Air Force Academy...

Yep. That's where I'm heading tomorrow morning with a paper due Thursday only half written to seek out people to attend our ethics conference next year. Ha ha, I love how self-serving the academies are...how pompous..."oh, no...ha ha, I'm not here to learn about ethics really, I'm just hear to shop around for speakers for our ethics conference. You should come." I hope we have more like the ones we had this year. I think at one point, we had a panel of the guy who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul (who is every bit as used-car-salesman-like as you might imagine[side story, when we were talking about values and ethics he said "every decision is easy once you've decided upon your values. Simply follow through with the logical conclusion of your values and you'll always know the right decision." To which I asked about conflicing values, such as prolonging life but shortening suffering and he said, "it sounds to me like you just need to sit down and rethink your bedrock values and then those decisions wont be difficult anymore." I was about to hit him in the face for being an arrogant over-paid asshole when the buzzer sounded and we changed groups])

I'm slightly excited to go to the AFA mainly because I'm excited to see what I've only dreamt about...being promoted at Thanksgiving, fridges in the rooms, private bathrooms, optional breakfasts and no formations...mmm...sounds nice.

What else is going on in the world (and yes, by "the world" I mean, what has occupied my time and thoughts)? I've been thinking a lot about the whole wire tapping thing, which seems to have faded away. Hmm...I wonder if Cheney shot that dude in the face for a reason now (que Hitchcock music). Man, it really seems this administration and anyone involved with them can do no wrong. From Abramof, DeLay, Libby and Cheney, not to mention the entire "oops...so we didn't go to war for the best reasons," they can do anything and walk away clean. Well...hopefully not.

This article is an interesting discussion of the implications of the wire tapping business. Moreover, I heard a really interesting discussion on NPR about how Alito spoke of the "Unitary Executive" durring his nomination trials. While I am, admitedly, un-informed on the full implications of that, the two scholars who were debating were in agreement that it basically meant Alito believes that, particularly in a time of "war" (even, apparently, prolonged, unending war) the President has the authority to do as he pleases (yes, this is a gross overstatment and oversimplification but hey...it sounds scary enough, right?)

And what else? This business about selling US ports to Dubai is absurd. Even without mentioning that the White House has financial ties and seeks to make gains from the sell (suprise...again...man, I hope the Dubai government contracts Halliburton to rebuild anything they need in the ports), the idea of selling our ports to a company that is state owned to begin with seems absurd. I need to read more about it to come up with a good reaction though...but considering the right and left have said it's a bad idea, I can't help but think maybe he should listen ("he" being Bush).