Restore Our Rights

To sign the petition yourself, visit this ACLU page.

"To My Members of Congress:

The Constitution and due process are in danger in America, as the Bush administration continues to run roughshod over our most fundamental constitutional rights.

We can no longer stand on the sidelines while the president extinguishes the light of American values, our civil liberties, and respect for law.

The America we know is disappearing, and the time to reverse this trend is now. I urge you to act immediately to:

1. Restore habeas corpus and due process.
2. Pass the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.
3. End torture and abuse in secret prisons.
4. Stop extraordinary rendition: secretly kidnapping people and sending them to countries that torture.
5. Close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and give those held there access to justice.
6. Investigate wrongdoing and ensure those who broke the law are held accountable.
7. Restore American values and the rule of law.

Our commitment to freedom and fairness have made America the great country that it is today.

That is why we’ve come together to demand that you act immediately to preserve the hard-won rights that define us as a nation.

I stand with the ACLU and my fellow Americans, in person or in spirit, as we gather in Washington to restore our America this June 26, 2007."

Absence and music

Okay, it's been long enough, I guess. Sometimes I go through periods of not posting anything here. I apologize to both loyal readers. :) Work has been keeping me pretty busy lately, so much so that often I don't feel like doing anything on the computer when I get home in the evenings. I'll try to do better.

I did at least manage, a few days ago, to add this month's installment of mp3club! which maybe you'd like to take a listen to.

The first track this month is a live version of a Lindsey Buckingham song which blew me away when I saw the performance recently on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I'm not sure if you'll get the whole effect from just the audio, but the live performance was just Buckingham with a single guitar and an amp, putting it all out there. His playing style makes it sound like maybe there are multiple musicians, but nope, it's just him. I subsequently acquired the album from which the song came, and the album version of this song is nowhere near as intense as this live version.

The second song this month is from the musical Hair. Stephen Colbert made a reference to the lyrics in the intro to one of his shows, and so I included the song here.

Finally, there's a song by The Blow, about whom I have no knowledge. The song, while somewhat simplistic, made me bob my head, so there you go.