Rosalea Barker: Animalia

Animalia

::Into the lion's mouth::

Big news here lately has been the story of a 70-year-old hiker who was about to become mountain lion tucker and was saved by his 65-year-old wife wielding an 8-foot long tree branch and whacking the beastie on the noggin. She didn't want to do that at first because the mountain lion was actually gnawing on her husband's head, but the lion wasn't the least deterred by being hit in the stomach, so she had to take the risk.

Once the lion let go of her husband, it turned towards the woman so she raised the branch above her head and screamed at the top of her lungs--which is what you're supposed to do when confronted by a mountain lion--and it ran away. At the end of the press conference at the medical centre to which he was transferred in San Francisco last week, the hardened old press corps apparently rose to their feet and gave the woman a standing ovation. Her husband is apparently now recovering well from surgery.
http://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=20037

::Into the pussycat's den, I::

Governor Schwarzenegger entered the very belly of the progressive beast on Thursday by turning up at UC Berkeley to announce a new research initiative between UCB, BP, and the University of Illinois, aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Newspaper and TV news reports early that morning said the Governor's whereabouts for the press conference were a closely guarded secret. Scaredy cat! Did he think he'd be mobbed for autographs?

::Into the pussycat's den, II::

Next thing you know, GWB's consorting with the Democratic Congressional Caucus at their "issues conference" in Virginia on Friday, and they’re laughing at his jokes and applauding him. All hail, suckuppery!

::Colts beat Bears::

Yes, yes, it's Super Bowl TM time again. Because the word is licensed, advertisers have to pay to use it so you see lots of ads for "Big Game" related goods, like plasma TVs, party platters, and pizzas. So much for free speech! To be honest, the very great seriousness with which folks in the States take the right of free speech has largely been kept alive by corporations and political action committees, both of which cry "First Amendment foul!" if their ability to spend millions on persuading people to buy/vote the way they want them to is threatened in any way.

::Speaking of which::

The First Amendment states, among other things, that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" and countless US Supreme Court decisions have upheld the essential role that freedom of speech plays in restraining tyranny, corruption and ineptitude, and in allowing a stable society to exist in a land that it is so large and so diverse it would otherwise be unmanageable as a democracy.

From http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org

Many Americans embrace freedom of speech for the same reasons they embrace other aspects of individualism. Freedom of speech is the right to defiantly, robustly and irreverently speak one’s mind just because it is one’s mind. Freedom of speech is thus bonded in special and unique ways to the human capacity to think, imagine and create. Conscience and consciousness are the sacred precincts of mind and soul. Freedom of speech is intimately linked to freedom of thought, to that central capacity to reason and wonder, hope and believe, that largely defines our humanity.

... Americans truly do embrace the central belief that freedom of thought, conscience and expression are numinous values, linked to our defining characteristics as human beings. While limits must exist, American culture and law approach such limits with abiding caution and skepticism, embracing freedom of speech as a value of transcendent constitutional importance.

Hear, Hear! Speak, Speak!

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

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