I've always wondered where the heck that comes from, and now I've had a chance to look it up.

From wordorigins.com:

"Katy, Bar the Door

This expression meaning impending doom or disaster is most likely rooted in medieval history. On 20 February 1437, King James I of Scotland was assassinated while staying at the Dominican chapterhouse in Perth. The phrase is in commemoration of one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting who tried to save him. There is no definitive proof to link the modern phrase with the historical event, but the similarities in use of language are too striking to dismiss without discussion.

The Katy in question is Catherine Douglas, popularly known as Kate Barlass. A band of murderers, led by nobleman Robert Graeme, had entered the chapterhouse in search of the king. The king's chamberlain, Robert Stuart, was in on the plot and had removed the locks and bolts securing the door of king's chamber. In an attempt to prevent the murderers from entering the room, Catherine used her arm in place of a bolt. The murderers broke the door, and her arm, and succeeded in killing the king. Her descendants to this day bear a broken arm on their family crest and keep the name Barlass.

The phrase itself, however, is much more recent. It dates only to 1902. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti published a popular poem called The King's Tragedy, in 1881 that told the story of Catherine Douglas. Rossetti's poem is not the source of the modern phrase, the closest it comes is the line "Catherine, keep the door," but it undoubtedly helped bring the story to the modern consciousness.

The chief argument against this explanation is that the modern phrase appears to be American in origin (I don't know of an early English or Scottish usage). But Rossetti's poem was published in the US and it is not inconceivable that an Americanism could be rooted in a Scottish folk-tale."

I know. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand, but it's still interesting as hell.

I've seen the statistic over and over again, how much more money Wyoming received PER CAPITA than California. It seems that no one, especially journalists, have ever heard of the concept of economies of scale.

$61 per capita is roughly $30 million for Wyoming. That's right. 30 million. $14 per capita for California is roughly 480 million.

The linked article goes on to be even more disgusted that Wyoming hasn't spent more of its own money on homeland security...money that earlier in the article, the same journalists were saying was unnecessary, because who would attack a few cows?

There is some base level of money that is needed, just to make sure that emergency responders can talk to each other. Is that amount 30 million? Probably not, but it is still higher per capita at a population of half a million than a population of 34 million. If CA had gotten every penny of Wyoming's allocated money, that would not have increased their expenditure even a full dollar per capita.

I can't believe that this stunt being staged by the Bush administration will really convince anyone that he has suddenly had a change of heart and is going to seriously listen to and consider the perspectives of his critics. He's made such a point of insisting that he gets the best possible advice from his advisors and of being infallibly certain about his actions in Iraq and the so-called war on terror that it seems inconceivable that even the most gullible Americans will buy this ploy.

I put this bit of window dressing in the same category as Bush calling his pro-pollution legislation the "Clear Skies Initiative." A nice name for a policy that is dead opposite of what it appears to say it is. Watch for the administration to use this PR and photo op to claim that it has turned over a new leaf and to use it as cover for continuing to do whatever the hell they please.

As with many of this administration's good news pronouncements, there is less here than meets the eye. According to the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/politics/06prexy.html), our short-attention-span president allotted only 5-10 minutes for questions and comments from his august assembly of guest advisors, and apparently part of that was spent disputing with Madeleine Albright about whether he had neglected the nuclear threats posed by Iran and North Korea in his pursuit of war with Iraq. "I can do more than one thing at the time," retorted President Snippy.

[...] coming out of his meeting with Madeleine Albright and Robert McNamara and Colin Powell and all the rest, Bush gave no hint that their words had had any effect on him at all.

Since Bush became president I've beed reminded repeatedly of the Humbug character from the classic children's novel The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. At one point our heroes, including the Humbug, literally jump to Conclusions, an island just offshore to which one is abruptly hurled when making an unsubstantiated statement. The only way to return to the mainland is to swim back through the icy, turbulent Sea of Knowledge, which our heroes reluctantly do. They all emerge drenched and shivering -- except for the close-minded Humbug, who is bone-dry and doesn't see what all the fuss was about.

This meeting was a travesty.

According to the NY Times article, the entire meeting lasted less than an hour...is this enough time to "listen" to over a dozen experienced and articulate leaders? Apparently the invitees were stunned, and tried to follow Bush out of the room for more discussion. They were told that they could talk to his aide!If I were they, I would be insulted at having traveled and taken time to meet with Bush, under the pretext of a true exchange of ideas. Bush immediately broke his pledge to "listen" when he immediately took issue with Madeline Allbright, the only one there with the chutzpah to disagree openly about Iraq policy.