Free In Idaho!

Hillary Clinton seems to have a horrible case of “do-something” disease, which has vaulted her to the top of the earmarks list.  This is world class trough hogging folks!

As reported in The Hill newspaper, Clinton has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009, almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator this year.

Queen of Pork, indeed… $342 million last year, to $2.3 BILLION next year… ssuuuuueeeeeeeee!  Here piggy piggy….

In making the blog rounds this morning I was struck by some photographs over at Instapundit.  It’s finals week at the law school apparently, and Glenn Reynolds shares three photographs of the students studying at the library (I’m guessing).  I was struck by the third one, of a student asleep under a blanket on a sofa.

There is no more of a fantasy world than an American college campus.  Where else will you ever have that kind of a life, that kind of a schedule?  Where else, besides your own home, can you pull out your blanket and fall asleep on the couch?  And, speaking as a “grown up”, where else would you even feel SAFE falling asleep on the couch?  Alright, that makes me a cynical grown up.  But really, can you name one public place you would feel safe enough to fall asleep? 

Maybe if my wife sat next to me, awake, with the Glock… but that’ll never happen in a “gun free zone” will it?   So the idea of going “condition white” in a public place gives me the shakes.

When we were in Seattle last week, I was very aware of being unarmed, vulnerable, and in enemy territory.  Washington and Idaho don’t have reciprocal CWLs, so even though I was a Washington license holder for many years, and have now been an Idaho holder for many years (under much stricter requirements, I might add), it is no longer legal for me to carry in Washington state.  Our youngest daughter lives on Capital Hill, which  is, according to wikipedia,

“the second most densely populated neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, after Belltown (in northern downtown). It is the center of gay life in Seattle and also a center of the city’s counterculture, while also home to some of the city’s grandest mansions and many attractions.”

In order to take in the many delights of the small neighborhood restaurants and shops, and enjoy some of the mansions, the easiest thing to do is to walk everywhere.  The weather was beautiful, and it was very lovely.  But I was never at ease.  On one of our longer walks we went over to Trader Joe’s on Madison.  The kidlet pointed out some of the neighborhood “features”, including the halfway house that had been the residence of a man who recently commited the murder of a young woman on the street.  Mom was suitably frightened by that bit of news, but in listening to her point out things about her neighborhood I realized that the young lady is paying attention to her surroundings, and that is good.  I’d like to get her to go another level up though.

When we got back from the walk, which went through some “grandest mansions” type neighborhoods interspersed with “older and run-down” neighborhoods, I asked the girls if they had noticed the three mid-20’s gangsters who shadowed us for a couple blocks in the alley just east of us.  Neither of them had.  Did they notice when I picked up the pace, then waited at the corner even though no cars were near?  No.  I told them that I had been watching these three as they kept pace with us, stalking us perhaps, and that I had made eye contact with them as they crossed the parking lot.  I shifted my grocery bag to my left hand and put my right into my coat pocket, and I speeded up the pace.  Then when we had reached the next cross street, I wasn’t watching for cars, I was watching for the three thugs to come out of the alley.  We were a block off of the main street and I was ready to make a run for it if they had ignored my “alert and ready” signal.  They apparently saw it and left off the stalk, but the girls had missed it all.  Condition white.  I guess I have some teaching left to do.