We’ve found another leader for the ages:

I have chosen to support his President because, for my countrymen, President Bush is our Lincoln. He has freed our people from oppression, slavery and injustice. Therefore, I thought the NAACP would be in favor of our country’s actions.
Notice the parallels: Both men chose to defend those who had no rights and very few freedoms. Both men took a highly unpopular stand, regardless of public opinion, in the midst of their first term, not because it was politically expedient, but because it was right. Both men extended the rights of education, equality and the freedom of speech and vote to a people who had lived under oppression for years. In the South, slave owners would whip, maim and kill those slaves who disobeyed them. Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, the Shi’a in the southern part of Iraq.
Neither man initiated any war. President Lincoln did not take action until the provisional Confederate army captured Fort Sumpter, three months after his inauguration. President Bush responded to the war brought to our shores only after the bombing of 9/11, eight months after his inauguration. Both men fully understood that taking such action endangered the chance they had for a second term. Both still acted, because it was the right thing to do.

When people talk about how Americans don’t know history these days, I have to agree. George W. Bush is like Abraham Lincoln as president the way I am to Lance Armstrong in bicycling.

It took outside pressure, but this is a good move by the Bush administration:

The State Department announced that $18 million in military and economic aid to Uzbekistan, a Muslim country in Central Asia, would be suspended because of its failure to carry out a promised political liberalization or improve its human rights record. Driven in part by congressional pressure, the cutoff should send a message to Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, as well as several of his neighbors in a region where oil, gas and military bases have recently become important: The old formula for partnership with Washington may no longer work.

Nice that we aren’t completely ignoring human rights abusers. But it remains to be seen how committed we are to this cause over the long term.

I think if I had this I’d be able to generate some decent site traffic:

A rough cut of a new album by U2 has gone missing from a photo shoot – prompting fears it may be posted on the internet months before its release.
. . .
The rough cut does not have any great financial value but could be published on the internet in advance of the official release date, he said.

I would think the potential Internet release clearly does have financial value to the band, and that’s why they went to the police.
Anyway, yes, I resisted the urge to throw in the obligatory “Still Haven’t Found” title.

Well, sort of. A radical judicial activist dropped trespassing charges against a couple who dared to express a political opinion on public land:

A Texas couple is headed home after proving Americans have the right to say what they want, when they want, even during a Presidential visit. Charleston Municipal Court Judge Carol Bloom dismissed the trespassing charges against Jeff and Nicole Rank Thursday morning.
The couple was charged after wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the President’s 4th of July address at the state capitol. The Rank’s lawyer, Harvey Peyton, says the charges were dismissed as a matter of jurisdiction. “Municipalities only have the authority to enforce, in their courts, violations of the municipal code. This citation was a general charge of trespass but the city of Charleston does not have an ordinance that prohibits trespass other than on city property or ‘the property of another,’ and that does not apply to the common grounds of the state house which, of course, is owned by everybody.”

This doesn’t appear to be a First Amendment victory. But the import of this is that if lawbreakers continue to express themselves outside the friendly confines of government-sanctioned free-speech zones, the zones will soon lose their air of privilege.
UPDATE: The Daily Show had a segment on free-speech zones last night. Again a fake news program seems to have a better beat on the issues that the “real” news programs. It also had good commentary on “conventional wisdom”–“Talking points: they’re true, because they’re said alot.”

I took my camera on a bike ride yesterday evening. I rode the ride currently listed as the “Anchor Park” route here. The route starts in Anchor Park (Farragut), skirts Fort Loudoun Lake, goes past Fort Loudoun dam, into Lenoir City, and back. Distance: 24 miles.
You can’t beat a good bike ride on a warm summer evening.
The pictures are posted in the photo gallery.