Former Clinton White House aide and Arizona prosecutor Andrei Cherny announced his run for Congress in Arizona’s 9th Congressional District. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Andrei on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you live in Arizona get involved here.

In related news on Arizona and the House, “Ron Barber, an aide to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) who was wounded in the shooting spree that also injured Giffords, will run to replace her in the House.” Barber announced today he would run in the special election for Giffords seat, and said that she had asked him to run.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has just announced plans to step down from Congress.

Giffords was the “victim of a gunshot wound to the head in an attack a year ago in her Arizona district.” She said her work toward recovery was her reason for stepping down.

Prior to the shooting Gabrielle Giffords “had been considered a rising Democratic star, and had been considering a bid for Senate this fall.” She has been absent from Capitol Hill over the course of her recovery, except for a very moving surprise return in August to vote on an agreement in the House, to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

Watch her moving announcement here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

UPDATE (2:32 pm): I first caught the breaking news on Twitter and them MSNBC. Since I first posted this, Gabby Giffords has already become a Trend on Twitter.

Blues, Jazz, R& B legend Etta James has passed away. She was 73.

According to her longtime manager and friend, Lupe De Leon, Etta James “died from complications from leukemia with her husband, Artis Mills, and her sons by her side.”

Etta James was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010. She also suffered from hepatitis C and dementia.  James passed away at a hospital in Riverside, California. She would have turned 74 next Wednesday.

Her manager Lupe De Leon said, “This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world. She was a true original who could sing it all — her music defied category.”

Etta James music did defy category. Throughout Etta James’ long career, she “overcame a heroin addiction, opened for the Rolling Stones, won six Grammys and was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Despite her ups and downs — including a number of health problems — she maintained an optimistic attitude.

“Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about,” she told CNN’s Denise Quan in 2002. “I don’t!”

Etta might not have known what she was “sorry about,” but her music spoke to soul deep to her fans and admirers. From her iconic love song, At Last to her rocking version of I Just Wanna Make Love To You, Etta James struck a chord in the romantic and heart broken in us all.

Etta James was born on January 25, 1938, as Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California.

Her mother was a teenaged African-American. She never knew her father and liked to speculate he was the famous pool player Minnesota Fats. Mrs. James was reared by her grandparents and caregivers. She grew up and toured with the late Johnny “Guitar” Watson and was discovered in 1951 by West Coast bandleader Johnny Otis.

I think perhaps one of my all time favorite Etta James songs is this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Washington Post’s Adam Bernstein’s obituary calls James “a widely admired musical interpreter of love and pain and one of the first rhythm-and-blues singers with a large mainstream following”

Rest in peace Etta… You will be missed… Your music will live on to remind us all of your powerhouse voice, that soothed our weary heartbroken souls and rocked us to our core:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out “Etta James: A playlist and reviews from the Post archives” and “Etta James: Recommended listening.”

UPDATE: There’s more Etta James videos at PamelaLeavey.com.

Bruce Springsteen’s new single “We Take Care Of Our Own,” off his upcoming CD, Wrecking Ball was released today. 

ABC News notes, “judging from the names of the other tracks listed on the singers website — “This Depression,” “Easy Money,” and “Death to My Hometown” — Springsteen is once again wading in political waters and returning his focus to working-class issues.”

“We Take Care Of Our Own” is a hard hitting rocker, in true Springsteen / E Street Band style. As  longtime readers here know, I am a big Springsteen fan and I have to say this new single simply blew me away musically and lyrically.

Watch the video debut here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Springsteen’s long-time manager Jon Landau said of Springsteen’s new work, “Bruce has dug down as deep as he can to come up with this vision of modern life. The lyrics tell a story you can’t hear anywhere else and the music is his most innovative in recent years. The writing is some of the best of his career and both veteran fans and those who are new to Bruce will find much to love on ‘Wrecking Ball.’”

Washington Post’s Click Track blog notes, Wrecking Ball is the 17th album of Springsteen’s career:

The social commentary is evident on the lead single: “From Chicago to New Orleans, from the muscle to the bone/From the shotgun shack to the Superdome/There ain’t no help, the cavalry stayed home/There ain’t no one hearing the bugle blowin’,” he sings on the title track. It’s not hard to see a thematic similarity between the song and Springsteen’s work on “Someplace like America,” a recent book by Washington Post photographer Michael Williamson and writer Dale Maharidge to which Springsteen contributed a forward.

You can check out Springsteen’s reflections on “Someplace like America” here.

Springsteen’s new Wrecking Ball CD will be released on March 6. U.S. tour dates have not yet been announced, but it is reported will be a full U.S. tour with the E Street Band in 2012. Rolling Stone has more on Springsteen’s new CD here.

Wrecking Ball track list:
1. “We Take Care of Our Own”
2. “Easy Money”
3. “Shackled and Drawn”
4. “Jack of All Trades”
5. “Death to My Hometown”
6. “This Depression”
7. “Wrecking Ball”
8. “You’ve Got It”
9. “Rocky Ground”
10. “Land of Hope and Dreams”
11. “We Are Alive”

I need you to take 30 seconds to watch the RNC attack ad below. That way, all that follows will make better sense to to you, Gentle Reader/Viewer.

Antisemitism on display?  Absolutely. But more from the accusers than from the accused. From the mysteriously and anonymously registered on October 18 website  steveisraelstandswiththem.com, which has mysteriously gone “offline” [update: it's back, now]:

Click here to view the embedded video.

click for the RNC YouTube original

Has the GOP gone completely mad?

Uh, yeah. But there’s a reason for it, and there’s not actually a “GOP” anymore. 

The easiest way to explain this is by analogy.

In Eastern psychology, there is the concept of the emotions as the “monkey cage” or “a cage of monkeys.” Perhaps

During the day, the Mind continually fulfills the will of  whichever monkey is screaming the loudest. When it gets what it wants, it shuts up. Then, the NEXT screaming monkey. They are under no requirement to be consistent: the monkey screaming for chocolate cake shuts up when the piehole is filled, and then the “you must diet” monkey screams.

Right now the “Right” and the “Conservatives” and the “GOP” are the monkey cage. The difference is that, in this case, mind has been fired. (A Konservative mind would never go on strike – no matter how hideous the working konditions.)

People constantly complain about the GOP “presidential” field. But consider it from their point of view:  Right now there is no such thing as a “qualified Republican candidate.”

That’s not a slam; it’s a stone cold fact. The Party has no clear consensus and, thus, “priorities” are all over the map. They are held together either by hatred — Guns, God, Gays, etc. — or else sheer contrariness — oppose all Democratic ideas, no matter how sound — but the fundamental positions within the GOP are SO contradictory that no one exists who could fill the wish list for the crazy salad they’d collectively like to toss.

I mean, accusing Congressman Steve Israel of anti0-semitism for standing with Occupy Wall Street is absurd on the face of it. The former President and CEO of the Institute on Holocaust and Law is probably NOT anti-semitic, nor, given his name, would one automatically mistake him for a Protestant.

No: this is the screaming of monkeys.

The attempt by the RNC to throw the anti-semitism card at the Occupy Wall Street movement is nearly Keystone Kops in its undistinguished hamhandedness:

It begins on October 19, last Wednesday with this headline, when it hit Memeorandum at 12:30 AM, t0 be precise:

Jonathan Easley / The Hill:
GOP rips Dems for anti-Semitism in Occupy Wall Street protests

Discussion:

ZIP / Weasel Zippers:   RNC Rips Dem Leaders For Failing To Denounce Anti-Semitim At Occupy Wall Street Protests…

And here is a taste of the story:

GOP rips Dem silence on anti-Semitism in Wall Street protests
By Jonathan Easley – 10/19/11 09:26 AM ET

The Republican National Committee is calling out Democratic leaders for ignoring episodes of anti-Semitism in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The GOP argues the Democrats are holding a double standard by ripping the Tea Party for incidents of racism in the movement while letting slide anti-Semitic comments by demonstrators protesting corporate greed.

“Democratic leaders have spent the last week championing the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement,” read a statement from RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer. “Yet in the midst of protestors’ extreme anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments, they’ve been silent.”

Spicer criticized President Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

“Where’s the outrage?” he asked. “While protestors are seen spewing hate against Jewish Americans, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have declared their support for the demonstrations. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel even circulated a petition saying he’s ‘standing with’ Occupy Wall Street.”

Spicer’s memo included links to videos on YouTube that showed a few protestors making anti-Semitic statements.

Gee, where’s the outrage at outrage? Does this lack of outrage about the outrage outrage you? And what about Bill O’Reilly? How can he be outraged, when the Democrats aren’t outraged that some of those outraged by the outrageous antics of Wall Street and the Plutocracy aren’t outrageous enough to characterize the entire Occupy Wall Street for the phony Marxist, Socialist, Anti-Semitic, illegitimate Dirty Hippy lawbreaking thing that it is???!

And how low can the GOP go when they’ve been feeding a non-stop “find the crank” and use him or her to smear the entire crowd* agenda for the entire week? It verges on the pathetic.

[* The Crazy Salad du Jour is Fox News' "EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role in ‘Occupy’ Movement" -- even though they were just reporting that ACORN doesn't exist (and ought to know, since they held the flailing arms as Breitbart and O'Keefe slit its throat)]

The Ghost of ACORN Past

This is very interesting, when you consider that the domain  steveisraelstandswiththem.com – the one whose sole page and mission is to present the video at the top of this post — was registered on October 18 [emphasis added]:

from www.allwhois.com

Domain name: steveisraelstandswiththem.com

Administrative Contact:
Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
Whois Agent (hnvtdgdf@whoisprivacyprotect.com)
+1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4259744730
PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1
C/O steveisraelstandswiththem.com
Bellevue, WA 98007
US

Technical Contact:
Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
Whois Agent (hnvtdgdf@whoisprivacyprotect.com)
+1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4259744730
PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1
C/O steveisraelstandswiththem.com
Bellevue, WA 98007
US

Registrant Contact:
Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
Whois Agent ()

Fax:
PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1
C/O steveisraelstandswiththem.com
Bellevue, WA 98007
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns1.cha.smartechcorp.net
ns2.cha.smartechcorp.net
ns3.atl.smartechcorp.net
ns4.atl.smartechcorp.net

Creation date: 18 Oct 2011 13:22:02
Expiration date: 18 Oct 2012 13:22:00

Registered, you will notice, anonymously. (More on that in a moment.)

So, the attempt to smear Steve Israel and the Occupy Wall Street movement BY THE RNC was created at approximately 1:30 PM October 18th (EDT?), and the pliable reporter with “The Hill” and the obligatory cross-linked blog to drive it to Memeorandum (Weasel Zippers, in this case) had the story “breaking” by 12:30 PM EDT on October 19th. No coordinated plan going there.

And then this week, the fully-produced campaign ad, with requisite footage of crazies was released. Here’s a screenshot:

The faint rectangle at the bottom says the RNC is responsible, as well

OK. So WHY did they register it anonymously?

Obviously, they knew that people would have to know who put the site up, and go to great lengths to make sure they’re taking full responsibility. So, what lunacy grips them that they have to register their new attack domain ANONYMOUSLY?

I guess ‘never let your right hand know what your far right hand is doing’ right? It is reflexive secretiveness, absurdly expressed. But absurdity is the order of the day.

 That strip you see across the top is the Google cache legend, explaining that this was how the website looked “a snapshot of the page as it appeared on October 24th, 2011 at 09:41:01 GMT.” (click here for the full sized screen.)

You see, there fundamentally  is no Republican Party right now: it has devolved into a series of tangentally-connected single-issue groups with competing aims and contradictory beliefs.

The anti-tax people fight with the “fiscal responsibility” folk. The small government Randians conflict with the MONITOR ALL PREGNANCIES with Big Government religious extremists. The crypto-athiests of “me-first” conflict with the “my-way-or-the-highway” religious zealots.

The point here is not to belittle the separate interests — although it ought to be apparent that I hold their beliefs in no high regard — but to note that while the machine chugs on, collecting money and minting attack ads, instant domains and anonymous identified webpages to show the latest video, the soul of the machine, the driver, the unifying consensus is gone.

And in the absence of that “driver” the bulldozer clanks on, mindlessly attacking when the attacks make no real sense.

It is the twitching of the legs of a dead daddy long legs spider. The nerves continue to produce movements of the legs, as all children learn, but the spider itself is dead.

Right now, the old consensus, the Ronald Reagan coalition of the GOP is out of steam. Out of ideas, out of passion, out of touch with the times.

It happened to the New Deal Democrats.

I once watched a series of speeches on CSPAN, shown concurrently with (IIRC) the 1996 Democratic National Convention, and it showed speeches by every Democratic Nominee from FDR to George McGovern and probably on from there, but what struck me was that the vision, clear in FDR, passionate in Truman, still strong in Adlai Stevenson, beginning to mutate a bit in JFK, clearly stated, but muddier with LBJ, and finally, in 1968, Hubert Humphrey spoke the same words as FDR, but the life had leeched from them. They were copies of copies of copies, and what had once seemed visionary had now turned pedestrian, what was once profound was now merely a string of clichés.

And that is where the GOP stands today. Separately. Uncertain in what they believe in as a party, but unified only by what they DON’T believe in, which is simply the negation of anything that the opposition believes in.

There is no consensus in congress and no compromise because there is no compromise nor consensus in the Republican “party,” since Parties are merely mechanisms for national consensus, and in 1976, Gerald R. Ford ran on a Republican platform that called for the ratification of the ERA and endorsed a woman’s right to choose. Jimmy Carter’s Democratic Platform pointedly did NOT support the ERA.

(When Republicans are out of power, they are always in favor of fiscal responsibility and restraint. When they are in office, they historically create gigantic new bureaucracies and spend like drunken sailors, as we saw with Reagan and Bush, and again with Bush the Younger.)

But the words have rung hollow, and the profound has turned to cliché.

(Mr. Boehner! Tear down this wall!)

We have created a self-supporting political money network — professional consultants, professional fundraisers, professional itinerary and support services, professional pollsters and the rest — that depend on a 24-hour political cycle. Otherwise, they’re out of work for a year between elections. And in that network, the machine clanks on, but, like the Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter, there is no longer any real agenda and time is wasted in endless cockfighting over turf, Congress reclaiming powers and prerogatives usurped by Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.  And the Democratic Party went into decline.

For a time, it was like that dead daddy long legs.

John Locke once said that words lose their meaning over time. That great concepts become hollow and empty, as has our Constitution become hollow and empty words.

The whole notion that the people, peacefully assembling for the redress of grievances are an OBSTRUCTION and a MENACE to (INSERT BUREAUCRATIC CONCERN HERE) ought to be laughable, given the plain language of the First Amendment.

And yet it is taken seriously that nobody actually takes it seriously.

Same for search and seizure, trial by jury and self-incrimination, to say nothing of cruel and unusual punishments.

But that’s another topic for another day.

The point is that in all of this, all of these weird, reflexive attacks, the Grand Old Party’s legs still twitch, but the spider itself is dead.

Until the next resurrection. The next consensus.

But right now there ain’t one. (See 2009′s “Daddy Long Legs” for more on this.)

But right now, the Monkee Cage is rockin’ and roilin’ and (without being at all schadenfreudey) it’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys.*

Courage.

===============

According to librarian Ted Nesbitt at allexperts.com:

The most authoritative source for the etymological of words and phrases in the English language is “The Oxford English Dictionary,” the multi-volume collection commonly called The OED. The earliest recorded WRITTEN use of the phrase was “cage of monkeys,” in 1840. Of course, the expression most likely was used in SPOKEN English, long before it was ever written in print.

Here is the entry from that source:

31. colloq. a wagonload (also barrel, etc.) of monkeys: used as the type of something extremely clever, mischievous, disorderly, jolly, fun, etc.

In barrel of monkeys, perhaps influenced by barrel of fun (laughs, etc.) s.v. BARREL n.

1840 G. DARLEY Thomas à Becket V. viii. 129 De Traci chatters More than a cage of monkeys: we must wait.

1889 Harper’s Bazar 21 Dec. 932/4 My brother..says the American girls are perfectly fascinating… He says they are more fun than a box of monkeys.

1895 W. C. GORE in Inlander Dec. 115 Barrel of monkeys, or bushel of monkeys, to have more fun than, to have an exceedingly jolly time.

1908 W. G. DAVENPORT Butte & Montana 28 This is just more fun than a bag of monkeys.

1930 G. GOODCHILD McLean Investigates xvi. 310 If once we lose touch with Feeny good-bye to the Rajah’s ruby. He is as clever as a cartload of monkeys.

1968 A. POWELL Mil. Philosophers 155 They’re as artful as a cartload of monkeys when it comes to breaking the rules.

1978 G. VIDAL  Kalki ii. 24 Christianity was never exactly a barrel of monkeys when it came to the here and now.

[...]

==================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Bexar County is pronounced “Behar” just as “Texas” ought to be pronounced “Tehas,” which undoubtedly explains the cluelessness of Fox News as they ejaculated their fear all over the airwaves this week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

click here for YouTube

I happened to be, literally, right across the street at the time that the TERROR scare was happening.

I have been offline for a week, attending a national tax convention in San Antonio, Texas, and we had arrived a day early (although HOW we arrived is another story). We had eaten at San Antonio’s legendary Mi Tierra restaurant, open 24 hours, founded in 1941 by Pete Cortez, who said something important on the back of the menu that seems to have been forgotten in post 9-11 America: “I am an American by choice, not by chance.”

Walking back to the hotel at about midnight, we passed right around two sides of the Bexar County Courthouse, and I noticed that they had one of those old-time fire escapes that you can jump up, and pull down the last stage of steps. A little more than an hour later, a bunch of drunken tourists did just that. They found an open window, and just like you used to do at the old high school building, they opened the window and got inside. The surveillance videos later showed them wearing sombreros they’d found and the oversized gavel they stole as a souvenir.

Local news crew leaving courthouse, with fire escape in question

But nobody knew that on San Antonio television when I woke up that day.

Across the street, at my hotel

It is rightly and duly noted that paranoia requires a large dollop of megalomania to grease the gears, and megalomania isn’t exactly in short supply in Texas.

That megalomania was on display as the local newsies spent long minutes speculating on WHY they were an OBVIOUS terror target: there “is a lot of military” around San Antonio, and, of course, the American National Shrine of The Alamo is located there. ‘Nuff said? Well, not exactly.

We always conveniently forget all the foolish blather that accompanies any sudden news. Within days or hours, it is “history” with the hysteria stripped away and forgotten.

But, at the beginning, it’s always the same story: in the absence of facts, humans invariably veer into paranoia and wild fantasy, and having very little to go on, TV talking heads are required to soberly and somberly fill the vast void of facts with commentary — which is, if you think about it, a perfect Rorschach Ink Blot test: it tells you more about what’s going on in the mind of the observer than it tells you about the indistinct chaos presented for interpretation.

Bexar County Courthouse

Just reading the descriptions in the news stories gives you a window into the mind of the news writer:

Five men allegedly involved in a late-night break-in … (Wall Street Journal)

Five young men were arrested early Wednesday morning in connection with a break-in … (New York Times)

FIVE drunken French tourists landed in a Texas jail … (Herald-Sun [Australia] reprinting the Agence French Press wire story)

five French-Moroccan nationals tried to break into a Texas courthouse … (local Fox affiliate broadcast)

Five foreign men were arrested during a courthouse break-in … (National Post [Canada])

And, of course, Fox News (the video above):

 Breaking news … the FBI is investigating a possible terror threat in the State of Texas … broke into an [sic*] historic courthouse in downtown San Diego [sic] … Muslims …  (Headline: FBI questioning 5 Muslims who broke into Texas courthouse).

And they mispronounced “Bexar” even though all the local footage was from their affiliate (the second video above) who KNOW to pronounce it as “Behar” or, essentially, “Bear” with a Texas accent. San DIEGO? [* but they got the "an historical" right, grammatically? Oy.]

Muslim.

BBC – Anti-Muslim grafitti

The Reuters story gives a little better rationale for the paranoia (but note that it’s after the fact, with the conference information slipped in AFTER the fact, as hysteria is repurposed into history:

all five were Moroccans.

Officials said they found “photographs of infrastructure” inside the vehicle, including shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings that they say were taken in cities across the United States.

“They got travel documents, parking passes, they have been all over the country,” Police Captain Cris Andersen said. “A lot of photographic equipment, a lot of documentation equipment [was] inside their vehicle.”

“They are going to be held for interrogation by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the joint terrorism task force,” Andersen said.

San Antonio is home to three major U.S. military bases, and officials said they have notified them of the incident, and have told them to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity and vehicles.

A military intelligence convention is underway at the city’s Convention Center several blocks away, with top intelligence officials including White House officials set to speak, but investigators did not say whether there was any connection.

Except that we now know that two of them, drunk, broke in, while their three buddies were in the RV with California plates (rented in Miami). So, “five” Moroccan, French nationals, foreigners, Muslims DID NOT break into the courthouse, and, seeing the surveillance videos, it’s pretty clear what happened with the two drunken burglars.

Bexar County Courthouse (center two towers)
Site of the Bomb Scare 

They even announced it in an afternoon press conference in front of the San Diego landmark that is actually in San Antonio, Texas:

Police arrested five men with French visas about 2 a.m. Wednesday after two of the suspects set off an alarm by climbing a fire escape to the fourth floor and entering a courtroom, Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz said.

The two men donned sombreros, according to surveillance video, and spent 30 minutes “clowning around inside the courtroom,” Mr. Ortiz said.

They left beer bottles behind, and the sheriff’s office learned that they had visited several bars earlier in the evening.

“It’s very likely these individuals were just intoxicated,” he said. “There are no indications of terrorism.” (Wall Street Journal — like, Fox, owned by News Corp.)

Somehow, two sombreros, a couple of bottles of beer and an oversized gavel had been turned into a national terrorist Bomb Scare. And then slowly backed away from.

Except … this should NEVER have been a news story.

Aftermath to Texas Terror across the street from my hotel

Had two drunken San Antonio high school football players pulled the same stunt, what do you suppose the coverage would have been?

Should never have been a national news story — save for the skin color and imputed nationality of the prank suspects, that is. And, like Mormons, Muslims are teetotalers. They don’t drink if they are devout, and the fanatics we’re worried about are generally very devout. I don’t know if they actually WERE Muslims (Fox tossed THAT one in), and now it doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter except for the bigotry that the insane over-reaction represents. I have this odd feeling that this is NOT the first drunken tourist escapade that San Antonio police officers have responded to. So how’d it get to be a Federal case? A Fox News ALERT?

Prejudice and cowardice. Sorry, kids. That’s the bottom line.

Historic Bexar County Courthouse

Rationalize it any way you want, but it’s all you’re left with after a ridiculous security lapse. Had I been drunk and nimble, I could have pulled the same stunt two hours earlier. I even noticed how easy it would be to get on that fire escape and commented on it to my wife, walking back from a couple of Margaritas and wonderful Mexican dinner.

The Canadian National Post got the headline right:

Drunken prank lands French tourists in US jail

AFP October 20, 2011 10:19AM

Even the New York Times felt the need to engage in a little creative revisionism, changing the original title of their story from “5 Held in break-in at San Antonio courthouse” to “Texas Courthouse Break-In Seen as Prank.” (Check the page title).

This commemorative stone in the courthouse plaza suggests
that “privatization” is not a new notion in government 

Or, if it was five drunken college students who’d rented an RV with a GPS in Miami and were taking pictures and videos of their trip, would anyone have characterized the event thusly:

“photographs of infrastructure” inside the vehicle, including shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings that they say were taken in cities across the United States.

“They got travel documents, parking passes, they have been all over the country,” Police Captain Cris Andersen said. “A lot of photographic equipment, a lot of documentation equipment [was] inside their vehicle.”

Welcome to Texas, foreign nationals!

Really? Or, perhaps, were paranoid sekurity officers covering their butts and dreaming of ceremonies awarding them plaques for stopping a “terrorist plot” (or a “bomb plot” as the Fox Affiliate in San Diego … er, ANTONIO, claimed)?

Still: the Bexar County Judge ended up being  interviewed by the Guardian in England [!!??!?!]:

“It’s just very strange,” [Bexar County Judge Nelson] Wolff said. “If it was some kids in the neighborhood, you’d think it was a prank.”

The Rorschach blot test reveals the panties-wetting nature of the over-reaction, belieing that song they sing in Texas at football games every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Fall:

o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Not bravery, but mere bravos, terrified of their own shadows, alas.

We might or might not have been in Rick Perry’s Texas, but we were surely in George Bush’s Amerika. Still.

The notion that three military bases are threatened by five college-age guys in a rented RV is laughable on the face of it: If the military is that vulnerable, why bother having one?

If you swung around to your left slightly less than 180º
from the shot of the cameraman above, you’d have seen this
van being towed away. These rental vans are extremely popular
with foreign tourists, as a trip to Chaco Canyon or the Grand Canyon
in May will quickly reveal to the inquiring traveler … 

Another incident took place later that afternoon.

A “Turkish national” was arrested for taking photographs of the Federal Courthouse and Post Office building across the street from the Alamo. Officials stated that it was because it was suspicious that he was taking photographs of the building.

“It isn’t an interesting building,” the official said, noting that the Alamo is across the street.

That building whose name I forget

That’s weird. I took photos of that building because I thought it was both interesting AND an interesting contrast to the martial hallowed ground and shrine across the street.

The “uninteresting” Federal building as seen along the wall of the Alamo

Hell, if taking uninteresting pictures was grounds for incarceration, there’d be very few Americans not in jail. Tourists most of all.

I don’t know what ever happened to the Turkish photographer.

Probably on his way to Guantanimo Bay.

The Statue of Justice in front of the Bexar County Courthouse

And that is the terror that stalks Texas.

Or, as the Dallas Blog notes:

Drunk Sombrero-Wearing Frenchmen Terrorize Texas Courthouse
by Tom McGregor Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 10:08 PM

The U.S. Homeland Security has been alerted to an alleged terrorist scheme by five drunken French tourists who wore Mexican sombrero hats and snuck into the Bexar County Courthouse in Texas. After conducting a thorough and rigorous investigation it was later determined that the so-called terrorists were simply throwing a surprise ‘Welcome to Texas’ party for themselves….

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Organized as part of Take Back Chicago Monday, a group of 40 activists dressed as Robin Hoods kayaked the Chicago River toward a Mortgage Bankers Association meeting to deliver a message: it’s time for the big banks to pay Americans back for the losses they have suffered through lost homes, lost revenue, and lost jobs.

Additionally, the group dropped a banner on the Michigan Bridge that read: “Wall Street: Steals from the 99%. Gives to the Rich. Let’s take it back!”

The Robin Hood action was organized by National People’s Action, a member of Take Back Chicago.  National People’s Action is also a member of The New Bottom Line campaign, a nationwide coalition of 1,000 faith-based and community organizations that seeks to hold Wall Street accountable.

WATCH VIDEO HERE:

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Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.