Dick Cheney is in a hospital for a annual heart checkup. What you said: A slight bow....

It's okay to die from a broken heart. That can happen if the heart becomes too sore.

I'd rather die with a broken heart. That's better than to have a heart, and diseased liver.

Be cautious.

O take care.

Embrace your pumping faithfully, good heart.

There, in a heart, contains the seat of emotions.

From the snip that liberalrob posted from the WaPo (link to article at sig):

In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm.

(Emphasis added)

Well, yeah sure. Getting it over the Internet will protect that confidential data all right. [insert eye roll here]

[insert eye roll here]

That was my first response, too. However.

Unless, the data transfer is accomplished through some encryption process which cannot be easily read or broken.

See http://www.ssh.com/ for example.

In the bath tub and reflecting:

In all my travels around the world,

Scrubbers have the cleanest bodies.

Some humans have the filthiest minds.

People have the highest morals and the lowest morals.

Of any people in earth that I have seen: God bless the Patriots.

~

Eleanor Roosevelt, before I was born, wrote: and apologies to her.

*

"In all my travels around the world, The Marines have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, of any people I've seen. God bless the Marines."

~

I found a cool web site: www.sarcoma.org // < . > . / [?].

Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital.

That's for those who are into ornithology. It's always one thing.

Then it's another. That's one way of learning. Maybe the only way.

If you were ever an other kind of funny ape in a D.C. bar zestfully attacking soft mushy innocent oyster creatures who were valiantly trying to protect themselves from predators by garrisoning in a hard, hard shell... Oh then, your heart might burst. You might scratch an under your arm and chatter ooo-ooo-ahhh-ahhh-aahhh-ahhh! (Or were you one in a pride of lions? A huckster like Obama will sell you the idea that lions and humans are just funny apes. You would believe. I digress.) My heart would be happy with a memory like that. High five!

Yes, Barack Obama voted for this patently unconstitutional law. Not his best day. But, this law is headed to court. Eventually, it's headed to the Supreme Court. If you want it struck down there, you'd better not let John McCain replace Justices Stevens and Ginsberg with two more Scalia's.

Yes, the lesser of two evils is still evil. But, we can't afford to have the greater of two evils appointing more judges and justices. For this issue and many others.

Most Americans would rather fulfill their roles as Consumers than as Citizens, and it is hard to fault them for it. "Citizenship" is nearly impossible in the modern American Imperium, impossible by design. The "accountability moments" every two or four years are Consumerist product/personality contests between CorporateImperialist A or B, or -- as the case may be -- a Dissenter of one stripe or another at the Congressional level. Viable Dissenters do not rise to the Presidential level. All the candidates are marketed as commodities.

Pick.

Take your time.

Or opt out.

Democracy!

But Citizenship in the sense our Founders meant it to be or as might have been found in Ancient Athens or the Roman Republic simply doesn't exist in the United States for most people. Consequently, Power continues to be consolidated into a distant Elite, a New Aristocracy of sorts, which has been reforming Government into a New Autocracy and Empire for years, and there is nothing (so far) The People can do about it, short of Revolution, which they are not about to do.

Years ago, I pointed out that the Busheviks are the political activists, the Revolutionaries, if you will. We represent the status quo; we're the ones trying (and failing) to resist their Revolution.

Turnabout sucks. But that's how it goes. The Busheviks have been successfully transforming American Government into Autocracy and Empire since the day they seized power, not unlike the Bolsheviks when they took over the Winter Palace and and set in motion their own Soviet Revolution. Everyone else and every other interest is pushed aside or coopted. Certainly we've seen ample evidence of that truth in the behavior of the Democratic Congress with regard to the recent unpleasantness over FISA.

So in a sense, we've been in the midst of Teh Revolution for years -- some would date its origin to the advent of Reagan as a conservative political force. And the most immediate phase of that Revolution, the Bushevik Revolution, is all but complete. Americans may not be that happy with it, but resistance is minor when it exists at all. And our Democratic Leaders are mostly quite comfortable to be agents of our transformed Government. The Constitution is optional for them, too; the rule of law applies differentially depending on status, gender and race; the Presidency is now a competitive monarchy; Congress and the Courts are nearly fully "synchronized" (in the original German: Gleichschaltung) with the monarchial, indeed Autocratic, executive.

The Autocracy and Empire are secure. And they are meant to endure.

We do not rise up or even resist to any significant degree in part because what has happened doesn't concern us. "Citizenship" being impossible in any case, we fail to see that there is anything we can do about the transformations under the Busheviks. Phone calls to our reps and mass email campaigns just don't seem to do the trick.

We don't really see that the Bushevik transformations affect us directly, except for the annoyances of the intrusive DHS, but that's all for our own good, isn't it? That business with the shoes at airports and constant surveillance and suspicion is all about protecting us from the Horrible Brown Menace, so even if it is silly sometimes, most Americans put up with it in good humor, why not? What's the harm? Really?

And if there really is a problem, somebody else will take care of it. Suits will be filed, they'll wend their way through the courts, eventually there will be rulings, and that will be that. We have People to take care of these things, we don't have to do it ourselves. We can let the Process work. It will. Eventually. We have the Best System In the World, don't we? Of course. So. Just sit back and let the professionals handle the problems that arise.

This is similar to the attitude that enabled Jim Crow to be institutionalized for so long. As their human and civil rights were being stripped from them, ordinary Negroes were told constantly by many Black leaders not to resist or rise up or do anything but yield. There were people filing suit on their behalf (and there were); let the Process work. This Bad Period would end sometime, just wait. Be patient. Endure. This too would pass.

As it assuredly did.

But not, as it happened, by remaining passive while others did the hard work of challenging and changing law and custom.

The Busheviks have consolidated their Revolution, and they've achieved nearly everything they set out to do. The loose ends remaining, such as oil companies obtaining control of protected areas and Wall Street looting Social Security can still be cleaned up even before the scheduled end of the Bush Regime by panicking the Congress or just doing it.

The People won't resist.

The danger to the Bushevik Revolution is the economy; if the People are denied their consumer picks because they can't afford them any more, or for any other reason, they might well get cranky and raise a fuss. So the trick is to make the End of Consumerism a valid choice in the Marketplace. That's the ticket! It's New! It's Green! Poverty! YAY!