jammed in a grapefruit waiting for the sun to come up "Where America's Day Begins".
Kudos to the interns, this time we did not change a thing on their post, readers can see it all still there, typos and all, as it happened that last post did pull in a new record number of readers to the Ninth Amendment log, and who wants to go messing up a good thing, that is unless you are in Government, military defense contracting, or food "manufacture". As they say on the license plates and in greeting on Guam, "Hafa Adai". In other words, "What?"
Copyright 2013 BigM All World Rights Expressly Reserved
