This from James Lileks:

It’s 1983; I’m working at the Minnesota Daily, in the editorial department. Smart friends, common purpose, and by God a paper to put out! It gets no better when you’re in your 20s.

We didn’t hate Reagan; we viewed him with indulgent contempt, since he was so obviously out of his depth. I mean, please: an actor? As president? (This from a generation that got its politics from “All The President’s Men.” This from a generation that would later embrace Martin Sheen as the ne plus ultra of all things presidential.) He was in a movie with a talking monkey, for heaven’s sake. That was all you really needed to know. “Bedtime for Bonzo,” you’d say with a smirk or a conspicuous rolling of the eyes, and everyone would nod. Idiot. Empty-headed grinning high-haired uberdad. Of course he was popular among the groundlings. It would be laughable if it weren’t so typical - he was just the sort of fool the voters could be trusted to elect.

Indeed, celebrities seem to be rather politically astute, so long as they are conservative/libertarian. even those who's public persona was that of the fool, like Fred Grandy, or the late Sonny Bono, have proven to be talented and effective leaders. Whereas the liberal side produces idiots like Natalie Maines.

“I expect you’ve come about Frank Burns, “ I said to the four members of the Greater San Antonio Ferret Appreciation and Protection League--- it’s not their name, actually, but it describes their mission fairly clearly. Only the two oldest of them laughed uproariously.
I found the young ferret in my backyard on Saturday morning, when I went to water the potted plants and something small, brown and furry moved between two of them. I really thought at first it was a roof rat--- but it didn’t run like hell--- or an opossum— but it didn’t waddle. It sniffed at my fingers, and let me touch it; obviously a pet, and accustomed to people. I didn’t want to risk it running away if I went to get a towel, or my garden gloves, so I just picked it up, and carried it into the house and put it in the cat carrier with a dish of water, and went to consult with my neighbor Judy, who knows everyone on the street.

On a Saturday morning, when it promises to be hot later in the day, people are out doing their lawns, or gardening, walking their dogs, or jogging. Two ladies from my church were out posting flyers about Vacation Bible School. I live in one of those cookie-cutter American suburbs, scorned by the intelligentsia as stultifyingly white-bread, and fill of angst and corrosive unhappiness, where no one knows anyone else, full of boringly similar ticky-tacky houses. (Fortunately, none of my neighbors know this is how they should feel about where they live, and wouldn’t give a crap if they did.)

“You found a ferret, “ Judy said, right away. “It was running around in some of the other yards, until those dogs next door began barking and frightened it away.”
“Do you know of anyone who has misplaced one? I tried calling the veterinarians’ office--- not of their clients have lost one lately.”
“No, and you’d think they’d be out looking. “
The two ladies from my church came up the road, and Judy asked them if they had seen anyone out searching for a missing ferret.
“No,” said one, “But the ferret veterinarian around here has an office on Pat Booker Road—he’s in the phone book. He might know.”

The ferret specialist gave me the number for the Appreciation and Protection Society contact, who told me to put the carrier with the ferret in a cool, closed room in the house, and they would be around after 6:00 to canvass the neighborhood with fliers, and if they couldn’t find the owner right away, they would take it to a temporary foster home.

They showed up at half-past six, with a specially fitted pet carrier, and swiftly examined my temporary guest. He--- and it was a he-- was very young, little more than juvenile, had been bathed and groomed, and his claws trimmed very recently. He was in very good shape, for having been out and about.
“He didn’t come from very far, “They said, “ And he wasn’t out for very long. We’ll go out and post the fliers. It won’t take very long, he’s probably from a house close by.”

They were right--- it was only half an hour. The ferret had been missed from a house six doors uphill from mine. The owners had been looking, but they had only gone to their immediate neighbors.

And I was thinking afterwards--- how marvelously efficient. Two neighbors, a couple of phone calls, and four volunteers, effectively deployed on a hot Saturday afternoon, all on behalf of a little, lost creature.

Damn--- imagine what we do when a whole nation of us really cares.

It's hard to believe it has been 9 years since he was born.

Happy Birthday, Son!
(Now stop poking your sisters...)

The President I grew up with, and the last President who was worth a damn, died today.

In closing let me thank you, the American people for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your President. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

I guess I should share a little anecdote here. When I was a kid (maybe 9 or 10), I wrote a letter to Reagan. I don't really remember what it was about, but considering the climate of the times and the fact that I believed that the Soviets were about ready to nuke the hell out of us, I'm pretty sure it had something to do with that. About six weeks later, I received this humongous manilla envelope stuffed with all sorts of books about the White House, a half-dollar, and a letter signed by Reagan (it was a standard form letter, but when you're a kid you don't know about such things) that basically said that everything's going to be all right. I thought that getting a response from the President of the United States was the coolest thing in the world, and I bragged to all my friends about it. I spent the half-dollar on a pack of baseball cards shortly thereafter, but I still have the packet and all its contents.

The masked fugitive was first spotted in the neighborhood two evenings ago, attempting to break into a house through the sliding glass door. The family dog raised the alarm, and the fugitive fled into the night. Several neighbors immediately began searching the immediate area, without results, although it seems the miscreant had torn apart several bags of trash, searching for something.

My next-door neighbor’s daughter in law spotted the fugitive last night;
“He was hanging out in your front yard, with that cat from down the road… it looked like they knew each other, real well. I just didn’t know who to call,” she told me later.

I found the masked miscreant this morning in my back yard, when I went out to water the plants. He was cowering between a scented geranium and a jasmine, and clearly indicating his willingness to surrender and come along quietly. I performed a citizens’ arrest, took him into custody, confined him to a proper enclosure and informed the proper authorities.

A representative from the San Antonio ferret enthusiasts’ club will be along tonight to take formal custody, pending return to whoever is the proper owner of a small, light-brown ferret with a white mask and nose, and rather charming white edges to his ears.

Of course, I am not at all sure if it is a male ferret--- I was risking enough, just picking it up, never mind getting a look at it’s undersides. Honestly, the animals that wander into my garden--- what can I expect next? An eagle? A giraffe?

I still have CD versions of the archive, "The Best of Sgt Mom", availble for a small sum for postage and handling. E-mail me for the particulars. The book version is nearly ready; I am hoping to have it available in the next month or so. Keep watching this space!

Additional duties, whose little semi-jobs, tasks or projects that a military unit of any size gets hit with, fall into a couple of loose and flexible categories. There are the official, extra duties, like Security NCO, or Building Manager, or Training NCO, Equipment Custodian, or Self-Aid Buddy Care Instructor, NEO Program Manager, which are officially sanctioned and designated, and which you are more or less stuck with as part of your workload along with your designated work specialty.

The above noted Extra Duties (along with a multitude of others not listed) necessitate a training course, frequently monthly meetings of astounding pointlessness and boredom, mounds of tedious and repetitive record-keeping and documentation, and occasional inspections of your efforts by some base-appointed nosey-parker who has the Latest Revision Of The Applicable Regulation Regarding This Activity at his her fingertips, and who will regret very much having to tell your commander, and the base commander that you, having run your unit program according to the Last Revision But One, (which was left to you by the previous incumbent) Have Been Going It All Wrong!
Since the Newest Revisions have been locked in a disused latrine, in a building undergoing renovation, and the person who you were told had the key and was authorized to distribute them (being informed of this in a tiny encoded footnote in the daily Base Bulletin) has been TDY to Whatinhellistan for six months, you have wasted every minute of the hours you stayed late every night for a week in preparing for the inspection.

Training NCO is a particularly thankless and impossible additional duty; you’re never going to get it right, because they change it deliberately to screw over hapless Training NCOs. Security NCO, on the other hand can be fun, even if you do get stuck being courier, especially of the unit has a safe with secret stuff in it; you can always pretend you are a secret agent. (On our side or theirs, depending upon how warped your sense of humor.) Or do your best Colonel Flagg impression. Whatever.

Equipment Custodian is for the anal-retentive with an excellent memory, although total recall would be a significantly impressive and useful bonus. Running around sticking little labels on the back of all the listed equipment, and checking off the items from a long computer generated rip is like a semi-annual Easter egg hunt. My advice is to never, ever throw away the old rips; they will come in handy when computer error suddenly doubles the quantities of items, instead of moving them into another category. Building Custodian is one of the better additional duties, because good work you do at it is immediately and readily apparent. Everyone appreciates a fresh coat of paint, or your ability to get CE over right away to fix something. You will learn more than you ever expected to learn about wonky plumbing, ancient HVAC systems and the GS catalogue. (Hint: supply the CE staff with cookies at Christmas, and only describe situations as an emergency, when it really, really is an emergency. They will appreciate this, and will henceforward eat out of your hand, metaphorically speaking.) The only downside is being called at home at night because the building is insecure.

I often made the suggestion that all the additional duties be amalgamated and made into a military job specialty, arguing if all this stuff was important enough, it ought to be someone’s dedicated job, and in the case of very large units, it could be the task of a whole section, with an Extra Duty Officer and any number of Extra Duty NCOs. I thought it would be a logical and efficient use of manpower, but all they ever said was “No”, and “Get the hell out of my office, “which is the expected bureaucratic response to new and brilliant suggestions which threaten the established status quo.

Other Additional Duties are annual threats, rather than the year-round chore: things like Tax Assistance NCO (helping out people in the unit with their income tax returns) Combined Federal Campaign, (getting people to sign up for the DOD version of the United Way), and the US Savings Bonds drive (charity to your government, if you like). While these efforts do involve the same required pointless meetings and the careful record-keeping, they have the virtue of only happening once a year, and with luck when it comes around again, you will be either PCSed, or they will have forgotten and will designate someone else. Let them: it’s good experience; especially if post- military career plans involve loan sharking or outside sales.

Which brings up the fantasy I always had, of having the two biggest guys in the unit tackle every newcomer as soon as they walked in the door, shaking them upside down, vigorously, and keeping all the money that fell out of their pockets for the various unit appeals. Is someone about to get married? PCS? Promoted? A well-run unit does its best to mark those occasions, and since the best things in life, contrary to popular folklore are not free, they must be paid for. And they are usually paid for by some sort of organized unit activity: a unit-run coffee and snack fund perhaps, or bake sales and car washes, organized by an NCO who is either designated, or given the task and authority by the commander; a sort of unofficial extra duty. My perception is that this generally falls to a female NCO--- this is the sort of thing that women have either have been trained to pay attention to, or have a natural inclination to take care of. However, the most efficient manager of a unit snack fund that I ever knew of (the only one to turn an outstanding profit) was a male, whose work area was so organized that the refrigerator stocked full of soft drinks, and snacks was situated right next to his desk, in a large and open work area. Not to many people had the hardihood to help themselves from it, without putting something which either rustled or clinked into the empty coffee can which did duty as the self-help cash register, not under the cold, and watchful eye of the responsible custodian.

In this most technological of ages, most duty sections do contain a refrigerator; in my early broadcasting days there was some official justification given for it, the favored rationale being that since we were expected to do occasional duty as still photographers, we had to have some means of keeping a stock of 35mm film. This excuse served stalwartly in various Public Affairs and Combat Camera offices; the odd roll of film tucked away in the back, behind people’s bagged lunches, a sack of perishables from someone who preferred doing their commissary run on their lunch hour… and the sodas, the bottled iced teas, the water, juices, the candy bars, and other snacks which formed the backbone of the unit snack fund. Not every unit is large enough to justify a stop from the AAFES mobile snack bar (assuming there is one) or the expected business from a vending machine, and so that is taken in hand by the unit, and with luck and attentive management turns a profit, enough to keep restocking to everyone’s taste, and buy the required plaques, and wedding gifts. Free enterprise and all that.

After all, next to God, Mom and apple pie, isn’t that what we are fighting for?

Timmer's magically delicious Weekend Caption Contest has started.

In a long post about Post-Mortem, one of Noel Coward's plays, Arthur Silber asks:

Coward's play reveals and underscores that there is nothing new in the arguments we are having today. All of these issues are as old as mankind -- and it appears that we have learned precisely nothing, not even from the terrible, virtually incomprehensibly horrific events of the twentieth century.

And we repeat it all, all over again. Why? I truly wish someone could explain that to me.

Why?

Because we're Human. What, you think all this civlilization and all these gadgets make us any different from the first of us who awoke in Africa and did their work with flint knives and crude spears? The tools change. We don't.

According to Right Wing News, conservative chicks dig this site. I may not agree with everything they say, but they obviously have good taste.

Finally, Mike Tucker sent me an email with a link to his website, which features clips from a movie he made while spending a few months in Iraq with a Field Artillery Battalion. From the clips and pictures on his site, this looks to be a really good flick. Most of the time when people go somewhere to "show the world" what's going on, they have an angle which gets in the way of the story. This one has more of a "fly on the wall" vibe that I prefer.

Here are two links to two video clips from the film, which are 7 and 11MB, respectively:

Baghdad Freestyle

Star-Spangled Banner, Baghdad Style

Even if you can't download the videos, do yourself a favor and read about his movie.

After seeing this war firsthand, I don't have any easy answers. In fact, I may have no answers. You try to find good in something like this; you try to find a reason. You try to explain death. I asked soldiers what they thought and their answers were simple. After nearly a year, it wasn't about Iraq, the Iraqis, democracy, Donald Rumsfeld or oil. It was about them. They just wanted to finish the job they were sent to do so they could go home.

For the past thirteen years, I've harbored an ill-feeling that I could never quite articulate. Something's always felt off-kilter in my life and until today I never knew what it was. Thanks to Reggie Rivers, the scales have fallen from my eyes. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am a slave. Yes!

Armed with this knowledge, I think I might go to Congress and demand my due...

(((dream effect))) (((dream effect))) (((dream effect)))

Congressman: "Mr. Stryker-"

Me: "That's 'Slave Sergeant' to you. I didn't spend 12 years at The Man's beck-and-call to be called 'Mister,' thank you very much."

Congressman: "I've read your sworn testimony Mr. Stryker and it's quite interesting. You claim that you've been a slave for almost 13 years and demand reparations. Is that correct?"

Me: "Yepper. I prefer a lump sum payment. Cash or Cashier's Check, please."

Congressman: "Didn't you enter into a contract with the government to provide services for a set period of years?"

Me: "Listen, I'm just a poor, stupid guy who got duped into joining the military. They lured me in with educational benefits and job training."

Congressman: "And did you receive those benefits?"

Me: "Well, yeah. But that just made me a smarter, well-trained slave of Master Sam. I have no say in where they send me!"

Congressman: "Well, military service does place extraordinary burdens on those who volunteer to serve."

Me: "I didn't land on Omaha Beach! Omaha Beach landed on me!"

Congressman: "You weren't even alive on D-Day!"

Me: "Yeah, but I played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. I'm still haunted by the screams..."

Congressman: "That's a video game, Mr. Stryker!"

Me: "But it's an immersive experience with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. I have a doctor who will testify that I suffer from Post Traumatic Game Stress Disorder, brought on during my slavery in the military."

Congressman: "Just because you happened to buy a video game while on active duty doesn't mean the military's responsible for your... affliction."

Me: "Oh, but I beg to differ. In fact, not only do I suffer from PTGSD, I also have a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome from rapidly clicking the mouse while playing the game. So, why don't you go ahead and toss another quarter mil into the kitty, 'kay? Thanks."

Congressman: "Mr. Stryker, have you even been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan 'against your will'?"

Me: "I led a highly trained, elite squad of commandos back to Baghdad during Desert Storm II."

Congressman: "Desert Storm II? When the hell was that?"

Me: "Don't play ignorant with me, you pork-bellied rascal! I've led special forces on missions all over the world at the behest of the United States government."

Congressman: "But our records show that you're just an aircraft mechanic. How in the world did you wind up leading our most elite special forces units on covert missions around the globe?"

Me: "Well, I don't want to say anything in such a public forum-"

Congressman: "Don't worry. There aren't any reporters here and any classified information will be stricken from the public record."

Me: "Okay, but I'm not to blame if this gets out...have you heard of Ghost Recon?"

Congressman: "That's another damned video game!"

Me: "A video game with advanced mission planning elements and realistically-rendered environments! I've lost men on these missions. Good men. More than I care to admit."

Congressman: "Have you even been shot at --in real life, I mean-- Mr. Stryker?"

Me: "Of course. It's all in my written testimony."

Congressman: "It says here your C-5 aircraft was fired upon by a farmer while on approach to Dover AFB. Is that what you are referring to?"

Me: "Yeah. Scariest two seconds of my life. I didn't know if I was gonna make it outta there."

Congressman: "He didn't even hit your plane and you didn't know about it until months later!"

Me: "It's not my fault the guy didn't know how to lead a target! Now, can we end this farce? Give me my money!"

Congressman: "I'm afraid that we'll have to deny your petition for reparations, Mr. Stryker. You are not, nor have you ever been, a slave in even the loosest definition of the word. You were of sound mind and body when you signed a contract for a period of military service, not just once, but on four subsequent occasions. Apparently, a life of servitude suits you just fine. Good day, Mr. Stryker."

Me: "You haven't heard the last of me. Justice delayed is justice denied. No justice, no peace!"

(((dream effect))) (((dream effect))) (((dream effect)))

Yeah, that'll be so boss. I can be like Moses and demand the President let my people go, but that's a post for another time.

It was a record heat-setting day on Monday, around here, a high of 103 at 5 PM, the hottest time of the day--- which is about what we expect, this time of year in South Texas, the place of which William T. Sherman once commented, “If I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.” Until yesterday, we had a mild, and rather pleasant spring, cool at night and in the mornings, and in the high 80ies for a couple of hours at the hottest time of the afternoon, interspersed with swift-moving, generously damp rainstorms. But yesterday, the thermometer vaulted a whole ten degrees, the leap from bearable to un-.

By late afternoon, the water from the cold tap, when I rinsed off dishes in the kitchen, was just barely cool. We haven’t any rainstorms for a couple of weeks, and the serious gardeners are just this weekend beginning to apply the sprinklers and lament the end of a run of low water bills. Mother Nature (commonly acknowledged to be a moody, temperamental bitch) has taken care of all our watering needs for nearly all the last year--- even last summer proved intermittently damp. From now until sometime in September, the only endurable place to be--- unless in the early mornings--- will be indoors, with the air conditioning turned on.

Among my neighbors I am the one who holds out the longest, against admitting that summer is really here, and it is time to tight-close the windows, draw the insulated shades or curtains, and turn on the AC, to hide from the brutal heat for three or four months until that blissful day in September (or October, at the very worst) when we can fling open the windows, and welcome the autumnal chill… or actually, what passes for moderate temperatures most other places in the northern hemisphere.

Because Texas in the summer is hot… hot, hot, hot, an oppressive stifling humid heat, that does not relent at sundown, or with a cool breeze blowing from the nearest body of water…heat that blazes down from a washed-out sky, and shimmers off the pavement like a griddle with a gas flame on underneath it. Those who are outside in the worst of the day are drenched in sweat that never dries--- standard equipment on workmen’s vehicles around here, especially for those who are outside--- is a five-gallon insulated water container, the kind with a spigot on the side. During the worst of the heat, dogs lie flat in whatever shade they can find, panting, with hardly the energy to move, while cats are invisible, removing themselves unerringly to whatever cool shelter they have divined. Even the lizards remove themselves.

It is too humid for swamp coolers, which cool by evaporation, and work very well in places like Central California, or the Salt Lake Basin, where the heat is dry. And there is no real relief from the heat at night, as there is in places when you can open up the windows and induce the cool night air into the house by using fans, then shutting the house and drawing the curtains, to preserve the coolness inside throughout the heat of the next day.

I cannot even begin to imagine how this part of South Texas was habitable before the invention of air conditioning, although the design of older houses helped considerably, with deep porches, and tall windows, with efficient cross-ventilation, thick walls and plenty of sheltering trees. I can always pick out the houses which pre-date central air conditioning, just from the way a good cross-breeze can be induced to blow through it. My own house, being modern, only gets a good breeze through it if I open the garage doors, and that is impractical. But I have let the photina grow, until it shades the front, and planted a verbena and two crepe myrtles that shade the rest, so my little house is spared the worst of the tormenting heat, and the sun blazing down, and the air conditioning purrs gently, and I count the weeks until the first cool day in fall.

When all is said and done, Texans are kind of proud of being able to endure summer heat. It is what we pay for a mild and wonderful spring and fall, and a winter that hardly offers the opportunity to put on anything heavier than a thick woolen sweater. Should we have a summer like other places, it would be too perfect, and everyone would move in and spoil it.

At the very least, we can say that the summer heat keeps out the French and other riff-raff.

(Correction: It was Phil Sheridan who made the "live in hell and rent out Texas" comment. But it doesn't make it any cooler.... Sgt. Mom)

From 'BurntCop' at CyberSoulMate.com:

IMPORTANT: WARNING FOR MEN - DATE RAPE DRUG

Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties and local
pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink from any
woman. A date rape drug on the market called "Beer" is used by many
females to target unsuspecting men. The drug is generally found in
liquid form and is now available almost anywhere. It comes in
bottles, cans, from taps and in large "kegs." Beer is used by female
sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims
to go home and have sex with them. Typically, a woman needs only to
persuade a guy to consume a few units of Beer and then simply ask
him home for no strings attached sex. Men are rendered helpless
against this approach. After several Beers, men will often succumb
to desires to perform sexual acts on horrific looking women to whom
they would never normally be attracted. After drinking Beer men
often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to
them the night before, often with just a vague feeling
that: "something bad" occurred. At other times these unfortunate men
are swindled out of their life's savings, in a familiar scam known
as "a relationship." It has been reported that in extreme cases, the
female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male
into a longer term form of servitude and punishment referred to
as "marriage." Apparently, men are much more susceptible to this
scam after Beer is administered and sex is offered by the predatory
females. Please! Forward this warning to every male you know. If you
fall victim to this insidious Beer and the predatory women
administering it, there are male support groups with venues in every
town where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter in
an open and frank manner with similarly affected, like-minded guys.
For the support group nearest you, just look up "Golf Courses".

Now available: Synthetic 3 carat diamonds - only distinguishable from natural stones because they are ABSOLUTELY perfect.

"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."

"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.

He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.

"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.

"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."

Forbes FYI's Christopher Buckley and Patrick Cooke present a revised International Code:

Simply enroll at the California University of Protection and Intelligence Management.

It's too bad that the SonarGuard swimming pool alarm system is so expensive, as it is certain to prevent several drownings.

It seems the insurrection in the Libertarian Party has suffered a major setback. On Sunday, the LP nominated Michael Bednarik, who preaches the same sort of radical yadda-yadda-yadda which has classically alienated voters from the LP:

11. What would you do on your first day in office?

a) Declare that all four national emergencies are immediately terminated, as well as the presumption of Emergency War Powers. Senate Report 93-549 has found that the "national emergencies" announced by FDR in 1933 because of the Great Depression, by Truman because of the Korean War, and two initiated by Nixon because of the Vietnam War, are still in effect today. (Skeptical readers can search the internet for this report and read it for themselves.)

b) Declare that all 20,000+ gun control laws in the United States are unconstitutional and unenforceable. I would also issue a valid executive order to the BATF and other pseudo police agencies informing them that any agent who confiscates a weapon of any kind, from someone who is not currently engaged in a murder or robbery, will not only be terminated from their position, but they will also be prosecuted for violating the unalienable rights of the citizens they have sworn to protect.

c) Issue another valid executive order to my subordinates executives working for the IRS. That order would instruct them to come to work, make a pot of coffee, and begin working on their resumes' pending a federal grand jury investigation as to the legitimacy of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Internal Revenue Code. High ranking officials from that department would be closely monitored as flight risks, pending indictments for fraud in the event that evidence proves that they knew that no statute exists that requires Americans to fill out a 1040 form and relinquish a significant percentage of their hard earned money to an unconstitutional government that refuses to operate within a budget.

d) Declare the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to be unconstitutional, and prohibit that organization from printing even one more dollar of fiat currency. I would immediate appoint Bernard Von Nothaus, Monetary Architect for the Liberty Dollar, to be my Secretary of the Treasury, placing the stability of our economy in his capable hands.

e) I would announce a special one-week session of Congress where all 535 members would be required to sit through a special version of my Constitution class. Once I was convinced that every member of Congress understood my interpretation of their very limited powers, I would insist that they restate their oath of office while being videotaped. Those videos could then be used as future evidence should they ever vote to violate the rights of Americans again.

f) I would take a short break for lunch.