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I’m not sure what disappoints me more, that the elections for president and senate went the way they did or that I share an ever decreasing amount less in common with the majority of the voting age population of this country.

It’s going to be a hard four years. I don’t even want to think about judicial appointments, what’s left of our natural resources and civil rights or even paying down the national debt. I’m sure this administration will leave a fine legacy.

I recently saw on an email a tagline that caught my attention.

It read:

There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo.
Use in that order. Starting now.

attributed to the science-fiction author Ed Howdershelt.

The impulse to do something, anything when faced with bad news and bolster their personal position come election time seems to make the members of both houses of Congress take leave of their senses. Read for yourself if House Bill 10 in PDF or in HTML has anything to scare you in Title II. Sponsored by Rep Hastert, J. Dennis [IL] and cosponsored by 26 others, the huge “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act” committee document was issued October 4th. The Senate bill S.2845, titled “National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004″ is not much better.

If you’re short on attention span read News.com’s editorial by Declan McCullagh.

It is sad that the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) will be sending monitors to the United States this November to keep watch on our elections. Normally they advocate for the rule of law, civil society and orderly political process in places like Central Asia and Southeastern Europe but they’ll be here in the United States. Our debacle in Florida and rampant irregularities in New Mexico (among other places) in 2000 are part of the reason but the hasty introduction of electronic voting machines also has them concerned.

I thought we export democracy (while we import oil and cheap manufactured goods). How naive. How sad it is that we’ve been lumped in with Albania, Bosnia, Ashgabad and Tashkent.

The New York Times and the Mercury News report that Bill Janklow, the US Representative from South Dakota who killed a motorcyclist last year after running a stop sign at over 70 miles per hour, was sentenced to 100 days of jail and must pay a total of $11109 in fines and fees. His felony conviction for second-degree manslaughter forced him to resign from the House of Representatives. He is ordered to serve the first thirty days in jail but after that he can leave each day to perform ten hours of community service. I would be surprised if that doesn’t translate to living outside and doing community service. After release, he spends three years on probation during which he cannot drive.

Sounds like he got what he deserved right? The Grand Forks Herald pointed out earlier in the case that the average jail time for a conviction of second degree manslaughter was six months. I’m not so sure that after a decade of reckless driving- including running the same stop sign and nearly hitting a woman- and using his political influence to dodge tickets that he did. The family of the victim has a civil suit so there may be a bit more handed out to him before he’s through.