Two items from the news:

1. "A United States federal appeals court has ruled that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute."

Yeah! Let's jack him up on meds so that we can kill him! Because otherwise? It's cruel and unusual punishment. Let's not forget: "In 1986, the US Supreme Court held that the execution of the insane was barred by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment."

Steve Earle said this great thing in an interview (here's the interview--it's good stuff) about how his opposition to the death penalty is not about saving the lives of murderers but about saving our own souls (I'm totally paraphrasing). He talks about the moral degradation we all experience by allowing such a system to continue and how we are all complicit in these deaths. That blood is on my hands just as much as it's on the executioner's hands.

So yeah. That was news item #1. Onward.

2. "North Carolina had one of the nation's most aggressive and longest-running eugenics programs, sterilizing 7,600 people -- including 2,000 children -- between 1929 and 1974."

Makes me proud, my country does.

In other, more personable news:

Buddy Black has been kind enough to tolerate my serenading him with Tracy Chapman:

Oh my mama told me
cause she say she learned the hard way
say she wanna spare the children

She say don't give or sell your soul away
cause all that you have is your soul

and, from my favorite Tracy Chapman song:

poor people gonna rise up
and get their share
poor people gonna rise up
and take what's theirs

I hope Jeff and Frances don't mind me filling his head with such revolutionary talk. Ah shucks--they're a million times more radical than me, my righteous buds. I hope they aren't trying to drive down here today--they're up there in the DC area where, I hear, y'all got a wee bit of snow. The roads are a mess around these parts--though we didn't get too much precipitation--just lots of icy nastiness. But I got my power so I am a happy bird.

I spent most of today obsessively checking to see whether or not RCC, where I teach, would cancel evening classes. I did this rather than planning class even though I had planned to plan because it has to be done sooner or later and one might as well be prepared in the off chance one does actually have to, you know, teach. The announcement that classes were cancelled came around 3 pm. I still had done nothing. I still have done nothing. But I'm happy. Because no work and no class and I have heat. It's the best of all worlds, babies.

I made cookies yesterday. The domestication of Molu is complete.