Misc. Friday Stuff

I was at an all day meeting at work yesterday, and it was interesting and fun, but I don’t talk about work on my blog, so that’s that.  But, since I usually write my post the evening before, and post in the morning, I don’t have a lot of time to post much now.  Gotta shower, get ready for school, walk the dog, etc.  What to do?  Just miscellaneous stuff, I think, is the way to go.  Some of this stuff could easily be flushed out into long, serious posts of their own, but not today.

1. A piece of advice.  If you don’t keep your glasses in the SAME PLACE all of the time that they’re not on your face, find them BEFORE taking out your contact lenses.  I’m just saying.

2. TGIF.  We have a pot luck dinner for the school tonight, and Ted has to work tomorrow, so it probably won’t seem like a whole weekend.  But we’ll take what we can get, right?

3. This in no way deserves to be buried.  People need to pay attention, because this is serious, scary shit.  Did you read the other day that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus?

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares “habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless … in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” But he insisted that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

Specter was incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn’t exist — a right, he noted, that was first recognized in medieval England as a shield against the king’s power to dispatch troublesome subjects to royal dungeons.

Later in the hearing, Gonzales described habeas corpus as “one of our most cherished rights” and noted that Congress had protected that right in the 1789 law that established the federal court system. But he never budged from his position on the absence of constitutional protection — a position that seemingly would leave Congress free to reduce habeas corpus rights or repeal them altogether.

If that doesn’t freak you the hell out, it really should.  The administration is claiming habeas corpus doesn’t apply to prisoners in Guantanimo, but if we think this couldn’t apply to any U.S. citizen should the Bush administration decide we’re dangerous, think again.  They’re getting good at overstepping their bounds and grabbing all kinds of power.

4. Fruit on the labels of many products are not in the products, says a new study.  Savvy shoppers look at ingredients before believing that there is actually fruit in a product, but many people buy these products, especially parents trying to get their kids to eat their ‘5 a day’, assuming that if there’s a strawberry on the front of the box, there’s a strawberry inside.  Wrong-o.

Yoplait Go-Gurt Strawberry Splash yogurt, Fruity Cheerios and Berry Berry Kix are just a few of the products named in the organization’s study being released today, “Where’s the Fruit?”

Some products boast natural fruit flavorings, but those don’t contain the nutrients of real fruit.

“Frankly, it was pretty surprising to find that nearly 51 percent of these products had no fruit in them at all and that 16 percent had minimal fruit,” said Leslie Mikkelsen, managing director of the Prevention Institute and a registered dietitian, who headed up the four-month research project.

5. Dot, are you going to take A. to see “Legally Blonde“, the musical?

6. Surprised to hear the assertion that Cheney and Libby led the attack against CIA agent Valarie Wilson and her journalist husband, hoping to discredit Joseph Wilson after he wrote a piece asserting that Bush’s claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons materials in Niger was not based in fact?  Really?  This surprises you? Huh.  I’m sorry to say that nothing they do surprises me anymore.  Horrifies, yes, surprises, no.

7. I started my Dick Francis mystery last night.  I’m not really into the mystery genre, but I like Dick Francis…probably because I like horses.  So far, so good, though I’m going to go out on a limb and say it lacks something that many of his earlier books had.  I’m not very far in, so maybe it will get better.  I hope so.

I know this is lame.  Serious serious stuff, mixed in with stupid stuff, but I gotta get in the shower now and get my butt in gear.  So this is what you get.  Hey, no one reads or comments on Fridays anyway, right?  And I’m a crappy speller with no time for spell check.  My apologies.