Mozilla Eats One Post, You Get the Summarized, Less Good Version. Herein: SS Isn't Just for Nazis Anymore. And Cool Shots of the Sun.

Oh, that hurts.

I'd just finished putting the finishing touches on today's post when a pop-up on Dictionary.com (for Netflix incidentally) froze up Mozilla and forced me to CTRL-ALT-DEL the whole program. Good times. Well, let me see. What had I written? Ah, yes. I was writing about a story out of Denver that had set both mine and my wife's blood to boiling with righteous and patriotic fury. Here's the story. I had a good summary all written up for those who didn't want to click on the link, so I'll do an abbreviated version of that (aren't you all enjoying this reference back to a post no one but me has ever even seen? I'm sure it's not annoying in the slightest).

Here's what happened. A man named Howards lives in or around Denver. It's June 16th of this year. He's walking his kid to piano lessons. He sees Vice President Dick Cheney some distance away shaking hands and having his picture taken with crazy people who still want to have their picture taken with the Vice President. Our hero, Howards, walks over to the Cheney conglomeration and says to the VP, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible." Howards and son walk away. Howards walks back through the same area some time later, presumably after dropping his son off at his piano lessons, and a Secret Service agent, appropriately named Reichle Jr., stops him and asks Howards if he had "assaulted" the Vice President. Howards denies the charge but is cuffed anyway, arrested, and taken down to the jail. Reichle Jr. tells the local authorities to charge Howards with harrassment. Howards gets out of jail and the local DA dismisses all charges. Howards has since filed a lawsuit against Reichle Jr. saying his First and Fourth Amendment Rights were violated. I sure frickin' hope he wins.

Aren't you kinda pissed after reading that? I mean, this is Cheney we're talking about. Cheney himself is reprehensible, but the guy didn't even say that (though that would have been his right as well), he only said Cheney's Iraq policies were reprehensible and then Reichle Jr. decides to give him his own SS brand of treatment. So what sort of message does this story send to the American public? It tells me that if I were to ever find myself in the vicinity of a Dick Cheney or a George W. Bush and I wanted to tell that man what I thought of the job he was doing in respectful terms if not necessarily a cordial tone, than the best I can expect in response is arrest from a goon. The message this story sends is be afraid to speak your mind. Not a good message.

Is it November 7th yet for chrissakes?

Also. If all goes well, I'm going to dilute some of that righteous fury I've just inbued you with by adding a little cosmic wonder. Yeah, I got some photos.





This is the sun with a couple suspicious-looking black specks on it. Those aren't sunspots, silly monkey.













Those specks are in fact the space station and the space shuttle in orbit around the Earth. Some guy with an Earth-bound telescope snapped this one just when the space shuttle and space station's orbit happened to position them between this guy's telescope and the great big ball o' fire we call the Sun. Anyway, I thought this was super cool and now it's on my blog for your enjoyment.

More blogorrhea tomorrow.