HELP OUR VETERANS!!

Is this how the president "supports the troops?" Our veteran outpatients, our wounded soldiers are shoved off into rat-infested, mold-ridden tenements?!! And they are afraid to speak out? This is a moral imperative. If we can't help our wounded valiant soldiers, home from the battlefield — who have lost legs, arms and brain matter all for Bush's evil war, then how on earth can we call ourselves a civilized nation?

The good news is this: because of two brave journalists, the veterans are being moved immediately, and changes are happening fast.

Dana Priest On Walter Reed Army Medical Center: An ‘Unbelievable’ Story of ‘Neglect’ and ‘Indifference’

Dana Priest and Anne Hull of the Washington Post revealed over the weekend that Walter Reed hospital, once perceived as the “crown jewel of military medicine,” has become “something else entirely — a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients.” Priest and Hull snuck in and out of the Walter Reed facilities over the course of four months without the knowledge or permission of hospital officials. They said they wanted to bypass the hospital’s “very well-oiled public relations machine.” Some examples of what they saw:

– The “legions” of injured soldiers housed at the facility “take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army.”

– Building 18 “has been plagued with mold, leaky plumbing and a broken elevator.”

– “The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.”

Next year, the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system expects to treat 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, a number three times what the VA initially projected. "The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about five percent a year, as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keeps rising." President Bush has promised that our nation would "keep its commitments to those who have risked their lives for our freedom." "We owe them all we can give them," Bush said after a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."

The Washington Post reported Saturday that staffers responsible for managing outpatients at Walter Reed have had caseloads of more than 125 patients each. Recovering soldiers face bureaucratic delays, overworked case managers and appalling living conditions, including black mold, cheap mattresses and cockroaches.

"This news is an absolute outrage. And it's shameful. It is absolutely inexcusable that our wounded troops are coming home to such an unprepared and overwhelmed health care system (and please note, Walter Reed is not even a VA facility). Responsibility for this tragedy goes straight to the top. We at IAVA are demanding swift action from the President, Department of Defense and Congress to correct these problems. It is disgraceful that our country has sent troops to war without ensuring adequate care for the wounded."

OPEN THREAD

THE POWER OF WORDS

Guest Blog by Carl

I've been thinking lately about society and how it is composed and how communities are formed. To do this, I've been trying to think like a physicist (admittedly, not my strong suit. I barely got a 90 in high school.)

To understand a complex material, scientists will break it down to the smallest logical component: its atoms. We can do the same for societies, to a degree.

Obviously, the smallest component of a society is the individual. All of us have some things in common: we're born, and we die. It is only by dint of circumstance that you're sitting there reading this, rather than being dead, just as it's only by dint of circumstance (and the good work of teams of doctors) that I'm alive to type this.

Each of us walks around in our own universe, in which we are comfortably in charge. In this universe, things go pretty much as we want them to: we work where we want, we buy what we want, we do what we want, we eat what we want, we hear what we want, we comprehend that which we want to be comprehended. For most of us on this planet, that's more than enough. We call these "Republicans".

Kidding! On the square. For most of us, the sense that there's a bigger world out there simply doesn't exist. Even when we deal with other people, we're still in our own little bubble: these are the people we want to deal with. Our bubbles bump together only when we want them to. These tenuous bumps are what create our communities, however. A shared experience, joint vision, communal values.

So the sense that there are other people out there whom we don't interact with is an abstract concept, and to think about how they live their lives requires the use of our imaginations. In concept, I can imagine life on a farm in Russia: it gets very cold in the winter, it can be very isolated, you have a very short growing season, the ground in the spring requires back-breaking effort to till. Families spend a lot of time indoors. They probably get pretty good at card games, and so on.

But do I really know how these people live? No. Of course not. Anymore than I truly understand what it's like to grow up in Appalachia with a single mom who makes a poverty level wage when she can work and yet manages to feed and clothe me and put a roof over my head. Or Harlem. Or the Dominican Republic. Or Africa.

And yet, like the electrons of an atom, I share values with all of these people too. The difference between me and many people in this country and on this planet is I'm aware and bother to think about these things. Doesn't make me superior to anyone else (because this is where liberals get smeared with the "elitist" charge), it merely makes me someone who has a bit more compassion in his heart than someone else, who probably has some other quality I lack (like humility!).

So how do we communicate this information? How do we get our community to care?

Atoms do this using a quantum concept called action at a distance, one of the creepier concepts of particle physics dealing with the immediate transfer of information at speeds apparently faster than light. Read up on it Fascinating stuff. Einstein even called it "spooky" and he should know from spooky.

Societies, however, apparently don't have this available to them (although one suspects that two teenagers in malls miles away who buy the same T shirt thus starting a fad probably qualifies). So we use words, which, as Sting put it "poets, priests, and politicians" have to thank for their positions.

Which raises another point. It's not just information. We get information from the television all the time: what to buy, who to watch, who died. But you'll note that, for this information to be effective, it not only has to be passed along, it has to be passed along by someone who can create an image with it to influence the receiver. Raw data is insufficient for the masses of folks who sit on the couch and absorb without thinking (cf. Republicans)

Which is why I blog. Which is why Lydia blogs. Which is why we are trying to shape the world, one bubble at a time.

A MARINE'S SUICIDE

** Sometime in the next few days, this website and blog will be offline for maintenance while we change servers. This will just be for a few hours. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE! xo. Lydia



Suicide is a serious U.S. public health problem (both within and out of the military) that results in about 30,000 deaths per year. In fact, more people die from suicide each year than from homicide. For the past 10 years, suicide has been the 2nd or 3rd leading cause of death among active duty Navy and Marine personnel. (Learn about suicide prevention from U.S. Navy website: U.S. MILITARY SUICIDE PREVENTION

TOLD TO WAIT, A MARINE DIES
By Charles M. Sennott,
The Boston Globe, Sunday 11 February 2007

VA care in spotlight after Iraq war veteran's suicide.
Stewart, Minnesota - It took two years of hell to convince him, but finally Jonathan Schulze was ready.

On the morning of Jan. 11, Jonathan, an Iraq war veteran with two Purple Hearts, neatly packed his US Marine Corps duffel bag with his sharply creased clothes, a framed photo of his new baby girl, and a leather-bound Bible and headed out from the family farm for a 75-mile drive to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minn.

Family and friends had convinced him at last that the devastating mental wounds he brought home from war, wounds that triggered severe depression, violent outbursts, and eventually an uncontrollable desire to kill himself, could not be drowned in alcohol or treated with the array of antianxiety drugs he'd been prescribed.

And so, with his father and stepmother at his side, he confessed to an intake counselor that he was suicidal. He wanted to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.

But, instead, he was told that the clinician who prescreened cases like his was unavailable. Go home and wait for a phone call tomorrow, the counselor said, as Marianne Schulze, his stepmother, describes it.

When a clinical social worker called the next day, Jonathan, 25, told again of his suicidal thoughts and other symptoms. And then, with his stepmother listening in, he learned that he was 26th on the waiting list for one of the 12 beds in the center's ward for post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers.

Four days later, on Jan. 16, he wrapped a household extension cord around his neck, tied it to a beam in the basement, and hanged himself.

In life, Jonathan Schulze didn't get nearly what he needed. But in death, this tough and troubled Marine may help get something critical done.

The apparent failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to offer him timely and necessary care has electrified the debate on the blogs and websites that connect an increasingly networked and angry veterans community. It has triggered an internal investigation by the VA into how a serviceman with such obvious symptoms faced a wait for hospital care.

And it is being cited by veterans' advocates and their allies in Congress as a searing symbol of a system that they say is vastly unprepared and under funded to handle the onslaught of 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are returning home, an estimated one in five of them with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. One in three Iraq war veterans is seeking mental health services, according to a report by an Army panel of experts last year.
For full story: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021207P.shtml

THE FORCE OF PEACE IS ON THE WAY ... More coming, stay tuned.

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace. - Buddha (560-483 B.C.)

Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity. - Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971)

Peace is the only battle worth waging. - Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

OPEN THREAD
You can discuss suicide prevention, spiritual principles, The Secret, Putin's remarks, Scooter Libby trial, celebrity-media fixations... it's up to you.

I am looking for profiles of U.S. soldiers killed Iraq for a special I'm doing on our troops. Please send them to: webmaster@lydiacornell.com
Thank you.
Luv xo
Lyd

GOD BLESS ANNA and DANIEL

My husband said that he had a very beautiful vision of Anna and her son dancing in heaven together, overjoyed. There is no death just eternity to work it out. Anna Nicole died of a broken heart. Every mother knows this.

Rest in peace and Love's Blessings to you Anna and Daniel. I have been crying all night, and can't say why this afffects me so deeply, except that once you have a child you are never the same. A part of your soul goes to that precious child. Children are not meant to die before their parents, and for someone as fragile as Anna, the heartbreak was unbearable.

UNDER THE "BIG W": 12 BILLION STOLEN

One of my favorite movies is "IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD" directed by Stanley Kramer. Remember Spencer Tracy, the mild-mannered chief of Police, who manipulated all those frantic people in order to rob them blind? He had plotted for years to steal the fortune under the big "W". What a coincidence. Guess the BIG "W" could stand for you-know-who of the same initial. Keep in mind, the money under the big W was stolen too.

Anyway, Dick Cheney reminds me of Spencer Tracy's character in that movie. He had no conscience, just like Cheney and Rove. I see Cheney and Rove (they are interchangeable) as the puppet masters standing behing the puppet Bush, pulling all the strings. They will stop at nothing to rape and pillage and ruin our country. They gave no-bid contracts to firms like Blackwater and Haliburton — and guess what? Over nine billion dollars was stolen by "ghost" employees. Turns out that 25% of all no-bid government contracts awarded to Bush's cronies, always "disappears" to the wealthy elite at the top of the chain. And we wonder why the average American cannot afford to survive. The "trickle-down" theory at its finest. This is the most un-Christian thing I've ever heard of.

IRAQ'S MISSING BILLIONS: In a hospital room in Iraq, a newborn baby struggles to breathe. Doctors are deeply frustrated by the severe lack of equipment to save her. The hospital, meant to have benefited from a $4 million refit, is a germ-infested, dilapidated structure with raw sewage leaks in the kitchens and operating rooms. It has melted lighting fixtures. Ants crawl around on the floors. This hospital is just one example of how the huge funds allocated for restoration have somehow gone missing.

In this revealing documentary, Dr. Ali Fadhil, a young Iraqi doctor, sets out to learn what has led to the catastrophic results when money was put into the care of the U.S. led coalition. What emerges is a disturbing tale of corruption and fraud.
As word spread of the kind of money that could be made in Iraq, foreign contractors negotiated deals fast and furiously. CBC Newsworld

From The Age
TENS of billions of dollars have been lost through fraud in Iraq and mismanagement, with some of the money possibly funding the insurgency, a US House of Representatives Committee has been told.

The claims came at the start of a four-day hearing by the House Government Oversight Committee, headed by Henry Waxman. Representatives of eight big companies with contracts in Iraq, including Haliburton, will testify at the hearing, and can expect a hostile reception from the Democrat-controlled committee.

Mr Waxman said the hearing would expose breathtaking "waste, fraud and abuse" and made it clear he intends to pursue senior Bush Administration officials about their role in botched Iraq reconstruction programs.

He said disorganisation and confusion in the Bush Administration after the fall of Iraq meant that billions of dollars had been wasted or stolen and had still to be accounted for.

He said the US Federal Reserve shipped 363 tons of cash, totalling $US12 billion, packed in wooden boxes to Iraq during the Bremer administration from March 2003 to June 2004 but it had "disappeared".

"Who in their right minds would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" he asked as Mr Bremer sat silently. "But that's exactly what our Government did."

Mr Bremer did not dispute the claim that $12 billion — about a third of the reconstruction budget for 2003 — could not be accounted for and that there was no paper trail that could help explain what happened to it.

"The country was in chaos and the banking system was a shambles," he said. "We had to simplify the contracting rules. Such regulations are simply not designed to deal with wartime conditions."
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THIS JUST IN: You won't see, read or hear this in any main stream news outlet!!!!

Join the Impeachment Race in State Legislatures

New Mexico and Vermont are in a race to be the first state to send impeachment resolutions of Bush and Cheney to Congress (see details below). Several other states are also in the race, including Maine (http://www.maineimpeach.org) and New Jersey (http://www.impeachthem.com). A state legislature, without a governor, can petition the House to begin impeachment, and a single Congress Member can force an impeachment debate by accepting the state resolution.
http://impeachbush.tv/impeach/states.html

You can sign up to get involved and stay informed in your state by signing this petition (you can also print it out and collect signatures):
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/petition
___________________

If You Want to End the War, Investigate It

The investigation season is off to a slow start. In "Beyond Oral Sex: The Bush Investigations" , David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz lay out what's needed. Very little has been begun. Chairman John Conyers has held hearings on signing statements . Chairman Waxman is holding hearings this week on corruption . To lobby for the right investigations done the right way, go to:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/investigations

THE GIFT OF FOG

Fear is like fog: you can still drive through it, even though you can’t see your way. But it will always lift. (continued below, but first this...

BREAKING NEWS: In Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, Rupert Murdoch was asked if News Corp. (FOX "News") had managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq. His answer?

“No, I don’t think so. We tried.” Asked by Rose for further comment, he said: “We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East…but we have been very critical of his execution.”

Let me repeat this: “We Tried!”

FOX NEWS, including Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, have deliberately PROMOTED the war in Iraq! The fact that Murdoch virtually admits FOX is a propaganda network should be FRONT PAGE NEWS. This is unconscionable, illegal, shameful. It took an act of Congress to make Murdoch a citizen so he could buy a U.S. TV network -- in order to sway and manipulate Americans. If the news, which is supposed to be "Fair and Balanced" can be bought and sold, then anyone with enough money can come in and do this. http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/index.php?p=341

And he owns MYSPACE!!!

Heard a great review yesterday on Harrison's show: Howard Zin's new book "Voices of a People’s History of the United States." The voices are loud and clear — and our vision is becoming clearer. I personally feel that I am coming out of a fog in my own life, on many converging levels. As I lift the blinders and come out of anesthesia, I am becoming more resolute. We can't allow these destructive people to hold our country hostage any longer. What kind of message does it send to the world that the most powerful democratic nation in the world — a government by the people, for the people and OF THE PEOPLE — allows a dictator to remain in office? On principle alone, we should start impeachment proceedings now. If Bush and Cheney were out, Pelosi would be President, but of course this won't happen; there's not enough time. I wonder if it's possible to launch impeachment proceedings and freeze the decider's war powers? Wishful thinking.

In my view, Gore, Edwards, Obama and Hilary are all great candidates. But I believe Gore and Edwards have the best chance of winning the actual election. I am thrilled that Gore has received both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar nomination for bringing global warming to the attention of the world.

Bush is not doing things half-assed, he’s doing them full-assed.

WHY WE MUST IMPEACH BUSH and CHENEY

Found these tidbits from Doug Thompson of the conservative Capitol Hill Blue back in 2005:

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives...

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President
and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

"I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

Attorney General Alberto [Geneva Convention is "rather quaint"] Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Aside from the below classic quote, don't forget that Bush said back on the 2000 campaign trail, "There oughta be limits to freedom."

I like the question posed to Gonzalez last week, when Congress asked him what Bush thinks the role of Congress is during war time. Does Bush realize Congress is a co-equal branch of government? Is he again going to dismiss the Constitution?

By the way, smirking while sending more troops to their death should be a high crime and misdemeanor. The horrifying thing is, Bush actually believes he’s right. He believes his policies are working. He believes he’s abiding by a higher moral law that will prove him right in the long run. This is the scary. He must be impeached because he lied over and over again. And because his agenda, his framework, his entire way of looking of things, his frame of reference and his definition of life, lying, truth, responsibility, civility, and human interaction is in opposition to the will of the people. He frames everything according to an archaic and very dangerous “Us vs. Them” mentality – and it’s primitive and dysfunctional. It is not only NOT progressive, it’s regressive, positively Paleolithic.

Here's a quote that reminds me of the administration's belief system:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship...

...the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Herman Goering from his cell at Nuremberg, April 18, 1946

And here's a great quote by my wonderful mother:

"I used to think, and still do, that it would be so wonderful if one never ever spoke of one's belief system but instead lived in such a way that people would ask, 'What is it that makes you so loving and kind?'"

Is that a utopian thought?"

When Elephants Jostle

Guest Blog by Carl

There's an old Swahili saying: "When two elephants jostle, that which is hurt is the grass."

Today in America, two elephants jostle: On the one hand, we have the hate-filled religious right, which has co-opted Christ's teachings and turned them into dispensationalist nonsense, somehow linking Christ's message of love and peace with the Old Testament's God of vengeance and retribution. On the other, we have the all-too-predictable backlash of the "God is dead (or at least, never lived)" rational atheist lavage of our brains. Left Behind v. Left Brain, if you will.

I, and millions, maybe tens of millions like me, are the grass which is hurt by all this. We are neither radically religious, but neither have we no faith in Our Lord. Lydia and I recognized this in each other about a year ago when I discovered her blog during the last Koufax Awards cycle (voting begins soon, folks! Vote for Lydia...and you can throw me a bone, too ;-) ), and she mine.

I reject the evangelical teachings not just of the Religious Right, but of my parents' church. However, I also reject the purely "reasoned" belief that this is all random clumpings of matter that scattered across the galaxy and somehow evolved into us and whomever else is out there.

That way denigrates the imagination, and if there is one thing we as humans should treasure above all else, the one thing that separates us from every other....well, almost every other...animal on the planet, it is our imagination. I hasten to note that recent published studies indicate that Bonobo monkeys are able to create music and not just repeat it. In fact, Peter Gabriel has taught some to play keyboards, and some chimpanzees can make compound vocalizations that seem to mean more than either individual vocalization in its own right.

But for the most part, we seem to be the only animal that can forward think, time-displace ourselves to the future, and even imagine an afterlife. If the universe were strictly rational and random, then what purpose would planning and imagination serve?

Comes now the elephant for the rest of us: Francis Collins is the director of the National Human Genome Research Project, and co-led the Human Genome Project (along with Eric Lander of MIT...sorry, I had to plug a classmate...)

Dr. Collins recently published a book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and sat down with science writer John Horgan for a discussion of theology, which was published in this month's National Geographic Magazine. I'm going to highlight some of the more cogent thoughts I read:

Horgan: The problem I have with miracles is not just that they violate what science tells us about how the world works. They also make God seem too capricious. For example, many people believe that if they pray hard enough God will intercede to heal them or a loved one. But does that mean that all those who don't get better aren't worthy?

Collins: In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don't expect to see one. Also, prayer for me is not a way to manipulate God into doing what we want him to do. Prayer for me is much more a sense of trying to get into fellowship with God. I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing rather than telling Almighty God what he should be doing. Look at the Lord's Prayer. It says, "Thy will be done." It wasn't, "Our Father who art in Heaven, please get me a parking space."

As both a recipient and performer of miracles, I can appreciate Dr. Collins' statement: prayer isn't about finding a parking space. Prayer is about guidance to do His work.

Some might take issue with us on the left who are religious. All we really want is to live life in His grace, to live in peace with our neighbors, to do unto them that we would want done unto us, and to find our own salvation.

Like Dr. Collins, I don't think God watches us daily to keep tabs on us. What a waste of omnipotence that would be, and in fact, would speak to me of someone with a personality disorder like OCD.

What scares me about this world, and in particular this nation, is that (to flip to the other elephant), there are people who believe just that:

Collins: What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head? Whether it was the Inquisition or the Crusades on the one hand or the World Trade Center on the other? But we shouldn't judge the pure truths of faith by the way they are applied any more than we should judge the pure truth of love by an abusive marriage. We as children of God have been given by God this knowledge of right and wrong, this Moral Law, which I see as a particularly compelling signpost to his existence. But we also have this thing called free will, which we exercise all the time to break that law. We shouldn't blame faith for the ways people distort it and misuse it.

Don't blame faith for how people interpret it. In this country, people use faith almost like the red velvet rope at the door to a hot club. Wanna get in? Lemme see your faith. What? You're Jewish (or Muslim or atheist or Buddhist)? Sorry. You don't get in.

This is no different than what those who dropped planes on us on September 11 believe and I'll be damned but I thought we were better than this!

There's a lot more to this interview, but I don't want to ruin the surprises for you. Suffice it to say that Dr. Collins expresses in a few short answers what many of us have wrestled with our entire lives: why is there suffering? What is free will? Can you explain altruism without faith? Will we ever stop needing a God?

For me, God pushed the whole thing in motion and walked away for a sandwich, from time to time looking in on us to see if we're OK, and maybe throwing us a bone (or a Son) to remind us of who we are supposed to be.

God gave me a brain, true, but He also gave me a mind. He didn't ask me to be an automaton, but to find out that which I can about my world, and then find out what I can't know. If my beliefs are wrong, if I am condemned to die and spend eternity in hell, it seems to me that an awful lot of people (the Rapturists never talk about how Revelations really only expressly says 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from the Twelve Tribes, are going to heaven and everyone else is in deep trouble) are going to be by my side.


Or to sum up my feelings:

Henry Drummond: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?

Matthew Harrison Brady: I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge!

Henry Drummond: Do you think a sponge thinks?

Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!

Henry Drummond: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?

Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!

Henry Drummond: Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!

The defense rests, Your Honor.

By CARL
Special Guest Blogger

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