Politics Plus

Yesterday, I learned that Tom Lehrer has relinquished all copyyright on all of his work, and has posted it all on the internet where it may be freely downloaded. He doesn’t intend to leave it there forever, and it’s already been up more than a month and a hlf, so I have started on it. “Everything” means, if he wrote the music, full lyrics, sheet music, and at least one mp3. If he didn’t write the music, it includes full lyrics. That’s because the music he wrote parody lyrics for is owned by its composer(s) under copyright law. I’m barely up to “D” so I don’t yet know how that applies to “The Elements,” since Sir Arthur Sullivan has been dead long enough that that tune is in the public domain. Since there aren’t that many mp3s, I think if you select one for each song that has one, you could probably fit thosw, all the sheet music, and all the lyrics-only PDFs on a 1 gB thumb drive. And a lot of receivers and players these days will play mp3s straight from a thumb drive. I’m guessing they (or at least mine) will ignore the PDFs and just play through the mp3s and them stop. It may take me a while to find that out.Meanwhile, I did see Virgil today. We and the guard were the only three people in the visitation room – so there was no issue getting the deck of cards. The weather was good – no precipitation, no wind, cold but bearable. It was kind of overcast, which let up for a while and then became worse. I ended up leaving a bit earlier than I had planned, and am glad I did. It doesn’t take long at all to get home. It does, however takeme a while tounwind, change clothes, make dinner, and get to the computer.

I don’t want to forget to remind y’all of thefinal Jan 6 hearing tody, at 1:00 pm Eastern.  This link is to the COmmittees own page at House dot gov, and it should live stream as the hearing starts.  But just in case it gets overlooked (it did for one hearing so far), this link is to the “videos” page at the Committee’s YouTube channel. The hearing should also go live hee, and, maybe more importantly, this is where it will be available after it’s over if you have to miss it live.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Vox – How an obscure Christian right activist became one of the most powerful men in America
Quote – It’s a significant decision in its own right, and will only prolong uncertainty at America’s southern border. But Kacsmaryk’s order in this case, Texas v. Biden, was merely the capstone of an unusually busy week for this judge. His busy week, and months of earlier actions, show the havoc one rogue federal judge can create, especially in today’s judiciary. The previous Thursday, Kacsmaryk became the first federal judge since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion to attack the right to contraception.
Click through for details, if you can stand to. Ugly as this is, I feel there’s a need to know – or at least, a need to know where to find this information.

Daily Kos (Thom Hartmann) – What the Final Stage of Reaganism Looks Like
Quote – Back in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in and implicitly promised to destroy our government because it was “the problem,” many of us who strongly opposed him wondered what the final stage of Reaganism would look like.
Spoiler – We know because we are in it.

Colorado Public Radio – Michael Bennet proposes a bill that would reform the farmworkers’ visa program
Quote – For more than two years, Bennet and Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho had been working to come to a compromise on the issue using the House-passed Farm Workforce Modernization Act. This smaller bill is a sign that the effort has failed. Bennet said he was “disappointed” and admitted there have been problems disentangling what this bill does with the politics surrounding border security and immigration writ large. “I think we have to set that politics aside if we’re going to do the right thing for American agriculture,” Bennet said.
Click through – not that it’s exciting. Senator Bennet just quietly works and gets things done. – as much as he can. I am so glad he was reelected. We need him.

Food For Thought