Poor weather can, on occasion, make for fine photography. Today’s specimen is a picture from yesterday evening, approaching one bay where bass are often found in years other than this one. It was a brief window between rain showers and fog was settling down over the forest and the lake. When that happens, all sounds become muted, as if cotton candy had been stuffed into your ears. At a time like that, it’s not hard to imagine the various sounds from the forest as all being caused by hulking...

Yes, you knew it was inevitable. Even though I’m on vacation, I had to be tempted out of hiding after Governor Palin’s bombshell announcement. With that in mind, I will direct your attention to my column this weekend at Pajamas Media. The actual title is, “Sarah Palin Commits Political Suicide,” but I really preferred, “So Long and Thanks for all the Fisheries.”

I would like to extend my wishes to all of TMV’s loyal readers for a happy, safe and patriotic fourth of July. The first of today’s pictures will show you that Old Glory is flying in fine form, even up here in the remote mountain regions. That shot was taken on Wed. evening shortly after we arrived, during one of the few breaks in the cloud cover. We’ve not seen that much open sky since then. Whether you plan on heading out to watch fireworks, firing up the barbecue or just relaxing,...

Being socked in by repeating lines of storm fronts, I find myself with more time for those pesky internets than I might have liked. Today’s exhibit in photography is an interesting effect found when rain clouds totally swamp a set of mountain peaks, with ghostly tendrils hanging down from the main cloud body like moss on a tree. There’s an entire line of mountain peaks beyond there which can not be seen for the density of the clouds. (As usual, be forewarned… the full size image...

Since I likely shall not get to do as much publishing as normal over the next week or so, I would share with our readers a bit of vacation experience. (And, according to some of you, a period of decompression which I’ve been badly in need of. I agree. I’ve been much more short tempered of late, and I offer my apologies for that.) In any event, if you click on the thumbnail image in the upper left, you’ll get a brief taste of what I’m currently up to. (Warning: The full size...

It seems that the GOP is setting its sights on some first and second term House Democrats who they see as being vulnerable. In particular, they’re looking at the new members in traditionally red districts who voted for the energy bill. The National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to air TV and radio commercials and unleash robocalls against Democrats who hail from districts that could be adversely affected by the narrowly passed legislation, are GOP-leaning or both. Those likely...

As already noted by Joe Windish, the Supreme Court has overturned the decision of the 2nd Court of Appeals in the case where results of a promotion exam failed to produce advancement for a sufficient number of minority candidates. While the ruling itself will likely come as no surprise to many observers, the close, 5-4 margin tells me that we still have a looming divide in our legal system and no way to address it. Frankly, I would like to be more surprised that we could find four SCOTUS justices...

President Obama’s selection to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, is running into a stiff headwind regarding some previous writings on the subject of animals’ rights. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court. Indeed, in his 2004 book, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,...

It’s an unfortunate comment on the current state of our democracy that Congress routinely passes bills which virtually none of the members have read. Hope is also rapidly eroding that the White House will actually post all proposed legislation on the web far enough in advance that at least we could read them before they come to a vote. But at a bare minimum, up until now they seemed to at least stick with a policy of having a final copy of the bills in existence so they could have theoretically...

Lots of people are still speculating about the future of Governor Mark Sanford, but today we’ll point you to the short, concise thoughts of one woman who wanted to comment on the Governor’s wife. She is obviously a fan, but we’ll warn you ahead of time that there is a bit of language here which is not appropriate for children, so you can go read it yourself should you care to.

Like many of you, I also listened to President Obama recently fielding questions on proposed health care reforms currently under consideration. One of the less artful answers came on the subject of what kind of health care he would like for his own family. Ed Morrissey found it to be telling, labeling it a Dukakis moment. I’m not sure if it was quite that bad, but it certainly didn’t speak well for his proposal. However, that’s not the key issue for me thus far. As we’ve done...

Sometimes things are just so unbelievably wrong that they need very little by way of introduction. With that, the extremely disturbing styling of Ted Pillman. Also known as the worst advertisement for Snickers candy bars… EVAH. (Warning: there is no nudity or language to make this NSFW, but it’s still really disgusting.)

(Note: Details of the following program will be discussed on today’s edition of Mid Stream Radio at 10 am Eastern time.) My fellow Americans, Much time and energy has been spent debating both the need and nature of massive health care reform in our great nation. Unfortunately, while this is very admirable, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. That’s why I’m here today to unveil our new PonyCare program. It is well known that all children love ponies. But for too long now, here...

Thursdays have turned out to be problematic of late for our weekly radio show, so if you would care to tune in and/or comment on Iran and a few other issues, Mid Stream Radio will air tomorrow at 10 am Eastern time. In the first half hour, we will welcome Ed Morrissey of Hot Air for a brief but civil debate on the situation in Iran and President Obama’s response to it. Your comments in chat or live calls will be welcome. We can’t take up the entire hour on it, however, since other pressing...

Yesterday quite a few of our regular TMV readers engaged in a lengthy, spirited debate on the subject of the unrest in Iran in the comments section of my column on this topic. It was a topic which our friend Ed Morrissey of Hot Air and I were debating and certainly an important one. In that column, I posed three questions for our readers. Two of them were, who won the election and who will we have to deal with in the future? The answers to those are still unknown. The other question I asked was,...

We’ve lost another of the classic names of the small screen. NBC News is reporting that legendary Tonight Show sidekick and promoter of everything, Ed McMahon has passed away. He had been battling a number of different medical problems for some time. The era of the Tonight Show when he partnered with Johnny Carson was a part of the fabric of life for so many Americans. A long road and a job well done. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends today.

With a hat tip to Ed at Hot Air, we find out that U.S. forces in Afghanistan will soon stop attacking Taliban elements in urban and suburban areas where civilian casualties are more likely. KABUL — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan will soon formally order U.S. and NATO forces to break away from fights with militants hiding in Afghan houses so the battles do not kill civilians, a U.S. official said Monday. The order would be one of the strongest measures taken by a U.S. commander to protect Afghan...

I don’t link to ThinkProgress all that often, but here is one story that’s unfortunately worth a look. It centers on MSNBC regular Pat Buchanan. Please go read the article, but it features Pat hosting an event where they would discuss the best way for Republicans to regain their majority status. One avenue under discussion was to fight for English only initiatives. (For the record, I favor some of these in appropriate areas, while I firmly believe that local interests should be able to...

Up until now I’ve remained largely silent on the recent goings on in Iran, partly because I, sitting in my living room watching the news on CNN and Fox, am hardly any sort of expert on that nation. (Unlike so many other self-styled pundits across the sphere, sitting in their living rooms watching this on CNN and Fox, who apparently are experts on Iran.) Iran is one of those places where we have pitifully small intelligence resources and it’s sometimes hard to know exactly what’s...

Miracles and wonders, my friends. Miracles and wonders indeed. Among the various campaign promises made by Barack Obama during the roughly two decade long 2008 presidential race, one of the first to get chucked under the bus after he took office was his promise to post all bills online for five days before signing them. This, supposedly, would give the public time to read them and comment. It was a nice idea, but I don’t know that’s it’s even been done once since he took office....