A sunny day, a happy office and our most important secular holiday in the wings makes for a charmingly disconcerted media and blogosphere. I just noticed on Drudge a blurb about a possible Iraqi weapons watershed; that should be an interesting development.
I've begun to push ahead again on the "freedom and culture" essay. Begun in February, I've slowly worked it up to around 9,000 words, and took a break several weeks ago to read up on historical accounts and perspectives to which I was beginning to become myopic - in other words, I felt I needed more research. Besides, the weapons debate has provided the perfect lead-in. I'm optimistic that I can, truly, have it completed to satisfaction soon. Soon.
The world's struggles and crises are running their course, no major points to comment on at the moment. Unemployment? My only question is whether or not those unemployed before the latest round of layoffs have been given disincentives to throw themselves back into work because of extended federal benefits. I've heard accounts of tough layoffs from trusted sources, many of them familial, and checks from the government were never a part of their plans. Ever.
Liberia: as I said on Pejmanesque, smashing dictators must become our business. Though this does seem out of order in the sense that free nations can do more damage to authoritarians by knocking out more powerful sowers of discord, fate will not hand us an orderly set of circumstances. Thus principle over practice. One caveat: we must enter Liberia with an intent to destroy the totalitarian and thuggish elements, then guide democratic reconstruction. "Peacekeeping" requires a peace to keep; it is not refereeing or playing objective sparring partner, which needlessly puts both civilian and military lives at risk while failing to solve the problem. The United Nations did that to feckless heights in the 1990s, a witless crime against humanity in itself.
Enjoy the sunshine if you have it. Cumulous-filled, humid days leading up to thunderstorms spells my summer of choice; if I didn't know any better I would think I had wings.