David Souter proved to be a fine Supreme Court Justice. If we want intelligent, fair, independent minds on our highest court, Souter served us all well. He was no one's rubber stamp. Souter preformed as an old-fashioned, give-me-the-facts New England Yankee. Good for him. He leaves the court in the right way, at age 69, he can enjoy a well-earned retirement. He didn't cling to his seat as if America couldn't survive without him. His departure leaves 86-year-old John Paul Stevens as the lone Protestant on our Supreme Court.

Since the publication of the Obama administration's DoJ brief on Smelt v. United States late last week, I have been surprised by two things: the utter thunderous silence of the mainstream media on the subject, and the lack of courtesy and respect shown by many on this site.

There was an article the other day about urban planners and politicians in the Rust Belt planning to physically downsize their towns and cities in response to the recession and localized depression. One plan was to bulldoze whole districts of their buildings and infrastructure, returning the land to nature. With the burst real estate bubble the era of unfettered expansion and supersizing, BigMacs and McMansions, is over. Is this the death of suburbia?

Remember that $500,000 pay cap for bailed-out banking execs the White House announced in February? Under Treasury Secretary Geithner's new rules for bailout pay, that max has become a minimum.

Jefferson County Commissioner Shelia Smoot officially rolled out her campaign to become the first woman elected to represent Alabama in Congress with a bus tour through the 7th Congressional District. Smoot said she will focus on strong solutions to the various challenges people throughout AL-07 face. Her plans include improving health care and education, economic development and improving infrastructure both by building roads and increasing high-speed internet access.

That Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney, two of the neocon cheerleaders for the disaster in Iraq, would blame President Obama for the election fraud in Iran is unsurprising. That once and future Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney of all people would parrot the charge is hilarious.

Atheists often portray people who believe in God in a fairly disingenuous fashion. God-believing folk, essentially, believe in a pink elephant. Or, a flying spaghetti monster. Even if the portrayal is not so dramatic, people who believe in God are depicted as closed-minded, avowing the righteousness of one path only, swearing by some book that was written by men two thousand years ago. This is disingenuous at best.

For several months I've been hearing about Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ezekiel, who is a physician. He has been promoting a voucher system which clearly seems designed to split America into two groups, the healthy and the sick. The healthy may be able to pay for high deductible care via a voucher, but that care falls into the trap that all consumer driven health care plans do, in that it does nothing to control costs except withhold care.

I watch in awe of the courage, passion and activism of the Persian people. A people sitting directly in the cradle of civilization. A people who are highly sophisticated and intelligent. A people who are showing me, as an American what it looks like to do more than just rant in a blog room on the internet. I am old enough to remember how it felt to be tear gassed, to help carry friends away from angry police lashing out with their sticks as I marched to end the Vietnam War in the seventies.

Whether you are looking to augment your income, replace your lost job, or just get out from under the thumb of management, you may be considering starting your own business. Before you do you may want to check this out for some helpful suggestions and advice to get you started on the path to success (or at least help you avoid the path to failure).

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