Pets of the Damned

Experimenting with Ecto client

The snake underneath my air-conditioning compressor

Eastern black-necked garter snake, Thamnophis cyrtopsis ocellatus

There are doubtless readers out there who share that family mythology that contains a subsection of stories beginning with “One day Grandpa/Meemaw/Aunt/Uncle/Cousin __________ was mowing/weeding/messing around out back of the shed/barn/outhouse/cistern….”

As those readers know, that prologue almost always signals that the tale is going to have a reptilian ending. Spiders and/or scorpions may play a supporting role. Depending where your location falls on the east/west axis, the reptile in question may be an alligator. (Sinfonian, I’m looking at you!)

Human injuries, envenomation and/or fatalities may be part of the plot but more often than not, it’s the reptile that comes out the worse for wear, if they survive at all.

Happily, in today’s story everyone survives, though the beautiful leopard frog I also disturbed while weed-eating around my air conditioning compressor may well be on this lovely serpent’s dinner menu.

Madam Speaker, Put it back on the table

Bill Moyers Journal, July 13: John Nichols of The Nation and Bruce Fein of The Washington Times state, and restate, the most compelling explanation I’ve heard for why impeachment can’t be “off the table.”

Watch the video. Or read the transcript

JOHN NICHOLS: But also we would have hit that educational moment, that rare moment where a president of the United States has been forced to– go before the American people and say, “Oh, yeah, I just remembered, you’re the boss. You are the bosses. Not me. And that I am not a king.” Again, this is why raising impeachment at this point, it’s a very late point, is so important. Because we are defining what the presidency will be in the future today because we do know the high crimes and misdemeanors of George Bush and Dick Cheney. They have been well illustrated even by a– rather lax media. They have been discussed in Congress.

If we know these things and we do not hold them to account, then we are saying, as a people and as a Congress, we are saying that we can find out that you have violated the rule of law. We can find out that you have disregarded the Constitution. You– we can find out that you’ve done harm to the republic. But there will still be no penalty for that. If that’s the standard that we’ve set, it will hold. It will not be erased in the future.

via Avedon who is Not Atrios