New York System

A hamster's lifetime of dreams were realized for me last week when I made, in my own kitchen, real live New York System Wieners. It all started earlier in the summer when I stumbled upon the only place in the known universe that actually makes the sausages, but now it's done. Birds sing a little sweeter in the morning these days.

God Bless America

From the New York Times:

To the Editor:

When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he presided over more than 150 executions. In more than one-third of the cases -- 57 in all -- lawyers representing condemned inmates asked then-Governor Bush for a commutation of sentence, so that the inmates would serve life in prison rather than face execution.

Some of these inmates had been represented by lawyers who slept during trials. Some were mentally retarded. Some were juveniles at the time they committed the crime for which they were sentenced to death.

In all these cases, Governor Bush refused to commute their sentences, saying that the inmates had had full access to the judicial system.

I. Lewis Libby Jr. had the best lawyers money can buy. His crime cannot be attributed to youth or retardation. He has expressed no remorse whatsoever for lying to a grand jury or participating in the administration's effort to mislead the American people about the war in Iraq. President Bush's commutation of Mr. Libby's sentence is certainly legal, but it just as surely offends the fundamental constitutional value of equality.

Because President Bush signed a commutation, a rich and powerful man will spend not a day in prison, while 57 poor and poorly connected human beings died because Governor Bush refused to lift a pen for them.

David R. Dow

Houston, July 3, 2007

The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who represents death row inmates, including several who sought commutation from then-Governor Bush.

From Keith Olbermann:

the cliff walk

Was in Rhode Island this weekend for a wedding (congrats Maribeth and Tom!) and finally checked something off my to-do list that's been lingering for a pretty long time. I walked The Cliff Walk in Newport all the way. I'd done parts of it before, but yesterday I did the whole thing.

So the whole thing is like 3.5 miles, but then you have to walk back. That's right this lazy sack of bones made it 7 miles yesterday, which is probably more than I walked in the entire month of May (maybe kidding). Here are some pictures I took that are not artistic at all:
Other people have taken nicer pictures and posted them on flickr.

Here's something else that just occurred to me today: the New York Post, that bastion of journalistic integrity and pithy headline commentary, has been making awesome puns and wordplay in giant white block-type forever. Lolcats are awesome and all, I'm just saying that if one is to give credit where credit is due, some credit might be due to the NY Post.