You probably got one of these, too. A letter from the U.S. Census Bureau informing you that you will receive another letter from them in about a week.

No wonder the country is broke.

I said the same thing when I got that stupid-ass letter. Do I need a letter to tell me I’m gonna get another letter?

An appellate court has upheld references to God on U.S. currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance, rejecting arguments they violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

“The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded,” Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2-1 ruling Thursday.

Bea noted that schools do not require students to recite the pledge, which was amended to include the words “under God” by a 1954 federal law. Members of Congress at the time said they wanted to set the United States apart from “godless communists.”

In a separate 3-0 ruling, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins and currency, citing an earlier 9th Circuit panel that ruled the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic and “has nothing whatsover to do with the establishment of religion.”

On the day I agreed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, I always thought I’d have to jump off my terrace.

It’s raining today, though. Maybe tomorrow.

At least she has the body to pull it off…

But seriously? Honey, don’t die for your couture.

Her daft garb was so uncomfortable it brought on the early stages of the potentially deadly deep vein thrombosis.

The experienced flight crew told GaGa she’d best get it off quick or risk long-term damage.

An airline source said: “GaGa was a high-risk DVT case so she was advised to change out of her clothes. But the outfit was so cumbersome she needed help changing out of it. She was particularly miffed about ditching her heels. She was wearing them in memory of her friend Alexander.”Her daft garb was so uncomfortable it brought on the early stages of the potentially deadly deep vein thrombosis.

The experienced flight crew told GaGa she’d best get it off quick or risk long-term damage.

An airline source said: “GaGa was a high-risk DVT case so she was advised to change out of her clothes. But the outfit was so cumbersome she needed help changing out of it. She was particularly miffed about ditching her heels. She was wearing them in memory of her friend Alexander.”

Poor Gaga.

A northern Mississippi school district will not be hosting a high school prom this spring after a lesbian student sought to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

The Itawamba County school district’s board decided Wednesday to drop the prom because of what it called recent distractions but without specifically mentioning the girl’s request, which was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The student, 18-year-old high school senior Constance McMillen, said the cancellation was retaliation for her efforts to bring her girlfriend, also a student, to the April 2 dance.

“A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation,” McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered.

School policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex. The ACLU of Mississippi had given the district until Wednesday to change that policy, arguing that banning same-sex prom dates violated McMillen’s constitutional rights.

So a girl wants to bring her girlfriend and there’s a policy that says prom dates must be of the opposite sex? What the hell kind of crap is that?

It got me thinking though; what if she arrived and said she didn’t have a date and that her and her girlfriend weren’t there as a couple. Would they not let them in the door?

And, of course, the school is now going to pin (without actually saying so) the entire cancellation on this one girl so that her fellow students can ridicule her. That’s equally ridiculous.

But hey. At least they won’t have to have young adults exposed to something as strange and unfamiliar as lebians. *eye roll*

Only about a third of the homeowners who have successfully completed the trial period of the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program have been offered permanent relief, according to new federal data obtained by the Huffington Post.

The conversion rate — about 33 percent — is woefully short of what the Treasury Department had forecast. Treasury thought the rate would be “ranging up to 75 percent,” Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, told the Congressional Oversight Panel in October.

The other two-thirds of homeowners who have gone through the trial program and made the necessary payments remain in limbo. Some of those homeowners — more than 350,000 of them — will ultimately lose out on the kind of relief the administration has repeatedly promised: averting foreclosure through lower monthly payments.

I swear, that should be this administration’s motto: promise everything and deliver nothing.

Yet another waste of taxpayer money and another fail in the long list of fails.

I wonder how he’s gonna blame Bush for this one?

FOX Nation and The Corner reported:

You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Call me old-fashioned but how about we read it first, then vote on it?

Wow. So we have to pass it to find out what’s in it.

That doesn’t sound very ethical, transparent, or hopeychangey.

I’d heard of the general principle of Parkinson’s law a few years ago. I only found out about the book more recently. I didn’t know until last night that Parkinson intended his principle to be applied more narrowly than it is applied now.

The full title of the first chapter of the book is “Parkinson’s Law, or The Rising Pyramid.” This chapter explains how work expands to fill the available resources within a bureaucracy and why bureaucracies grow exponentially at a compounding rate of around 5% per year. The subtitle addresses the mechanism for this growth, bureaucrats creating a pyramid of subordinates. Parkinson derives his law from “two almost axiomatic statements”: An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals. Officials make work for each other.

Nowadays Parkinson’s law is usually condensed to saying work expands to the time allowed. It is applied to individuals as well as a burgeoning bureaucracies. Parkinson discusses this interpretation in his opening p

Guns. Religion. Abortion. These are the no-win arguments that spoil family gatherings — and the stuff of retailers’ nightmares.

Starbucks has found itself in the middle of just such an argument as its stores became forums for demonstrations by both pro-gun and gun-control advocates. All for a firearm policy that hasn’t changed and is the same as most retailers’: follow the local law. If it’s legal to carry a firearm in town, it’s allowed in the stores.

In recent months, the “open-carry” arm of the gun-rights movement, which advocates that gun owners carry visible weapons as they go about their daily business, have been exercising their rights. They’ve been proudly displaying their sidearms in public places, sometimes meeting up in groups.

Starbucks’ association with a politically liberal, “latte sipper” ethos, made it a tempting target for gun-control advocates. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence attracted more than 26,000 signatures demanding that Starbucks “offer espresso shots, not gunshots.”

Starbucks’ response? It reiterated its policy of following state and local laws and politely asked everyone to leave it out of the debate.

It’s frightful territory for a business, which risks alienating customers and losing sales by taking sides on such emotional debates.

Starbucks is following the law.

How dare they!?