This is cute.

In a televised speech to the nation last night, President George W. Bush praised the Federal government for responding swiftly to Hurricane Rita with well-crafted, high-quality photo opportunities showing him looking concerned.

Bush Happy with Rita Photo Ops

(Thanks, Marty!)

Current song obsession:

Life Less Ordinary, by Carbon Leaf

(The song link plays the Amazon 30 second sample in Windows Media Player; the second link is to full length mp3 downloads of other Carbon Leaf songs.)

Not really relevant to my life at all, but makes me dance around my living room in a manner spastic enough to scare my cats into hiding.

My earliest memories of Arlen Specter relate to my mother’s despise for him. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned her biggest problem with him was his conduct toward Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. Since I’m too young to remember the specific atrocities he committed, I’m finding lately that I think I actually like Specter.

Today, he kinda made me proud to be a Pennsylvanian.

I’ve been watching the “reruns” of the opening statements of the Roberts confirmation hearings and I’ve been totally struck by the Republican senators’ constant harping on this “judicial activism” thing. “Our courts are legislating from the bench!” they’re saying. “This is not what the Founders had in mind!”

I’m sorry, boys, but I don’t think the Founders imagined that you all would get so creative with the commerce clause. The Supreme Court hears cases about which there is a Constitutional question. If you stopped overstepping your authority maybe they wouldn’t have to overturn your legislation so often.

It was not my intention, after the last post, to go so long without posting again, although I will admit I knew it was a possibility. One of the side effects of the new semester and new apartment is that I’ve been a little disconnected from my regular world. I spend far less time paying attention to current events, or thinking or reading for fun, and far more time reading for class and working to make my new space mine.

And, really, there was nothing I could say about Katrina, but it felt like it’d be weird to post without mentioning it at all. So there’s my mention. The whole thing is so terrible there’s not much else I can say.

So instead, I’m going to talk about: ME!

I’m really enjoying both my classes and my apartment. I picked McDaniel largely because I’d already examined and rejected nearly every other small liberal arts school in the country and it happened to enter my life at the same time. That’s pretty much how I ended up with my apartment, too. McDaniel, though relatively unknown, seems to have a very high caliber faculty who expect a lot from their students but are also extremely friendly and supportive. My apartment has high ceilings and wood-paneled walls that make me feel like I’m on a beach vacation. It’s a wonderful sanctuary. Eventually I’ll post some pictures.

For now, I am off to pick up my sister, who resides on campus, just a mile away.