Via Andrew Sullivan, Senator Obama's remarkable address to the graduating students at Southern New Hampshire University yesterday:

There is a verse from the Bible that is sometimes read or recited during rites of passage like this. Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”

I bring this up because there’s often an assumption on days like today that growing up is purely a function of age; that becoming an adult is an inevitable progression that can be measured by a series of milestones – college graduation or your first job or the first time you throw a party that actually has food too.

And yet, maturity does not come from any one occasion – it emerges as a quality of character. Because the fact is, I know a whole lot of thirty and forty and fifty year olds who have not yet put away childish things – who continually struggle to rise above the selfish or the petty or the small.

We see this reflected in our country today.

Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo nicely sums it up:

The AP had an interesting item today, highlighting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' perspective on being close friends with the president. As the embattled Gonzales sees it, his close relationship with Bush, which spans decades, is inherently "a good thing" for everyone.

"Being able to go and having a very candid conversation and telling the president: 'Mr. President, this cannot be done. You can't do this,'—I think you want that," Gonzales told reporters this week. "And I think having a personal relationship makes that, quite frankly, much easier always to deliver bad news."

"Do you recall a time when you (were) in there and said, 'Mr. President, we can't do this'?" Gonzales was asked.

"Oh, yeah," the attorney general responded.

"Can you share it with us?" a reporter asked.

"No," Gonzales said.

Now, I think there are two ways to look at this.

1. Gonzales is lying about this little story, and there's never been a time in which he's had to keep the president from going too far. He's the quintessential "yes man," who does as he's told.

2. Gonzales is telling the truth, and the Attorney General/WH Counsel—the one who's approved of abandoning the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law—believes some of the president's other requests are beyond the pale. I'm struggling to decide which is worse.

Only 611 days and 4 hours (or fewer) remain in the most corrupt presidency in history.

Parker and I are hard at work at Inner Drive Technology World HQ:

Ah, the joys of the bully stick...

This is absolutely the last thing you want to see if you're a rabbit. Fortunately, given Parker's hunting skills, it wouldn't actually be the last thing you saw, but it would still scare the pellets out of you:

Schadenfreude embarrasses me a little. I never want to wish death on anyone. But sometimes, someone dies who spent his life in opposition to everything one holds dear, and one cannot help to feel just the tiniest bit pleased at his passing. Of course I mean Jerry Falwell, one of the most reprehensible characters in American politics this century. In conversations with friends since yesterday, a couple of things came out: First, it's too bad there's no "him" left to contemplate the fact that he's not actually where he thought he'd be; and second, it's always sad when a clown—even a delusional, evil, paranoid clown—dies.

I wonder which fundie will step into the vacuum Falwell's passing leaves?

There has to be a caption here. Thoughts?

Parker continues his fascination with rocks:

Oh. My. God. Via Talking Points Memo:

Staff members of an elementary school [in Murfeesboro, Tenn.,] staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

...

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

More here.