Warm weekend and racing

Monday morning, nothing exciting happened this weekend. Had a group over yesterday evening for some time in the pool. We gathered together around 5, air temp had dropped down to 108f, and the water was at our favorite temp of 92f. E was part of the group, and really seems to like swimming – or at least having somebody hold her while she plays with the toy fish and splashes around.

Our son-in-law was raised in Canada, and does not like the desert very much – not enough trees or rain. It looks like they are going to get more active in finding a place in Portland to move to. He is off on a job hunt, and they will be making a house hunting trip up there in August. So it looks like the E pics will not be as frequent, grandma is used to watching E and was looking forward to seeing her grow up. Oh well, people move on and things change. Daughter figures we will be making frequent trips up there, eventually selling out here and perhaps buying a condo up in the Portland Pearl District. No thanks – I’ve given up on rain and really like having sunshine 320+ days a year.

I mean, come on, how can you pass this up?


Some local news – our Las Vegas city council has signed a contract with somebody to permit a Formula One race to take place on the downtown streets. Being from Southern California we used to watch similar races on the streets of Long Beach, and there are several other cities doing this as well. Our first race will be Easter weekend of 2007. From the map printed in the local paper the course will be on a big circle surrounding the Fremont Street Experience, then head west to go around the new Furniture Mart and County Center. Supposedly people will be able to just walk over and watch, but pay to sit in the bleachers. At least that is what the council expects; we’ll see what actually happens. Promoters are hoping for 150,000 people to come view the races.

On other sides, Miranda pointed to an interesting post by the US Embassy in Lebanon, informing US citizens that they will be charged for their evacuation from the war zone over to Cypress. We’ve been seeing images on TV every night of our ‘brave Marines’ helping old people and kids board the large Marine transports to get away from Lebanon. No mention has ever been made of the fact that people will have to pay the government for this transport. And then when getting to Cypress these evacuees will have to pay for their own hotel rooms and transportation back to the US. Seems like we can give how many millions in aid to the Lebanese, but our own citizens are stuck with the bill? And how many billions a month are we spending in Iraq? Oh, yes, get me started on that one.

Other news articles have been highlighting our President’s method of writing his magical letters (signing statements) when he signs in new laws. There have been a few items on national news over the past few days, and a big thing in the local newspaper both yesterday and today.

The PBS Newshour had two people on opposing sides discussing the situation. One lawyer, a former Reagan cabinet member, on a bar association committee was discussing their finding that the signing statements were probably unconstitutional. Another individual that was a teacher of law took the position that the president could refuse to enforce laws he felt were ambiguous and open to interpretation or he found to be unconstitutional.

I don’t know, but I always thought (as evidently the bar association also does) that it was up to the courts to decide constitutionality. It was up to the president to enforce all laws passed by congress that he signed. If he felt something was wrong he could veto a bill and then congress would have to review and override the veto. If the president still felt it was wrong he could then ask the Supreme Court to review the law.

It seems that our current president feels that he is the ultimate arbitrator. If he doesn’t like something then he alone can say whether it should be enforced or not. If he wants to permit torture of evildoers then it shall be done. If he feels people should be imprisoned in Guantanamo they will be, and if that prison is outside of normal US laws then by heck he will ignore the constitution and do whatever he wants to those darn people. They are terrorists, and by heck they don’t deserve the protection our constitution gives to citizens. So what if some of them are US citizens, if they are terrorist then they give up their constitutional rights as well.

Ok, enough of that. Shows you how busy I am at work, didn’t even get my Monday post up until Tuesday night.