By the way, Happy Lent, my Catholic friends!

This qualifies as news? "A senior Zimbabwean official condemned on Saturday a U.S. decision to impose sanctions on the leadership as part of a "white racist" attack on a government he said was fighting for the interests of its black majority." Nevermind that the US was actually following suit behind the EU. We the People should be just a little ticked that we weren't first in imposing such sanctions.

The rest of the article was just as, well, disturbing as the headline insofar as the EU/US/UK sanctions were regarded as a policy put in place simply to counter the "policy" Zimbabwe and the Beast Mugabe have in place that seizes farms from white farmers. Not because of mismanagement or income tax evasion, but because of the "white" in front of the "farmers." If it were standard procedure to replace the white farmer with a black farmer, well, that would suck and still be evil, but at least the important "farmer" part would be in the description. But no, the farms are going to Mugabe's cronies and Zimbabwe's citizenry (Sadly, I feel the need to add "both black and white") is starving because "cronies" don't know about growing food like someone with a moniker like "farmer" would.

Thank you, CNN, for helping us sort through this dry policy issue.

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth announced Thursday that he has filed a bill to change the name of Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. Wants to change it to "Texas State." Here's a better idea--how about "Pile of Rubble" or "Bulldozer Fodder." I shouldn't be too hard on SouthWaste Taxes State "University". Just Aggie arrogance talking there, I guess. Wentworth wants to remove the association of regionalism from SWT--fair enough. It's been just a tier below the bigger state schools and far better than the A&M and UT branch schools. However, it's also about a half-hour drive from University of Texas-Austin so I really don't see the point of ginning up another state-level school in the area. Again, my views are colored by the idea that there seems to be little need for any college other than UT-Austin and Texas A&M. You know, there wasn't a third, green, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot in the ring.

On the plus side, the peace movement never got a foothold in SWT (or A&M, but for different, funnier reasons) because a few of the students saw to it that the hippies got their asses beat when they tried to march.

Former Texas Attourney General Dan Morales has been indicted! And more--"In January, Morales' brother, Michael, pleaded guilty in federal court to attempted blackmail." Forgot who he was trying to blackmail. Far too much to go into here, especially when I have to get ready for work, but it's sorta delightful--this is the fellow who was Texas' pointman in extorting money from tobacco companies. That whole effort's rife with corruption nationwide anyhow. The indictment states various facets of using political contributions for private use, including buying a house. Then there's the coverup stuff, including lying to the federal and state governments, some tax fraud, mail fraud, it goes on for quite a while.

"Morales, a graduate of Trinity University and Harvard Law School, served three two-year terms as a San Antonio state representative and two four-year terms as attorney general, leaving statewide office in 1998." I wonder what else they'll find?

Some Texas congressmen want judges to be appointed rather than elected. Just what we need--more unaccountable elected officials. Granted, the judges would face an up-or-down election after their first term. "Senate confirmation would be necessary. After their first term, judges would face voters in an up-or-down nonpartisan retention election." Stop laughing, people! So these congressmen want to hand out first terms to judges... great. More on this later.

Also, sorry for the long absence--computer problems and lots of real life rushing around me. I'm getting back on the horse.

Sen. Lindsey Graham wants "Human Shields" punished. I like it, but let me explain. For a while conservatives have been in a dither about how hard it is to punish people for treason. The founders made it hard to prosecute, yadda yadda. So be it. In effect, since we have "symbolic speech" that consists of burning flags, holding signs, etc., any physical action can be thrown out as "symbolic speech." Burn a flag, symbolic speech--I can buy that. Give a military convoy the finger, symbolic speech--yeah, that finger does mean something.

We've got something different here, though. True aid and comfort--actions meant to actively hinder our own military activities in favor of a foreign power. A lot of them wussed out, so let them off. They're traitors with a doubt, but in the end the only thing they really did was to step into a big pile of reality when the evil dictator they were aiding decided to put their traitorous activity to good use. That's the rub--if they haven't left by the time shooting starts, prosecute 'em. I mean, damn, somebody's gotta be treasonous. As for the ones that got mugged by reality, they could make good witnesses. Wouldn't they hate that?