Clay Shirky always inspires me, and summarizes well…

It seems crazy to have to spell this out, but it should be hard for a government to keep secrets from its own people. National secrets are a necessary evil, of course, but the necessary part should not blind us to the evil part. Deciding to try to keep any given piece of information secret should be difficult, and expensive, and prone to occasional failure.

I will never forget that when George Bush declared war on Iraq, my initial reaction was to trust him because he had access to those “National secrets” that must… MUST justify his actions. That naive trust will never ever be restored. In the information age, we must seek truth, even – especially – in the dark corners of our government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we must remain diligent citizens to sustain our freedom-based democracy.

As a final thought, I’m not so sure all these folks should be in such comfortable collusion…

This is what it is to rock. I hope you have loud speakers.

Please consider helping our wolf friends and signing this petition. There is so much animal abuse going on in our day and age, and these kind of large predators get the least consideration of them all. I know it’s hard to co-exist, so the easy route is to exterminate them. And there is lots of pressure from many directions to do just that. We don’t have unlimited chances to get this stuff right.

Here’s what I added to my petition signature:

AS SOON AS YOU DELIST THE SLAUGHTER BEGINS. And it will not take today’s modern hunters more than a few moments to destroy so much of what has been so difficult to accomplish and so fragile to maintain.

(cookiecutter text follows…)
I’m writing to you today to demand that the federal government not prematurely strip Endangered Species Act protections from most gray wolves in the United States.

The restoration of wolves has been hailed as one of the biggest successes of the Endangered Species Act since it was passed in 1973. But the important work of wolf recovery is unfinished. Delisting the gray wolf will halt four decades of progress in its tracks and expose America’s wolves to unwarranted and unsustainable killing.

This is precisely what has happened in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, where the premature delisting of those states’ wolf populations has led to the killing of more than 1,100 wolves. This race to the bottom in wolf management threatens to seriously undermine wolves’ hard-won climb from the brink of extinction.

Delisting could also derail efforts to restore wolves to more of their historic range that has huge areas of suitable wolf habitat, including Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, Utah and California.

Wolves are an iconic, native species that play a vital role in restoring healthy ecosystems by keeping prey species in balance. Places like the Olympic peninsula and the Colorado Rockies could benefit both ecologically and economically from the return of wolves.

Delisting would close the door on an historic opportunity to revitalize some of America’s best remaining wildlife habitat by bringing back these important animals.

Someday, when wolves have recovered throughout most of their historic range, and when states refrain from managing their wolf populations in a politically driven race to the bottom then perhaps delisting is an option worth debating. However, we are far from that day, and delisting now would be an avoidable conservation nightmare.

We urge you in the strongest possible terms to not turn the clock back on one of America’s signature wildlife conservation success stories. The future of full wolf recovery is in your hands.

We reap what we sow, and now these three big-lobby colluders are proposing to dismantle all climate legislation (NC Senate Bill 171). Yes I said all. The fact that they could even sit down and come up with this bill is evidence that they are not interested in the good of the people, only the coffers of their sponsors.
These extremists are crafting our laws here in NC as we speak. Take a look at the bill proposals and voting records (Jackson, Davis, Brock) if you want more evidence. We have a lot of work to clean up NC politics, and it doesn’t end with just these three. Mike Hagar is sponsoring House Bill 298 (along with others), to eliminate requirements for utilities to provide even a small portion of power from renewables. Let’s pay careful attention here, this is not what we want for our children and our future. Please take enough of a role in politics to help keep this extremism at bay, and keep these extremists out of our government.