Reports are that Rep. Giffords could be released from the hospital as soon as this week.  While certainly good news, we should be aware that so far, almost all the assessments have from physical neurologists.  Being able to follow commands, recognize people, move limbs, really are the least of it.  We have no idea what cognitive impairment may have resulted, and won’t until the psychological neurologists start examining her, and working through her rehabilitation.  This was a massive trauma, and often, apparent people who’ve suffered from such can mask serious neurological issues.

Obviously, everyone wishes her and her family the best, and in fairness to them, we shouldn’t allow our hopes to cloud our expectations.

In case you haven’t heard by now, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was critically injured today in a shooting at one of her “Congress at Your Corner” events.  Six others were killed.

This is beyond repulsive, and it appears to have been carried out by a deeply deranged man of indeterminately radical political opinions.  An attack such as this isn’t a political attack in the normal partisan sense, it’s an attack on our system as a whole.

We pray for Rep. Giffords’s speedy and complete recovery.

It’s never too late to find new heroes.  So at 39 (again), I’ve found Robert Conquest.  Conquest, now 93, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, but he made his bones as a historian of the Soviet Union, one of the few who was fearless is his condemnation of the Sauron-like evil that emanated from the place.   His hostility to the USSR, and his contempt for their enablers in the West, was born not of any particular political ideology, but out of a deep-seated love of political liberty, and an understanding of what it takes to make that work.  In 2000, he wrote Reflections on a Ravaged Century, about the West’s conflict with leftist totalitarianism.  Several quotes jumped out at me:

A democratic community enjoying political liberty is only possible when the attachment of the majority of the citizens to political liberty is stronger than their attachment to specific political doctrines.  And this is to say that on many controversial issues a certain comparative apathy must prevail among a large part of the population.  But apathy cannot appear a virtue to the man who has committed himself to an intellectually elaborated scheme or policy.

One of the great political successes of the Left has been to relegate that attachment to political liberty to a political doctrine in itself, and having largely chased it from one of our major political parties.  One of the more inspirational developments of the last two years has been the emergence of a political movement which appears to be largely agnostic or even divided about many issues, except for its attachment to liberty.

Then, this:

But Marxism’s greatest success has been the demonizing of “capitalism.”  No one is likely to raise barricades under the flag of “capitalism” – presumably the skull and crossbones.

I don’t know if Conquest even remembers writing these words, but I wonder if he’s surprised that a somewhat different flag of capitalism has been dusted off, albeit thankfully without the barricades.

I’m not sure what the collective noun for runners is, but from experience, “plague” is as good as any.  Evidently, my friend King Banaian, econ prof up at St. Cloud State in Minnesota, is running for the State House of Representatives up there.  His district appears to be Democrat, but not irretrievably so.  It went for Franken in ’08, but by a relatively small margin, so it seems to be clown-averse to some degree.  Whether this is a help or a hindrance for a university professor, even one as level-headed as King, remains to be seen.

This morning on the way into work, I heard Mike & Mike discussing an ESPN report on the health standards of food in major league stadiums.  Let’s just say that Upton Sinclair would have been unsurprised.

So here we have concessions in government-financed (and often government-owned) stadiums, covered under government health standards, easily available to government health inspectors, and catering to patrons of government-favord monopolies (and yes, I love baseball, too), and they’re still serving up a little extra protein with those corn chips, all over the country.

This is exactly the sort of thing the government ought to be regulating.  How about we let them get this right before handing over additional responsibility?

From the document itself:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

The Archives has a terrific set of pages about the Declaration, although they have unaccountably demoted it from a foundational document to one of a series of “Charters of Freedom.”

From President Calvin Coolidge’s remarks on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration:

On an occasion like this great temptation exists to present evidence of the practical success of our form of democratic republic at home and the ever-broadening acceptance it is securing abroad. Although these things are well known, their frequent consideration is an encouragement and an inspiration. But it is not results and effects so much as sources and causes that I believe it is even more necessary constantly to contemplate. Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.

It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. They undertook to balance these interests against each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guarantees of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever-broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.

And you can listen to Professor Thomas Krannawitter discuss the origins, history, and meaning of the Declaration this evening on Backbone Radio.  Or you can stream it here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I have never been an early adopter of new technology. Got over the need to be the first on my block with the toy early in life. But it’s still pretty cool to be typing this on my EVO.