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,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
  
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
  
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
  
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
  
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
  
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
  
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
  
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
  
• has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
  
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.
  
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
  
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
  
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:
  
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
  
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
  
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
  
• For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:
  
• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
  
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
  
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
  
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
  
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
  
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
  
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
  
• He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.
  
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
  
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.

Nor have We been wanting in attention to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

• Button Gwinnett
• Lyman Hall
  
• George Walton
  
• William Hooper
  
• Joseph Hewes
  
• John Penn
  
• Edward Rutledge
  
• Thomas Heyward, Jr.
  
• Thomas Lunch, Jr.
  
• Arthur Middleton
  
• John Hancock
  
• Samuel Chase
  
• William Paca
  
• Thomas Stone
  
• Charles Carroll of Carrollton
  
• George Wythe
  
• Richard Henry Lee
  
• Thomas Jefferson
  
• Benjamin Harrison
  
• Thomas Nelson, Jr.
  
• Francis Lightfoot Lee
  
• Carter Braxton
  
• Robert Morris
  
• Benjamin Rush
  
• Benjamin Franklin
  
• John Morton
  
• George Clymer
  
• James Smith
  
• George Taylor
  
• James Wilson
  
• George Ross
  
• Caesar Rodney
  
• George Read
  
• Thomas McKean
  
• William Floyd
  
• Philip Livingston
  
• Francis Lewis
  
• Lewis Morris
  
• Richard Stockton
  
• John Witherspoon
  
• Francis Hopkinson
  
• John Hart
  
• Abraham Clark
  
• Josiah Bartlett
  
• William Whipple
  
• Samuel Adams
  
• John Adams
  
• Robert Treat Paine
  
• Elbridge Gerry
  
• Stephen Hopkins
  
• William Ellery
  
• Roger Sherman
  
• Samuel Huntington
  
• William Williams
  
• Oliver Wolcott
  
• Matthew Thornton

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, four-star General Wesley Clark envisioned a volunteer force of specially skilled Americans to be called upon to serve both domestic and international functions ranging from fighting forest fires to nation building in his 2004 platform for President of the United States. I wrote about a similar program dubbed the Civilian Reserve Corps proposed by President Bush in 2007.

This model for service fits nicely with Barack Obama's vision for America.

In the following video, General Clark critiques John McCain's positioning as the presumptive national security candidate in this year's election.


Who else is on your Obama VP short-list? Post a comment.

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, General Wesley Clark, John McCain, national security

I'm in San Francisco for the Google I/O conference/geekgasm. It's too awesome for words. I'd almost forgotten how much I love this city and the West Coast in general. Gorgeous. Careful Maine, you just might loose me!

The Wednesday morning keynote was an introduction by Google Engineering VP Vic Gundotra to the cloud availability, pervasive connectivity, and ease of deployment strategies Google is trying to realize with products like Google App Engine and Android.

I followed this up with a couple of sessions, one by Python creator Guido van Rossum and another by Google Fellow Jeff Dean. At the end of a fascinating trip under Google's hood, Dean announced that the after party should not be missed. Oh yeah, he also let slip that Flight of the Conchords would be playing. The room collectively w00t!!11!-ed its pants.


Jeff was right. The party was something to behold. The main room where the keynote speech was held that morning had been transformed into a Google playland. Foosball, pool, Wiis everywhere. And the food. Two words: Chocolate fountain. I'll say this, Google can throw a party. I've never seen so many developers in one place not bitching about work; and that's saying something.

Throughout the conference we've returned again and again to several core philosophies Google holds near and dear, but there were some blind-spots I wasn't expecting. Google is trying hard to be a good friend to developers and to humanity in general, but it's just too huge and too powerful; there's still an undercurrent of trepidation amongst many of the older and wiser attendees. And there's definitely more going on behind the scenes.

With any environment where there is a finely delineated inside and outside, there's going to be suspicion. And suspicion kills.

Unfortunately there's nothing for it. Google can't be what it is without holding some cards close to its chest, and we can't survive as users and developers without remaining vigilantly critical of its motives and methods.

More to follow once I've had a chance to digest and ponder.

Labels: bloggers, blogging, Google, Google Code, Internet, IO2008, technology

Big brass ones.

Yesterday, while speaking at the Israeli Knesset in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, President Bush criticized those in the American government who would speak to our international adversaries as “appeasers,” a reference to the fatally flawed Munich negotiations of British statesman Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The reaction was instantaneous in Washington, and throughout the entire American mediascape – to include the Blogosphere – and it was almost universally accepted that Bush was indirectly poking Democratic Presidential contender, Barack Obama.

While Godwining the 2008 presidential race is ballsy enough, Bush took the Heisman of arrogant dumb-assery a day later when he traveled to meet with America’s staunchest friend and ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. There he begged the king to increase oil production to ease the strain on the U.S. economy as we enter the annual, Summer-time months of peak consumption. The king, like any good friend and ally, served President Bush a nice steaming hot cup of STFU, and then negotiated U.S. aid and cooperation in Saudi Arabia’s fledgling nuclear program.

Appeaser? It takes one to know one.

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, George W. Bush

Fellow Strimling supporters out there in the first district should head over to PolitickerME, and vote in their latest web poll.

We're less than a month from the June 10th Democratic Primary here in Maine and the race heating up with campaign signs sprouting faster than the crocuses. It's time to start reading-up on these candidates if you haven't already.

For those interested in watching web style democracy in action, click off a vote for Ethan Strimling in the PolitickerME poll. Go ahead. You know you want to.

Labels: 2008 Election, Ethan Strimling, maine

Is Vista ME part 2? Is Windows 7 the real deal? Well, let's not get crazy.



The video certainly shows off a few nifty features, and many more are hinted at. A split view Explorer window, FTP locations, disk usage analyzer, and a revamped task manager are a few of the shiny, and useful updates.

It's a shame the soulless machine that is Microsoft will deliver this to market as a whole new OS, instead of as the necessary Vista functionality upgrade it actually is.

Labels: Microsoft, Vista, Windows 7

Cheers and thank you to our friends and families on the flip side of our little blue orb for your sacrifice and devotion so long ago.

ANZAC Day reminds us of those intrepid souls who did what they were asked, and plunged headlong into the chaos of war. Faded photos and the handwritten script of a different age tell parts of their stories, but we must be mindful of the lens of history. They - along with hundreds of thousands of others from around the globe - believed that they fought and died not for war but for peace.

In our post-modern age it's too easy to condemn the notions of a "last war," or a lasting peace as quaint and antiquated. We can never allow that to happen. But first we need to agree that peace is real, achievable, and worthy of pursuit.

Then - for those that went before us, and for those who will follow - we need to stop killing each other once and for all.

Labels: Anzac Day, World War I