Today's outrage....

You would think, given this government -- and I say government, not Administration, because both Congress and the judiciary have done some breathtakingly bad things over the past few years, although generally not as bad as the idiots in the White House, I would have run out of the capacity to be appalled and shocked.

There is an amendment to the current housing bill which would deny housing funds to any group which participated in voter-registration campaigns, even if those efforts were nonpartisan. (Thanks to jmhm for the heads-up.)

You may remember that, along with capital punishment, voting rights are sort of a "thing" with me. I was so appalled by this amendment I decided that even e-mail wasn't urgent enough, and called my representative's Washington office, which may have been stupid, but which made me feel a little better.

Call. Write. E-mail. Scream. Just contact your representative. Trampling on the ability of groups to help people exercise one of the most fundamental rights we have as citizens is an abomination.

Evil. Evil. Evil. I would call these people pond scum, but that would be an insult to fine, upstanding pond scum everywhere.

(Oh, and just wait until I get started on some of the efforts at amending the Patriot Act's federal death penalty, or the maneuverings in regard to Jose Padilla. And I've been completely avoiding Plamegate, on the grounds that so many other people are doing such a stellar job talking about it.)

Evil evil evil evil evil evil.

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A comment in a blog reminded me today of the most prescient piece of political journalism in the past ten years, from January, 2001.

And this item, too, from the same source, September 26, 2001.

There's hope!

Recently, I've been despairing of James's writing. His creative writing is wonderful -- he has an amazingly wide-ranging imagination, and an ear for poetry. His more formal writing, however, is a problem. (It doesn't help that for some reason the school starts out with literature first semester freshman year, NOT composition.) He has wonderful ideas, but his organization and grammar are often jumbled at best, incoherent at worst.

One problem is that through middle school people told him how brilliant he was -- which, by the standards of what was required for middle school, he was -- that he gets defensive and restless when faced with criticism. And he has accused me of being a "grammar nerd," a title I claim with pride, although I recognize that my qualifications are not as impressive as most grammar nerds I know.

So it was with a great deal of pleasure that I got into a discussion with him today -- which he initiated -- about how absolutely infuriating it is when people misuse apostrophes.

(no subject)

I finally finished my five Bible Studies (six actually -- I ended up doing an extra one) needed for the Women's Retreat. And only five days late. I can either feel bad that I was late, or relieved and happy I got them done. I am opting for the latter.

I'm sure there will be revisions, but the heavy lifting is over, so to speak.