Detroit won a football game!

What’s next, dogs and cats living together?

If this isn’t a sign of the end times, I don’t know what is.

Local congresscritter Baron Hill has decided that no-one can tape his town hall meetings. Ostensibly this is so that highly edited versions of the events don’t end up on YouTube, and embarrass the good congressman.

Recently, a couple of students from Indiana University were told to stop taping at a town hall meeting Congressman Hill was holding, even though they apparently had cleared their activities with Hill’s assistants prior to the meeting.

Congressman Hill says it’s his right to not be videotaped, and if he was just any other citizen, I’d say he was right. He does have the right to demand to not be taped in purely personal settings, such as when he is out with his family or such.

But when he’s acting as a representative of the people and holding a public meeting with his constituents, he has no right to privacy. His first amendment rights as a citizen are trumped by the right of his constituents to know where he stands on issues, even if they can’t make it to the meetings. They need to know not only his opinions on the issues, but also how he and his supporters treat those who disagree with him.

They could even help him out. If dissenters act unreasonably at his meeting, then a video of their conduct could be beneficial when justifying ejecting them.

If Congressman Hill is worried that his words might be taken out of context, he should tape the meeting himself and be able to release the full, unedited video and shut down anyone trying to pull a fast one.

Disclaimer: I don’t live in Indiana, and I only know about Baron Hill because his district uses the same media outlets as Louisville, and he and his opponent in the last couple of elections made it nasty early in the campaign.

Come on, Congressman, a little sunlight in your meetings will go a long way in getting people to trust your word without a lot of effort on your part. Let your constituents make tapes of their meetings with you so that disputes don’t come down to a he-said-she-said argument.

OK, here we go, just in time (again):

Cleveland at Baltimore – I love a rivalry. Cleveland
Tennessee at New York Jets – New York Jets
New York Giants at Tampa Bay – New York Giants
Green Bay at Saint Louis – Green Bay
Kansas City at Philadelphia – Kansas City
Atlanta at New England – Atlanta
Washington at Detroit – Washington. Go Skins!
San Fransisco at Minnesota – Minnesota
Jacksonville at Houston – Houston
New Orleans at Buffalo – New Orleans
Chicago at Seattle – Chicago. Da Bears
Pittsburg at Cinci – Pittsburg
Miami at San Diego – Miami
Denver at Oakland – Oakland. RAIDERS!!!
Indiana at Arizona – Arizona
Carolina at Dallas – Carolina. Dallas SUX.

Hope I can do better than .500 this week. It’s getting to be a pattern.

OK, so a divinity school graduate who also does reality TV has been arrested on suspicion of strangling his former porn star girlfriend. Boy, there’s a lot going on there.

Apparently the young lady appeared in a few mainstream movies, but since I’ve never seen the Fast and the Furious or Rush Hour 2, I didn’t recognize her.

Here’s the paragraph that stuck with me:

According to Randone’s Web site, he also traveled the world as a Christian mime, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Christian mime?

If you have an all-night video game party at your school, and your father has already told you you cannot participate, it is not conducive to your happiness and well being to email your father with a “I’m going, you can either accept that or not” take on the situation.

You should also not roll in at 7:30 AM the next morning expecting warm cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate.

It would also add to your chance of surviving the weekend if you just accepted that your father is not going to let you sleep it off. Think yard work, lots and lots of yard work. And your father is well aware that it’s raining, so what?

I’ve made a decision.

If you get shot in Louisville, and the only picture they can find to show of you on the news is your mugshot, then I don’t care.

That is all.

An Anglo-Saxon horde of gold in Stafforshire, England, has been found by a man with a hand held metal detector.

So the graves of my Viking ancestors are desecrated again.

This poor princeling worked hard his entire life to pillage and burn enough villages and monastaries to gather his treasure for Valhalla, and now this schlub walks around in black socks and sandles and finds it.

All kidding aside, the find is enormous, and will teach us a lot about that period of English history. The Scandinavian settlers/invaders of Britain brought a lot with them, and got back as much as they contributed.

Good on him for finding something this important.

The Last Centurion was the best piece of military fiction I’ve read in a long time.

John Ringo put out this book last year. It’s based in the not too distant future, and takes place against a societal collapse caused by a virulent flu outbreak along with climate caused famine.

It’s a narrative told from the point of the main character, a young infantry officer who’s left pretty much stranded in the Middle East when the rest of the military heads back to the U.S. to help with the disaster.

It’s a page turner, and I highly recommend it. One note – Democrats and left-leaning environmentalists might be a bit cautious about reading. The character has not much nice to say about some Democratic politicians.

Izmash, the Russian company that makes AK-47’s, among other things, is in deep financial doodoo, and may go into bankruptcy.

I have a Mosin that was made by it’s predecessor Soviet factory in the ’30’s, and it’s rock solid.

If Izmash goes out of business, it would be a loss to people who want good, solid firearms and not pay through the nose for them.

Apparently they’re losing money because the Russian government has curtailed weapons spending, and they are having to compete with all of those countries that the USSR licensed their designs to back during the Cold War.

Rumors are also saying that their executive management is pretty incompetent.

But I have to ask:

If you can’t make a profit making guns in this market, just how messed up a business person are you?

OK, I was 8 and 8 again this week.

That makes me 16 and 16 for the season so far. Batting .500 isn’t too bad, but I’m glad I’m not betting money on this.