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The flying tigers

One of the cool things about living here in Washington is mountains. Starting in late spring through early fall, on just about any Friday, Saturday, or Sunday when it's not raining, you can see a bunch of crazy people jumping off of Tiger Mountain.

This afternoon, I took Lucas out and we watched the para-gliders. For $150 per flight you can fly like this on a weekday afternoon. On Weekends it's $175. If you've never done it before, you can take a tandem flight with an experienced pilot.

If you find that this sort of thing is for you, you can take classes. After you've taken the classes you can solo. Classes cost about $1600. Apparently a lot of people find this sort of thing enjoyable.

Me, I think I'll keep my feet on the ground, or in my racecar, where it's safe.

I let Lucas man the digital camera. He took some very fine shots. Here are a few of the best.

We killed the Patriot Act

Do you remember when Harry Reid said that? The Democrats in Congress were crowing about how the Patriot act had been defeated. Come on, surely you remember.

Do you remember that the Patriot Act was renewed anyway just a short while later? All the Democrats had done was delay things a bit.

This morning I'm reading blog posts all over the place that say the "comprehensive" immigration reform bill is dead. I beg to differ. This travesty of a bill, this outrage isn't dead.

The only thing that happened was that Harry Reid's move to stop debate and force this amnesty bill through failed. Senators from BOTH sides of the aisle want to continue to add amendments to it. It's a reasonable bet that this isn't a good thing.

Sure, some Senators will add amendments that might give the enforcement of our borders some teeth, or that will at least pay lip service to the idea. I'm not optimistic about that though. I would be willing to bet that there's going to be lots of pork attached to this one, just like with the surrender act. The pork will be the only way the sponsors will be able to buy the votes they need.

I'm also willing to bet that they'll add language to say that they don't really mean it when they say that there will be penalties to pay for illegal immigrants that want to become citizens. There'll also be language to further obscure the fact that this bill doesn't encourage illegal immigrants to seek out citizenship. There'll be more language added to obscure the fact that this bill discourages people who've taken the legal path toward citizenship, and in fact encourages them to try it the illegal way.

This amnesty bill is an outrage. It's managed to divide both parties, but the Republican party most of all. It's shown President Bush to be a man seeking a legacy, although in a misguided way. It panders to other nations. It panders to racist elements of our society. It panders to businesses that want to keep exploiting labor at rates that are barely above subsistence levels. It panders to organizations that want to overthrow our country from within and establish "Aztlan".

It may have been slowed down a bit by the failure of Harry Reid to obtain cloture, but it's not dead yet. It's not dead until a vote to pass this "comprehensive" "Screw American Citizens" bill is defeated.

Update: Senator Harry Reid has pulled S. 1348 from the Senate floor as a third attempt to invoke cloture was rejected yesterday.

Maybe this thing is dead. Maybe. I'm not holding my breath. Just because it was pulled from the floor doesn't mean it won't return to rear its ugly head again.

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What degree of madness

The Patriot sends out a daily "founders quote". I found today's to be quite interesting.

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

What degree of madness indeed... only socialism, the 17th amendment, and an insatiable appetite for pork. Pork, "national health care", other socialist policies, an environmental protection agency that regulates things that have nothing whatsoever to do with interstate commerce (since when was a swamp an interstate waterway), and an ever increasing federal bureaucracy... these are the signals of general alarm that both the Republican and Democratic parties are ignoring today.