AdamSmith

Well, I just pulled out my old videotape copy and popped it into the player, out of curiosity, and it is in color.

You know I love you but you live on a different planet. Zeffirelli's movie was in color.

I did ask that of a couple of sweet old Jehovah's Witness ladies who came to the front door the other week. (I believe Jehovah's Witnesses are the only people who ever use or have used or will use that front door. Even the undertaker knows to go to the side door.) Despite these ladies' earnestly wanting to know if I knew what Armageddon was, they could not answer the question we raise here. They also could not reconcile their obsession with the End Time with Jesus' admonition specifically NOT to worry the point. "...for I will come like a thief in the night..." Just be ready.

Well, yes. That is what makes it a trick question. No?

Evidently. There does seem to be some hope that Brennan's pending confirmation hearing will provide occasion for at least a modicum of public debate over all this.

This piece is a good reminder of how the P.O. (still can't get used to its current name) is more central to the American experiment than sometimes acknowledged: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/opinion/how-the-post-office-made-america.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130209&_r=1& I also remain puzzled about the commentary here that the organization soaks up tax dollars. Can anyone document that? I will confess a bias. Papa was a mail sorter (having to learn the dread Scheme each February was his bane -- every sorter before automation had to learn the address structure and ZIP codes of the entire area served by that P.O., so they could take over anyone else's lettercase when someone was sick.) And his brother ran the local Post Office garage, maintaining the mail trucks. So one has some attachment.

It is not poorly managed. What EXPAT said is the root problem. And contra Four Aces, it has not received taxpayer dollars since the early 1980s, with very minor exceptions.

Oddly, Pat Robertson seems to be getting vaguely liberal on some issues these days. Could the end time actually be near?

Lookin, your phrase "will lead" is so optimistic. "Has led," try? And where is anyone of conscience in the civil debate? Has the left, the right, and everybody in between taken leave of their senses?

OK. So you and my mother are identical... Just so I know...!

Ok, "surf." alright already! But, yeah, that part of the country is lovably full of contrarian shit. People you would not at all expect from the conventional PC line.

Yuck, yuck! And I thought I had no shame.

Being a Yalie myself...As whatsisname said to Dershowitz (whom one knows and has seen naked in the serf off Martha's Vineyard), after poisoning wife Sonny Von Bulow: "You have no idea."

I repeat myself but one episode when Thurston and Lovey were teaching table manners to the Cave Man, and he just could not grasp the concept, Thurston could not help exclaiming, "Heavens, Lovey, he must be a Yale man!"

"IV"? Ah! As in the scion of Thurston Howell III. (Which a gf from NYC called me.) (I took it as a compliment.)

...I know I've made some very poor decisions recently. But I can assure you, very confidently...

And why would that be so surprising? ...It was back in 2006, anyway. On a visit to NC when Andre happened to be out of town.

This analysis also seems correct: http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/08/law-war-cia-john-brennan-drone-kill-list

Trying to think what I would pay to return to the old once-a-day news cycle. If only.

P.S. http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/feb/09/barack-obama-extreme-anti-terror-tactics-liberal-backlash

As Mark Twain said: "...but I repeat myself."

Gross! I may not be able to eat today. (I.e., you got me back!)

TY, I agree the Framers gave each branch pretty broad latitude to do as it saw right, in whatever the exigencies. Certainly it is useful that the Executive can stretch his/her powers quite far when times demand. Then, emergency past, Congress and the courts can beat back the excesses. (Took Hamilton to see, some 20 years after ratification, that those perceived weaknesses/incompletenesses of the Constitution were in fact some of its greatest strengths.) BUT. Do you really not think some of Obama's application of those principles goes too far? Due process, once we get used to its being lost, may be frightful hard to recover.

I have the greatest enthusiasm for this mission...

Well, Polack jokes aside, one could argue that any carrier stupid enough to make such a bet deserves to go out of business.