rule of law simply means nothing to these people, does it?

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Gonzales on Habeas Corpus:

Gonzales on Habeas Corpus

Posted on: January 19, 2007 9:25 AM, by Ed Brayton

This report on DailyKos on the attorney general's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday includes this statement from Gonzales:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. It's time for Gonzales to step down. An attorney general this ignorant of the Constitution has no business doing that job.

How the fuck did that asshole ever pass a bar exam?

"daydream believer, and a..."

LiveScience.com - Daydreamers: Scientists Find Our Bored Baseline:

Bored out of your skull is a reality. A new study of mind wandering shows that the mundane moments of life allow brains to shift into a default resting state that invites daydreaming.

Some psychologists had suggested that mind wandering could be the brain’s baseline, a place of flitting thoughts from which a person must wrench away for challenging work.

The new study agrees and looks deeply into the neural mechanics behind this common and sometimes happy affliction.

The findings also offer a solution to those who need to snap to. Rather than muscle-fatiguing efforts to focus, just try switching to more engaging work, said neuroscientist Malia Mason, lead author of the new work.

[...]

Daydream degree

Not all minds wander to the same extent. Individuals who showed more blood flow in the default brain regions also reported more stray thoughts.

Now the scientists want to know why these unfocused thoughts occur at all. One idea is that daydreaming allows a person to stay only as alert as they need be during mundane tasks. The flitting thoughts could also serve as a “spontaneous mental time travel,” which helps to thread together a person’s past, present and future experiences, suggest the researchers.

Of course, there’s one more possibility. Perhaps, the scientists wrote in the journal Science, “the mind may wander simply because it can.”

Now, granted, there's been no attempt here to link this "daydream" to ADD, but I think the potential is there. I personally think that most ADD diagnoses these days is simply either an extreme case of this "lack of challenge" or a defensive reaction when the challenge is (subconsciously) interpreted as too much.  Yeah, there's REAL ADD, where hitting those irrelevant thoughts really is out of control, but the sooner we weed out the real from the "looks like it but isn't", the better for BOTH types of afflictees.

"momma momma I keep having nightmares nightmares nightmares..."

(5 points to anybody who can name the artist of that song lyric)

The nightmare I mentioned in the post about the Vincent Price Muppet Show episode:

well, the nightmare (strong enough and often recalled enough that i still remember parts of it now) was a weird combination of all of the sci-fi/scary TV i'd been watching that year up to that point, with shades of Sid & Marty Kroft's "Far Out Space Nuts", that muppet show episode, and Slim Goodbody being chased by star-wars like space ships down a weird video-effect corridor (yes my brain actually imagined the green-screening and cheap video effects typical of Kroft productions at the time), and escaping by showing up on a jeopardy-like game show (not that I'd seen jeopardy at the time) with two other monsters, one from Space Nuts, the other from Muppets.

the wake-up was riding in a car at night as a huge bright light happened in front of me, which I recall pinning to an episode of Project UFO at the time.

the really scary bit that had no basis in any tv show i'd seen but had shades of Fantasia in it, was gargoyles from a castle with a broken drawbridge (like the one in Shrek, but of course I hadn't seen that at the time) flying across to the other side where the field was green and sunny and no shades of "evil" were around, turning into normal humans in period costume and having a Edwardian picnic (straw hats, wicker baskets, white blankets, wine bottles and all), then sprouting wings and flying back to the castle, turning back into gargoyles the closer they got to it. i don't remember how it went from the castle to the slim goodbody segment, but that's what's still in my head after all these years.

yes, all that happened in my head in one night, so clearly I can still recall it 30 years later.

to this day, i still have no idea how my brain constructed the gargoyles -> english picnic scene, as I really have no basis for either the transitions from gargoyle to human and back nor ever seeing a proper english picnic (unless it was on some PBS thing mom was watching that i can't remember).

knowing "pagan" folklore now, i actually wonder if this is really something of a race memory, and then wonder if it IS such a memory, how much influence such visions might have had on the inquisition and the witch hunts all those centuries ago.