iPandora

“If morality is the point here, and if it’s right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can’t have 50 different versions of what’s right and what’s wrong” Mike Huckabee

Going to a humanistic but practical definition of the Moral Good outlined by a Philosophy professor I took a class with:

Moral good is a quality of the action or intention of a free and knowing agent, which action/intention adds/preserves the physical i.e.biological, psychological, economic, etc–whatever is “natural”(to the object) good of some natural whole such as humans and other species in some rational subordination to human and with keeping in mind the distinction between essential goods and incidental (trivial) goods.

In the issue of Abortion, are there some benefits which are essential and some which are trivial? In a relative scale, a continuum, are there some benefits which are better than others?

What are the benefits of Abortion as defined by it’s supporters?

• Health of the mother.
• Protection of the victim in cases of rape and/or incest.
• Protection from abuse of the mother and/or an unwanted child.
• Protection of those who are going to abort anyways by providing safe/legal environment to have it performed.
• Preventing deformed and handicapped children from having a less worthwhile life.
• Quality of life of the rest of the family.
• Happiness.

To these I would add protection of the perpetrators of rape and incest.

What are a few of the problems with Abortion? The anti-goods. This list is very short. I wanted general categories rather than specifics.

• Abortion kills human life.
• Abortion causes physical and emotional issues in the mothers.
• Abortion destroys potential.

Now, compare any other these items in these two lists, the “goods” against the “bads”, and is there a case where the “goods” are morally superior to the “bads”? For the sake of our discussion, how do the list of “goods” and “bads” line up on the continuum from essential to trivial?

In the extreme case, perhaps the strongest, most emotionally charged arguments for Abortion are those involving rape and incest and the life of the mother. How do these cases compare in the essential to trivial continuum with those against Abortion?

I would submit that killing a human to resolve an ugly, evil situation such as rape or incest does not mitigate the evil of the original situation nor the lasting consequences of it. If anything, adding the guilt of murder to an already traumatized victim cannot be a safe course of action.

And what of the child? The child has no say in the circumstances of it’s conception. The child could well be a prodigy, it could be special needs, it could be normal and unique like all other children. With special needs children, any person who can look at such a child and not be struck both the intense love such a child needs and is capable of reciprocating, is sorely lacking in humanity. The point is, to unjustly cut off the potential of any child at any point is a grave mistake and a crime with few equals.

Therefore, comparing the competing cases, we see that on the continuum, any benefit to the mother to be attained by killing her child would be trivial compared to the essential goods to be attained in the potential of that child.

And what of the idea that another child could rob the older children of some of their owed love from their parents? Is love a zero-sum game, where there is a set and finite amount of love contained in this world, that to add to those who need love we subtract from the total available to any other? To believe that is to believe a lie, an obvious and tawdry lie. A child both receives love and gives love, adding to the total love in a family. Love is not, cannot be, selfish. We experience love when we are not even the direct or intended recipients of it. To witness love is to feel love and experience it. As older children observe their parents giving of themselves, selflessly, to a new and dependent child, they can understand true love as it is modeled for them.

Finally, what of happiness? Is a smaller family a happier family? Are children likely to be aborted more likely to experience unhappy lives? It is true that abortion primarily appeals to poor and minority families (Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a documented White Supremacist and supported eugenics and abortion as methods of controlling what she deemed to be unworthy aspects of society), but are these necessarily unhappy families? If even one of the children may experience a happy family, basic decency demands we give that child the chance to experience that life. And not every child who experiences an unhappy child will necessarily experience an unhappy adulthood. We are not automatons completely dependent on our situations and histories. Instead, we have choice in how we respond and react to each of our situations. To deny the chance that child may grow up to use their troubled history as a springboard to launch them into the far reaches of achievement in society and culture. Or do you have so little faith in humanity?

Abortion is wrong, evil, hateful, arrogant, stupid, and blind.

Over at the Acton Institute’s Power Blog, Jordan Ballor mentions a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finding that the wealthier a country, the less citizens’ lives revolve around religion. The one country bucking the trend? The U.S., but why?

Ballor gives a somewhat lengthy and ambiguous answer.

Ballor theorizes that it is America’s heritage and the “penetration of the Gospel message into people’s hearts and minds.” As an example, he notes that Satan’s attacks American’s differently than others. He quotes a John Piper column, “Gutsy Guilt:”

“The great tragedy is not masturbation or fornication or pornography. The tragedy is that Satan uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had or might have. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your lakeside rocking chair.”

Interesting thoughts and worth a read, if nothing else, for the mental exercise.

I have little sympathy for fat people, and even less when they’re sitting next to me in an airplane. Apparently at least one fat person thinks he ought to be allowed to try and squeeze his bulk into a single seat with no thought for the poor person(s) forced to share 2/3rds of (their) seat(s) with him. This is selfishness, and I support Southwest Airlines in their decision to require people to purchase two seats if they cannot lower the armrests past their gluttonous bodies.

Thankfully, the gentleman who was compelled to buy a second seat to store himself has taken the terrible “shame” he experienced and used it to drive himself to lose weight. Good for him. Give it a bit more time and he’ll be thanking Southwest for shaming him into actually doing something good.

The sad part of this story is the fact that shame is seen as something which ought to be assuaged, the guilt is bad because it is guilt, not because it indicates how the person is in the wrong. Mr. Hill ought to have been ashamed of his weight long before he got to the airline ticket counter. Shame is a good thing, it tells us when we’re wrong and ought to change.

There is a significant difference between merciless taunting and true shame. I do not need to act any less loving or caring to cause shame in another. To taunt one for their difference or deformity is wrong at all times and in all cases. It is when the over-reaction to taunting causes all commentary and truth telling to be considered taboo that the whole culture loses its ability to self-regulate and now we have ugly fat people, and ugly fat kids, and walking medical bills, and public stupidity, and so many other visible scars walking the streets and sleeping on park benches.

I do not discount that these are humans who need love more than most. But Jesus came for those who knew and admitted they were sick.

Regardless of whether or not OJ is guilty of armed robbery as he has been charged, he is wrong in his actions.

If we are to believe the biggest escaped-in-the-open lying murderer of our time, he was simply trying to get back some memorabilia that was stolen from him. When he heard the goods were in a Las Vegas hotel and he was conveniently in town for a wedding, he went to the room where the goods were supposedly stored and attempted to reclaim them.

There are problems here, several of them:

• Did he file a police report when the items went missing? When someone as *ahem* important as he loses personal memorabilia, it is a wise thing to file a police report, just in case.
• Did he think his version of vigilante justice would make sense to anyone besides his own, twisted self? There are many things we have the freedom to do in America, but dispensing our own justice when the law of the land has been broken is not one of them.
• Did he think that anyone would believe him? At all?

For a Christian, we are told that God reserves the right of vengeance to Himself. By acting out our own vengeance we rob God of His perfect justice which He’s stored up in His storehouses for dispensing on that day He has ordained for each of us. God has given the responsibility for certain applications of justice to earthly systems of authority based on the individual responsibilities of each of those systems. To parents He gave the reward and punishment of their children. The the church those inside the church. To the various municipal authorities each their own based on their defined areas of responsibility. But each derives it’s authority from it’s own authorities and ultimately from God Himself, the final arbiter and judge.

When two people not under the authority of the church and willfully unrepentant are at odds, generally the responsibility for justice, punishment and restoration falls to the civil courts and judicial system. Such is the case of OJ. If we are to believe his tales, he is still in the wrong for seeking to dispense his own form of gang justice.

Does he think he is a law unto himself? With the same smug smile he showed so self-righteously throughout the murder trial last decade, he is the epitome of the post-modern relativist morality. What is right for him is right for him, and others rules and laws make no difference to him. He does as he pleases and answers to no man for his deeds or thoughts.

As he skated the conviction and wounded justice so many years ago, he may now fall for pride.

All my reading and perusing today seemed to be along the lines of the problem of Islam. There are several gems which I’d like to bring to y’alls attention.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has put together rebuttals to the Amanpour slander-fest, CNN’s “Holy War”. I have not seen, nor do I care to see (as I like to avoid those things which will certainly shorten my life by raising blood pressure and depleting IQ) this series but I’ve heard naught but the most steady slamming of its vociferous and detestably slanderous lies. Even others in the MSM have taken shots at the show.

CAMERA breaks its rebuttals down into three separate articles :

1. God’s Jewish Warriors – CNN’s Abomination
   

   “God’s Jewish Warriors” (is) one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing “martyrdom,” or suicide-killing. There is, of course, no counterpart among Jews and Christians to the violent jihadist Muslim campaigns underway across the globe, either in numbers of perpetrators engaged or in the magnitude of death and destruction wrought.

2. God’s Muslim Warriors — CNN’s Double Standard
   

   While much of the program was informative and fair (in contrast to the propagandistic nature of Part One,”God’s Jewish Warriors”), there were serious flaws and glaring omissions. Among the most important shortcomings, extremist Muslim beliefs and practices were often minimized and many of the key causes for the spread of Muslim supremacist beliefs went unexplored.

3. God’s Christian Warriors— CNN Slurs Christians
   

   At the end of this segment, devoted to “God’s Christian Warriors,” Amanpour left viewers with a warning that society cannot ignore “the millions of people who feel their faith is being ignored, is being pushed aside and who are certain they know how to make the world right.”

   Given the huge levels of religiously motivated violence taking place in the world today – most of it perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims – Amanpour is right. Religious fundamentalism cannot be ignored.

   But if Americans are going to determine how to respond to religious extremism on both an international and societal level, they surely cannot rely on Amanpour’s coverage of the issue. In her coverage of “Christian Warriors” Amanpour demonstrates a predictable inability to discern the difference between Christians in the U.S. who organize politically to affect public policy and suicide bombers in the Middle East who target civilians in an attempt to intimidate their opponents into submission.

So there you have it. CNN thinks I’m as likely as Sadr to kill and maim and destroy life and property merely because I believe that God (not Allah, the false god) has standards and rules and promises blessing to those who follow them. God, unlike the false demon Allah, forbids the killing of people except when they themselves have killed and are judged worthy of that judgment, instead reserving the right to vengeance to Himself and urging us instead to love and seek to turn those who disagree with us with tangible acts of mercy and humility.

Allah, the demon, requires that each of his servants be enactors of bloody retribution on those they deem his enemies. Humans cannot judge the heart or the motives, only God the Just Judge can do that. We have limited means of determining the real events while God with His infinite knowledge and wisdom and insight into each our hearts and minds is the perfect Judge and protects both the innocence of the innocent and the guilt of the guilty with His reserving that vengeance to Himself.

Islam also breed distrust and dishonesty among its adherents. It is permissible to lie in certain circumstances in Islam: when dealing with infidels (that’s us) and when your wife asks if you love her (that makes me mad and sad). In much the same way as Mormonism, the female in Islam is a second-rate baby machine whose purpose here and hereafter is to please the men by providing sexual service in a place of servitude,bringing (male) progeny for the man to further his name. The infidel exists only to be given one chance to convert and then to experience immediate destruction, often in humiliating and horrific manner. There is no acceptance. There is no forgiveness. There is no choice.

What do diet food and brilliant babies have in common? Or more accurately, what do a recent study finding that people who eat diet food are more likely to become (not just be) overweight and another recent study which finds that letting your very young children was the Baby Einstein and other such “intelligent children” video programs diminishes their vocabulary development have in common?

The two studies are the latest in what I like to call “why is everyone worrying” section of life. The first study regarding fat kids found that it is likely that the nutritional deficits of “diet food” cause the body to not recognize high-calorie food when it is ingested and therefor the person is prone to eating significantly more than they need. I would add that eating diet food also makes it easier to eat more, assuming that because it is diet it is better, therefore getting the body accustomed to more food than it actually needs. Diet food, when used as a replacement for a “regular” item in conjunction with self-control and basic common sense can indeed be part of a healthy lifestyle. But so can regular food. The Subway spokesman who famously lost significant weight while eating their sandwiches really only regained self-control, taking smaller bites, chewing more slowly, eating more slowly, recognizing when he is full, recognizing when he is actually hungry, being satisfied with reasonable portions, etc. These are tips that can bring any appetite into control and any body into a healthy weight.

Next we have babies whose parents have stuck them, for the few hours they see them at home, in front of a TV to be faced with images of objects and colors and music of Mozart, in hope that these miracle DVD’s will insure their child’s future brilliance. Apparently these children, compared with children whose parents spend time talking with and around them, suffered a significantly reduced vocabulary. Vocabulary is a primary tool the child uses to understand the world around it, without vocabulary the child cannot grasp concrete concepts and has difficulties communicating those concepts to it’s surroundings. Turns out that the best thing a parent can do for a very young child is to spend time with them, communicating, even if only in “parentese” as one of the articles defines the sing-song way parents often talk to their parents.

So what do these two findings have to do with each other? No it’s not the children. It’s personal responsibility. We want to have something we can just plug in, some philosophy we can subscribe to that fixes our problems and allays our fears. We want the baby to be smart without working really hard. We see a DVD that says it’ll make our babies smart, proven. We buy it and we’re happy. We want to eat without guilt, we want to be thin without trying hard, without changing ourselves. We are constantly searching for the silver bullet that will make our problems go away without effort on our part.

This is part of the reason for our consumer culture: we’d rather buy a solution than build one.

This is part of the reason for the success of the lottery: we’d rather bet that someday our luck will turn and we’ll be set for life without having to scrimp and save and not buy every last thing that catches out fancy.

The list of societal ills that can be directly, primarily, and even just significantly linked to our aversion to personal responsibility is long.  Instead of drinking diet soda and eating diet food, lets start exercising and working out and eating less. Instead of wanting out children to be smart, lets start investing in them and feeding into their small minds such tools as they can use to tackle the world they inhabit and will inherit. DVDs of pictures and colors and music are not Mom and Dad. I do not doubt that classical music of such complexity is vastly superior to a persons’ development than some of the garbage which passes for art in our poor modern time, but it is not magic wand of brains, filling out child with calculus and verbiage, no that is left to you.

So take control, you can make change. You alone are capable, you alone are responsible.

In a comment on the article Apology Steve highlighted the double standard, very obvious to so many of us, employed by the congressional leadership. Beginning to comment I found I had too much to say to constrain myself to a single comment:

It’s a shameful double standard. I often wonder how a thinking person can stand such duplicity, much less espouse it themselves. It seems to me that the answer lies in the convergence of several factors.

First, many people today, and I believe it is safe to say a very significant majority of Liberals will deny the fact of objective truth, claiming objective truth is… untrue, objectively. False on it’s face, it is still a significant and appropriate cornerstone of any of the misguided and malignant policies promoted by those who subscribe to the belief. Objective truth is a moral compass. When we accept that some things are “just wrong” and some things are “just right” we can base decisions on our pursuit of what is right and use that guide as a director for our goals. The moral law is also innate to all of us. It is written on our hearts, according to God. To deny the moral law is a process of beating down a part of ourselves, and we can batter it into subjugation to our baser desires.

Without a moral guide, the only reason to do good is for selfish reasons: because I want to, not because I need to. Resulting from this lack of good reason is a lack of good purpose, the second issue. This second issue runs in conjunction with the lack of objective truth to allow the duplicity currently running Capital Hill. There are many purposes in the world today: and many of them can result from more than one cause. A desire to alleviate suffering in poor nations can result from a desire for them to experience the love of God through me, or from my own guilt at being a member or benefactor of our superior system. A desire to run for elected office can result from my own desire for power and self-aggrandizement or from a desire to ensure the survival of our superior system and the benefit of those inside the system and others around the world our superior system reaches out to, or even from the selfish desire to bring about change which we believe is superior to our system. These distinctions are important and will affect profoundly the course a person takes to reach their destination and what they will do once they’ve accomplished what they set out to do.

Finally, the lack of a real faith in God. If there is no objective truth, no good purpose, and no belief that I will be held accountable for my actions and my intentions, there is no reason to do good. Instead, because we cannot exist in a vacuum of any type, we latch on to some goal or idea to give ourselves purpose. We either take the goal of personal power and fulfillment, or we find some idea which appeals to us or seems to be a good thing to do. In our pursuit of our chosen goals then, we are able to subjugate everything else to the goal. There is no truth that cannot be ignored, no promise which cannot be broken, no goal which cannot be changed, as long as we are furthering the idea we’ve latched on to.

A moral person who believes in God and accepts their purpose will tend to check their actions and their motives to see if they are wrong. Even if they are pressing toward a laudable and good goal, their intentions and actions are judged as well and therefore are subject to review.

The Liberal has no qualms, no standards. Arguing with one is like arguing with the wind: you may feel it in your hand but you can never catch it there, it always runs on past you changing as it must to reach it’s goal.

Perhaps James is a good place to end this: The double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Like a wave of the sea he is tossed about.

While Democrats want to increase the Department of Labor’s budget by nearly $1 billion, they are leaving the little agency that oversees union transparency out. The agency currently receives $47.7 million and President Bush wanted to increase the budget to $56 million. Instead, Democrats have set funding at $45.7 million.

Clearly, union bosses are calling the shots on Capital Hill.

• Example One: Only the agencies unions can use to bully employers, such as those tasked with employer accountability and worker safety, are getting the increased funds. The singular subject on which Dem’s are exercising fiscal restraint is the agency that, from 2001 to 2006, “investigated more than 2,000 criminal cases that secured some 650 indictments of union officials who had engaged in everything from embezzlement to extortionate picketing. The [agency] has also implemented a 2004 rule requiring unions to file expanded disclosure reports, obliging them for the first time to disclose how much dues money they spend on politics and union salaries.”
• Example Two: The Hill wrote yesterday, “In an op-ed e-mailed to reporters, Chao criticized Congress for being ‘all for boosting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s [SEC] budget so it can ride herd on businesses.’ In contrast, she said, Congress had singled out the one federal entity charged with protecting union members from corruption for budget cuts.”
• Example Three: Democrats are succumbing to pressure to renege on promises to keep the free trade agreements with Panama and Peru alive. Charlie Rangel has been persuaded to visit the two countries and tell them that if they want the agreements to pass (i.e., Democratic support of the agreements.) to make their labor laws more union-friendly.

Predictably, unions take a “Who? Me?” approach, raised eyebrows and all. “The statistics are cooked,” associate general counsel to the AFL-CIO, Deborah Greenfield, said to The Hill.She said DoL double-counts convictions (If one union boss is convicted of 5 different crimes, the agency counts five convictions, not one.). She told The Hill that an AFI-CIO study on union bosses says that less than four-one hundredths (4/100 or .04) of 1 percent of union officials are guilty of crimes against their unions.”

Also note: Democrats who voted for the Kline amendment were Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Bud Cramer (Ala.), Lincoln Davis (Tenn.), Brad Ellsworth (Ind.), Tim Mahoney (Fla.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Harry Mitchell (Ariz.) and Heath Shuler (N.C.). Sixteen Republicans voted against the Kline amendment, including Reps. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Ray LaHood (Ill.) and Christopher Shays (Conn.).

Read the Wall Street Journal editorial here: Congress’s Union Dues
Read The Hill’s news report here: Sec. Chao criticizes House for cutting union oversight funds

Two years ago in Washington state, the unthinkable happened. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won, but by only a thousand or so votes. Some counties conducted re-counts to ensure the accuracy of their totals. King County, Seattle, conducted two or three re-counts, each time finding more and more votes for the Democratic candidate. Eventually, the Democratic candidate won by 120 votes.

Obviously, the losing party challenged votes and investigated for fraud, etc. More than 500 votes were found to have been cast illegally, but the various city, state and federal prosecutors refrained from conducting any serious investigations.

In protest of the callous indifference displayed by King County election officials (who ideologically sided with the Democratic winner), Jane K. Balogh, a 66 year old Federal Way resident, registered Duncan M. McDonald, her Australian shepherd-terrier mix to vote using a mail-in form last April.

Duncan was mailed a ballot in November and she returned it with “VOID” written across the face and signed with a paw print.

Election officials noticed the odd ballot and called Jane who admitted to the scheme, but Duncan remained a registered voter and was sent another ballot for an election in May.

Duncan was finally removed from the voter rolls three weeks after Jane was charged in King County Superior Court for “making a false or misleading statement to a public servant,” which is a misdemeanor, and “for filling out the false voter registration.”

A county investigator said the owner contended that Duncan was eligible because

He is an American citizen,
Was born in the United States,
Is over 18 years old (in dog years) and
Has never been convicted of a felony.

“The county prosecutor’s office offered to charge Balogh only with a misdemeanor and to agree to a sentencing recommendation of a one-year deferred sentence, a year of probation, 10 hours of community service and a $250 fine if she pleads guilty. If she doesn’t, the prosecutor’s office will charge her with a felony.”

After vigorously prosecuting this 66-year old, the county prosecutor should investigate ACORN for submitting 1,800 apparently fraudulent registrations after the registration deadline. The registrations contained forged signatures and often identical addresses.

While popularly attributed to Georgia State Representative Mitchell Kay, Snopes reports this piece was actually written by self-described philosopher and Libertarian Party Senate Candidate Lewis Napper. Even Ann Landers got that wrong.

We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to our great-great-great-grandchildren, and ourselves, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, deluded, and other mentally weak folk who surround us.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights.

ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but No one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This nation is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone – not just you! You may leave the room, change the channel, express a different opinion, etc., But the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be. Accept it.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone truly in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest of us try to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won’t have the right to a car, a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You don’t have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won’t lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you want to. However, we are not required to parent the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our blood and money battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.

ARTICLE IX: You don’t have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE X: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to freely pursue happiness – which, by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

Note that America is not an isolated nation, an island in a sea of storms. The prevalence of global communication and transportation have made it impossible to remain isolated in the way Lewis propounds. Not only is it impossible to remain isolated, it is unconscionable to leave humans to die horribly at the hands of “every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.” Particularly for Christians, we are not called to tuck our heads in the sand, crossing our fingers and hoping everything works out. Instead we are called to live with a passion for others physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom and salvation.

Besides Article VIII, this list is definitely something which might just do some good taped to a whole lot of walls, required reading prior to submitting any court claim, read every night on the evening news, and set as a filter through which every bill must pass before it can even be considered on the floor of any house of government.

By the way, this post makes 200. I, Pandora has been averaging 70 visits a week for a while now. It’s been a lot of work (I’ve tried blogging two other times before I, Pandora) posting nearly every work day since beginning of February, but it has been very rewarding. Maybe someday soon I’ll tell just how rewarding.