. . . to its new home:

When the Liberty Bell begins its slow journey at dawn Thursday, it will be moving from Market Street to a new home only 100 yards away in the new Liberty Bell Center.
. . .
“It’s moving a few hundred feet geographically,” said Gary Nash, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, “and a few hundred miles conceptually.”
The move is part of a continuing $300 million redesign of Independence Mall, under way for more than a decade. The Gateway Visitor Center at Sixth and Market and the National Constitution Center on Arch Street, also part of the redesign, have been completed.

I visited the new Independence Visitor Centor last summer and it’s really nice. I imagine a visit to the Mall would be even better now.

I’m not aware that Tennessee has a state pledge of allegiance. If this is a representative example of how they go, that’s probably a good thing.
As if the pledge itself weren’t bad enough, Texas schoolchildren are apparently required to recite it daily. Yikes.

From MichaelSavage.Com:

Arnold Kennedy Wins!
In a surprising return from his grave, JFK was spliced onto Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The victory celebration was a return to Camelot. No prominent Republicans were introduced nor mentioned; only the Shrivers and Kennedys. This leads this observer to think Arnold Kennedy is a front man for the old line establishment Democrat Party USA, sent in to wrest the Democrat Party back from the brink of disaster.
Davis and Bustamante had hijacked the mainstream Democrat Party and ran it over the cliff. Internal Power struggle resulted in victory for old line mainline Democrats in Republican clothing. Only time will tell, but this observer believes Arnold will not enact any measures to stop the flood of illegal aliens, the outflow of business, and the penetration of deviancy into our schools.
Tune Into the Savage Nation over the coming weeks and months to find out.

One of the many strange twists of California’s Re-Decision 2003 was how readily some of the “conservative” mouthpieces jumped on board the Schwarzenegger bandwagon once he entered the race.
If a candidate with Schwarzenegger’s exact same policy positions had run as a Democrat in any other race, these same talking heads would be bashing his liberalism at every turn. I imagine if you line up Schwarzenegger’s positions and compare them with those of President Clinton, you’d see a lot of common ground–and they’ve both got matching women issues to boot!
But because Schwarzenegger was an electable Republican, none of that stuff mattered. The violence Schwarzenegger promoted in Hollywood movies? No big deal. Pro-choice policy? So what. Special rights for homosexual couples? Whatever. Pro-gun control? Yawn. Groping allegations? Enough already.
What a difference party affiliation can make.

For all the talk of corporate profits, productivity growth, and higher capital spending, we have yet to see signs of an economic recovery in the job market.
We’re now 22 months out from the technical end of the last recession. Over the past 50 years, the average growth in number of nonfarm payrolls (jobs) during a comparable period is 5.2%. The change during the current “recovery”: -0.9%.
Over the past year I’ve listened to many “experts” try to make sense of what’s going on in the economy. I’m still waiting for a good explanation.

South Knox Bubba has letters from a few of what I presume are many national guard reservists in Iraq who are unsatisfied with the way they’ve been treated lately.
Extended deployments in a distant, hostile envirnoment under dubious circumstances aren’t sitting too well with some volunteers.