political roundup and poetry

First: Alito is still on the Supreme Court. I had rather hope that the whole thing was a bad dream, but oh well. Looks like he'll be there for most of my life, so I may as well get used to it.

Second: Coretta Scott King died yesterday. She was one of the last leaders of the civil rights movement who held that all freedoms were to be fought for, including LGBT rights. Her daughter is not so generous.Ominous, that we loose the courts and a great leader on the same day.

Third: Cindy Sheehan was arrested last night for attending the State of the Union address wearing a t-shirt that listed the number of soldiers dead in Iraq. Some reprots stated that she had a protest banner, but this has been recanted. She was just wearing a t-shirt with a statistic on it. She had emended it by hand because three more soldiers had died since the shirt was printed. More: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002355.htm

Last: Apostrophe on the Race of Man

(On reflecting that the world
is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build
bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest,
be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach,
expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay