Here is the news…

In the local news: I finally got that nice big LCD monitor I’ve been wanting for a while now. It’s amazing how much desk space a 19 inch monitor takes up when you compare it to an LCD. It also looks really good, and has a better dot pitch, better Kelvin, and is color matched which makes doing art on it a lot nicer.

In the regional news: Another example of “yee haw” stupidity happened this last weekend when a “sportsman” shot and killed the big bull moose at Piney Lake. Now, shooting a moose is about as challenging as shooting a cow; they don’t have any natural predators other than man, don’t have and real fear of people, and as such won’t run from you. For one selfish moment of bloodlust this person deprived the area of a true celebrity as hundreds of folks would stop and watch him and his mate browse near the lake every year…

And finally, the national news: The Pledge of Allegiance is back in the news because they’re still hashing out if the mention of God in it is constitutional.

Well, here are some facts you can ponder while the right wing crazies and the FFR folks fight it out:

1 – The Pledge was not written by our “founding fathers”. The Pledge didn’t exist when the Declaration of Independence was written, the Constitution was written, or when this country was founded. The Pledge was invented and adopted in 1942 during the horrors of World War II. It was not, nor has it ever been, part of the foundation of this country as we seemed to do perfectly well without it from 1776 to 1941.

2 – The words “one nation under god” were not part of the original Pledge written in 1942. Congress added those words in 1954 under the urging of folks like Senator Joe McCarthy (ever hear of McCarthyism?) to distinguish the US from the “godless commies”.

The Pledge was a patriotic stance, not a religious one. So in the court battles, remember this, and it’ll make the whole thing a lot more entertaining and funny. 😉