The postponement of the vote regarding John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is one of the few political bright spots this spring (if you can call a postponement a bright spot). In a highly emotional speech to the Senate Wednesday, Senator George Voinovich (R OH), urged his fellow Senators to reject the Bolton nomination.

Those with a NYTimes account can read Voinovich's open letter to members of the Senate

Below is Voinovich's statement before the Foreign Relations Committee:

"Mr. Chairman, I am not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues. We owe it to the President to give Mr. Bolton an up or down vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. My hope is that, on a bipartisan basis, we send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the floor without recommendation and let the Senate work its will.

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A couple of funny links from Caleb:
First there's this one.

And then there's this funny and painful video.

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From Caleb we have the request for you to go, get your Unitarian Jihad Name Now!.

Me? I'm Brother Neutron Bomb of Forgiveness.

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Last fall I wrote about my anger at the little known section of Leave No Child Behind that requires school officials to release private information on students to military recruiters.

Last February U.S representative Mike Honda introduced H. R. 551, the Student Privacy Protection Act that only allows for personal information to be released to military recruiters only if parents opt-in.

If you support Rep. Honda's bill, head over to leavemychildalone.org to learn more about the issue and to sign their petition.

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Sasha's latest play, The Frontier, opens this Thursday at The Blackbird Theatre here in Ann Arbor.

Inspired by the life and writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Frontier is an original show written by Dana Sutton.

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Ahh - springtime is finally here; the daffodils are up in the backyard, the forsythia is budding and the Mets have lost three in a row for their worst start since 1963. I'll probably be happier this summer if I concentrate on the garden and forget about the Mets... Sigh.

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To celebrate today's first anniversary of Air America Radio, HBO is premiering a documentary called "Left of the Dial".

From the HBO website:

In early 2004, a group of investors set out to launch a liberal radio network that would challenge the dominance of America's airwaves by conservative talk radio. The creative, financial and logistical challenges were immense, but on March 31, Air America Radio became a reality. LEFT OF THE DIAL chronicles the trials and tribulations involved in starting up - and sustaining - a nationwide radio network during a highly charged election year.

Premieres Thursday, March 31 at 8:00pm ET/PT.

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Today we headed home from Celo at 7:30am, this time it was a straight shot up US23 through the heart of Appalachia in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. Around 10 I started looking for a place for us to stop for breakfast. As Big Stone Gap neared deep into the hill country of Virgina, I dreamed of homemade biscuits and gravy with country ham.

Since I am reading the novel titledBig Stone Gap, I thought it would be fun to stop there for breakfast. The novel tells the story of interesting characters in a sleepy mountain town and so I had a picture of a sweet and pretty little town, but what I found was wide streets angling through car dealerships and beauty salons and the like. Not only was it nothing like I had imagined, but there was no place at all to stop for breakfast. We found one family restaurant, but it didn't open 'til 11.

In Norton, VA (a fairly big town in perspective to where we were) we stopped once again to get get breakfast, but after driving all the way through town, the only place we could find was a Dairy Queen where we ate a $2.69 breakfast on Styrofoam plates.

A hundred miles or so later we stopped in Kentucky we stopped for gas, and while I was waiting to pay for the gas, the woman in front of me bought some cigarettes. The cashier told her it would be $9.56, (they cost $5 a pack here in Michigan) so I assumed she had bought two packs, but I was floored when the the woman was handed a carton of cigarettes! No wonder everyone in Kentucky seemed to smoke.

Before we left left rural Kentucky coal country for the Interstate where we would be surrounded by generic chain stores and gas stations from now on, we stopped at a little mom and pop store where I picked up a bottle of Ale-8-1 a drink you can only find in Kentucky. In this cookie cutter land of ours, it's nice to be able to still find some regional and local products.

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Today was spent hanging out with Robin and Tammy and exploring Celo, one of my favorite places.

Certainly the highlight of the trip for the kids was when they got to hang out with Celo native and Survivor Marquesas, Gabriel Cade. Gabe told the kids about his time on the island and let them see some of his artifacts from the trip.

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This morning the kids and I made the 650 drive from Michigan to visit Robin and Tammy down in Celo, NC. What is normally a 12 hour drive (with stops) turned into a 17 hour marathon when we hit a BIG patch of construction at the Kentucky-Tennessee border along I-75 Fortunately Jeremy and Sasha were real troopers and we made it to Celo unscathed.

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From Poynter.org, the web home of The Poynter Institute ( a school for journalists), comes this article regarding new screen fonts from Microsoft.

If you don't think screen fonts are important, consider how much time you spend reading things online, and the fact that screen fonts are essential to the usability of any web site.

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Makes you wonder about this kid's parents.

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