Does anyone care?  I do.  And I hope you do too.

Yesterday Bill O'Reilly had a guest named Jon Meacham, deploring the "War on Easter", saying amongst other things:

"What do you think Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have thought about the ACLU, all right, Pledge of Allegiance, no God, Christmas icons out of the public arena? What do you think those guys would have thought about that?"

However what I want to write about is not my story, but the story of the many documented and undocumented people I've known in the United States.

In particular, Section 8.  And if you look at Clause 11, it states that Congress "shall have the power"

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

It was this blog which got me to wondering what exactly a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was.

More than 100 Orange County residents who thought they were simply signing petitions to cure breast cancer, punish child molesters or build schools were duped into registering as Republicans, an Orange County Register investigation found.

Poor old Jose Padilla.  About the only thing going good for him lately is that the media has been showing some accurate images of him, unlike the well-known doctored photo from 2002, which was "re-touched" to appear more menacing.

Now at least he looks like his real self, wearing his orange prison suit for the 4th year in a row.

I'll leave the discussion of that to others, but the numerous mention of the ethnicity of the protesters is something I need to talk about.  Specifically I am referring to the term Hispanic, probably one of the most misused words in America.

To begin with, there's actually no such thing as an ethnic "Hispanic".  That is to say, your neighbor Pedro Gonzales can walk across the border to Mexico or drive to Argentina or fly to France and he will instantaneously cease to be Hispanic, in the sense of an ethnicity.  Pedro can sail a boat down the coast of Mozambique, amble along the great wall of China and ride in a hot air balloon over Indonesia but it is only when he steps foot inside the United States that he becomes "Hispanic".

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, at a news conference Thursday in Washington, D.C., announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to get permission to voluntarily test all of its cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

R-CALF USA supports Creekstone in this effort because voluntary testing for BSE likely would help reopen and maintain certain export markets for U.S. beef, which in turn, would certainly benefit the thousands of independent cattle producers this organization represents," said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. "The U.S. economy is based on free enterprise, and Creekstone is simply trying to meet the demands of its customers - a key objective for any successful business."

Almost two years ago, R-CALF USA called on USDA to permit cutting-edge packers like Creekstone Farms to voluntarily test for BSE 100 percent of the animals processed there.

I'm not the biggest fan of United Nations special tribunals, but in the case of Sierra Leone it is high time for Charles Taylor to face the consequences of his actions.  

I believe that the best electorate is an informed electorate, and that must include a knowledge of what's going on around the world.

I read approximately 50 newspapers every morning and report what I find there, with an emphasis on foreign or international events.  You will however not find information about Iraq or the Israeli/Palestinian situation, the first because it is amply reported elsewhere and the latter because it is too contentious.

Events that I feel are well-covered elsewhere are not included for brevity.

Yet the Bush administration has been hiding things and it all started way before 9/11, so that tired old cliche about the attacks "changing everything" does not apply.