New Blog Started

http://web.mac.com/lucidcoercion

New Blog

It has been forever since I've posted anything new one here. I haven't really been too busy lately...just too lazy to write on here lol. Just a quick rundown of what's new with me:

-I will probably not be working for Polaris anymore after this term. Last weekend I was flown to Colorado Springs by Spectranetics for a job interview. They have given me an informal job offer. I'm waiting for the formal offer this week. Got to see Heather while I was out there too. It was an amazing weekend!

-I'll be home in Grand Junction by the 23rd of June for a week and a half.

-If you're around the northwest Iowa area, you should stop in and hang out...the lakes are awesome right now!

-I can't wait to get back to school...the roommates and I are always fighting with each other....really annoying. Seems like one of them has his priorities all fucked up.

-I'll have some new pictures up on my new blog

-New blog! I'm going to be building a new blog through software suite called iLife from Apple. I'll have it on my .mac site soon. I'll post the link and a redirect as soon as I get the new blog up and going.

A NY Times Editorial

Editorial
Veto? Who Needs a Veto?

Published: May 5, 2006
New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/opinion/05fri1.html?ex=
1146974400&en=9944ed0b3a5f414e&ei=5070

One of the abiding curiosities of the Bush administration is that after
more than five years in office, the president has yet to issue a veto.
No one since Thomas Jefferson has stayed in the White House this long
without rejecting a single act of Congress. Some people attribute this
to the Republicans' control of the House and the Senate, and others to
Mr. Bush's reluctance to expend political capital on anything but tax
cuts for the wealthy and the war in Iraq. Now, thanks to a recent
article in The Boston Globe, we have a better answer.

President Bush doesn't bother with vetoes; he simply declares his
intention not to enforce anything he dislikes. Charlie Savage at The
Globe reported recently that Mr. Bush had issued more than 750
"presidential signing statements" declaring he wouldn't do what the laws
required. Perhaps the most infamous was the one in which he stated that
he did not really feel bound by the Congressional ban on the torture of
prisoners.

In this area, as in so many others, Mr. Bush has decided not to take the
open, forthright constitutional path. He signed some of the laws in
question with great fanfare, then quietly registered his intention to
ignore them. He placed his imperial vision of the presidency over the
will of America's elected lawmakers. And as usual, the Republican
majority in Congress simply looked the other way.

Many of the signing statements reject efforts to curb Mr. Bush's out-of-
control sense of his powers in combating terrorism. In March, after
frequent pious declarations of his commitment to protecting civil
liberties, Mr. Bush issued a signing statement that said he would not
obey a new law requiring the Justice Department to report on how the
F.B.I. is using the Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize
papers if he decided that such reporting could impair national security
or executive branch operations.

In another case, the president said he would not instruct the military to
follow a law barring it from storing illegally obtained intelligence
about Americans. Now we know, of course, that Mr. Bush had already
authorized the National Security Agency, which is run by the Pentagon, to
violate the law by eavesdropping on Americans' conversations and reading
Americans' e-mail without getting warrants.

We know from this sort of bitter experience that the president is not
simply expressing philosophical reservations about how a particular law
may affect the war on terror. The signing statements are not even all
about national security. Mr. Bush is not willing to enforce a law
protecting employees of nuclear-related agencies if they report misdeeds
to Congress. In another case, he said he would not turn over scientific
information "uncensored and without delay" when Congress needed it.
(Remember the altered environmental reports?)

Mr. Bush also demurred from following a law forbidding the Defense
Department to censor the legal advice of military lawyers. (Remember the
ones who objected to the torture-is-legal policy?) Instead, his signing
statement said military lawyers are bound to agree with political
appointees at the Justice Department and the Pentagon.

The founding fathers never conceived of anything like a signing statement.
The idea was cooked up by Edwin Meese III, when he was the attorney
general for Ronald Reagan, to expand presidential powers. He was helped
by a young lawyer who was a true believer in the unitary presidency, a
euphemism for an autocratic executive branch that ignores Congress and
the courts. Unhappily, that lawyer, Samuel Alito Jr., is now on the
Supreme Court.

Since the Reagan era, other presidents have issued signing statements to
explain how they interpreted a law for the purpose of enforcing it, or
to register narrow constitutional concerns. But none have done it as
profligately as Mr. Bush. (His father issued about 232 in four years,
and Bill Clinton 140 in eight years.) And none have used it so clearly
to make the president the interpreter of a law's intent, instead of
Congress, and the arbiter of constitutionality, instead of the courts.

Like many of Mr. Bush's other imperial excesses, this one serves no
legitimate purpose. Congress is run by a solid and iron-fisted
Republican majority. And there is actually a system for the president to
object to a law: he vetoes it, and Congress then has a chance to
override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

That process was good enough for 42 other presidents. But it has the
disadvantage of leaving the chief executive bound by his oath of office
to abide by the result. This president seems determined not to play by
any rules other than the ones of his own making. And that includes the
Constitution.

A Democratic Dictatorship

Excerpt:
'No one can deny that we now live in a country in which the ruler has the omnipotent power to send the entire nation into war on his own initiative. To use the president’s words, when it comes to declaring and waging war against another country, he’s the “decider.”'

In my life:
Not much really new here. I was recently talking to Apple tech support about an issue with my laptop (minor issue regarding the first run off of macbook pros) and they were amazingly helpful and nice. I have NEVER talked to tech support that comes even close to the quality of Apple's.

Since the last time I posted, I did go see a new movie. If you get the chance, go see Thank You For Smoking. It's funny as hell.

For those of you back home that read this: I will most likely be in town the last week of June into the first couple days of July. Let me know if you want to do something.

Also, paintball has been getting a ton of airtime on tv lately. Support the sport and flip on the tube to either espn or espn2. It's on monday nights and different times on sundays.

For those of you that know much about paintball, I'd love some feedback. I'm looking at getting one of these guns: dm4/5, Angel 4 fly, Angel G7, or an Ego. I've shot the DM4 and really liked it. The angel 4 that I shot was nice, but it didn't have quite as comfortable of a fit as the dm4, but it is easier to take care of and has a lot of extra features. I haven't shot the Ego, but having spent lots of money and time working with Planet Eclipse products and was impressed with their quality and ease of use. The teams that have been playing with them seem to have nothing but good things to say. Have any of you shot one? Let me know!

Other than all that randomness, I don't have much else to say. I'm sure I'll update again soon!