laneys.info Beware of Yankees, drunks, and loose women.

    Seen on a bumper sticker:

Democrats / Republicans: Same s***, different piles.

    The two-party system has failed, but only part of the blame lies with the system itself.

Nearly a year ago, USA Today published an article cowritten by Cal Thomas, a conservative columnist, and Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic strategist.  They talked about the 2008 election cycle, which had already begun even then, and how while character does matter, there are still some things that should be off limits.  Several things struck me as interesting.

The AP is reporting that another as-yet unnamed Guantanamo Bay detainee has killed himself.  From the article: "Defense attorneys said the death was likely an act of desperation at a prison camp where detainees are denied access to U.S. civilian courts and isolated in their cells for up to 22 hours a day.  'You have five and a half years of desperation there with no legal way out,' said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. 'Sadly, it leads to people being so desperate they take their own lives.' … The former commander of the detention facilities, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, described those suicides as acts of 'asymmetric warfare' - an effort to increase condemnation of the prison."

From a Christian perspective, there's a lot to condemn.

Where do politics, fitness, and your local grocery store meet?  In the farm bill that Congress reviews and renews every five years.  It's up for renewal during this Congressional year, but it is not the unimportant snorex that most urbanites might think.

Michael Pollan wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine that explains how the farm bill has far-reaching consequences, from the prices at your grocery store, to the raging obesity in our society, the sorry state of school lunches, immigration, and foreign policy.  It's time for us to stop letting the status quo continue unchallenged, if for no other reason than the ridiculous situation the status quo represents.

Now that we're all done patching our computer systems and compensating for unpatchable devices that jumped forward another hour last Sunday, the data is starting to roll in that our extra weeks of Daylight Saving Time achieved exactly squat. Ars Technica, a technology site, has a story on the lack of savings and references a story by Reuters as their evidence.