On Thu, Aug 11, 2005 at 10:21:19PM -0400, Casey Rousseau <casey at the-bat.net> wrote: > David Dyer-Bennet announced: > > Well, if I haven't left any large chunks behind, I've > > restarted the Dragaera mailing list. Welcome! And my > > apologies for the interruption. > > The old archives are partially missing, partially > > inaccessible, and will be worked on sometime in the future. > > Meanwhile, new archives will be accumulated from posts to > > this new incarnation of the list. > Shouldn't take long to start accumulating those archives. There's been a > noticible change in bandwidth usage on my domain account since the server > went down. > > Now, where were we? Men who wear their belts backwards, a Dragaera Wiki, > Guild Wars. Nah. Lessee, Half-Blood Prince? Well, whether or not anyone > here cared, we didn't discuss Order of the Phoenix, no doubt due to the > distraction of a slightly less widely read volume being released the same > month. OK, we could talk about the Shuttle...kinda ho hum. I mean, 30 > months of no flights, improving the foam, but it still breaks off in big > chunks, so we may not have another mission for a while. Iraq? Roberts? OK, > getting off topic.... I think that Roberts would support sending Vlad after Osama Bin Laden, seeing as how the Constitution explicitly allows Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal; no penumbras necessary. But I don't think that Taltos v Laden should be a litmus test for his confirmation, since the right-wing conservative court that approved eminent domain for economic development purposes would doubtless sacrifice our liberties for the additional security Vlad could provide. The real question is whether the Guantanimo prisoners who have been reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix would be willing to sell information to Vlad in return for a copy of the Half-Blood Prince, or whether we would need to find a pretext for involving Aliera and Pathfinder. But even with her helpd, could we count on Vlad being able to reach Osama Bin Laden before he completes his next attack on the Space Shuttle? Remember, we didn't start having problems with the foam until after the foam was redesigned to conform to the EPA's dictates on chemical pollution, and Osama has included the Kyoto protocols on his list of demands. Not to mention, once we've sent Vlad after Osama, can we depend on the media to publicize the event properly, after the efforts they have already expended trying to convince us that Iraq is just another Vietnam? For that matter, after we have named Vlad our executioner, would we need to fear him growing in office to become another Souter, and striking down the death penalty? (I gotta admit, I'm proud of that one).