Hammer Mill Days

Hey. Did any of you guys nail a proclamation to the door? Lincoln, is this your dagger? Anyone good with a quill pen (other than Lincoln)? Hmmmm.... could be legitimate. Okay, there's this parchment scroll tacked to our door with a dime-store knife. And it's got some rubbish scribbled across it about how we need to vacate the premises of our adopted home, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, by the end of July... "or else". No signature. But a very distinctive style of penmanship, I must say. South paw. (You can tell by the smudging of the India ink. ) Can just barely read the thing, frankly. (Or even dishonestly.) Clearest thing is the illustration of a shaking fist - kind of threatening. I handed this to anti-Lincoln, since he tends to understand this kind of thing (ultimatums, mad grudges, and what-not). He read it upside down, looked at the back of the paper, then rolled it into a tube and tried to make trumpet sounds with it. I should know better, I admit. Though we...

My dad never said it to me, but growing up I heard it said by adults to impressionable young people many times. The conversation would go something like, "But, dad... all my friends are going. Why can't I?" And dad (or whoever) would say, "Well, if they all jumped off a cliff, would you do that, too?" It's such a staple of parentage as to be cliche, but I'm not certain the G.O.P. class of 2010 was ever confronted with that type of challenge when they were in short pants. (Perhaps they are still in short pants - I've only ever seen most of them from the waist up.) There's nothing particularly unique about this attitude. It is, however, being applied in a very, very destructive way right about now. I will be charitable and suggest that perhaps many of these freshman House members (and some of their more senior colleagues) simply do not understand the gravity of the situation. Having said that, I'm going to do what people who say "having sa...