Civil Liberties and A Crumbling Empire

G--, Received your info on the Patriot Act. It's in the thought process. It mentioned the ACLU - an organization very low on my list of priorities. Wishing you music. Charles (J-18) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles... I have to admit, I joined the ACLU out of a reactionary panic from last year's election results. I know we never broached the political subject...(touchier now in this country more than EVER) I've discovered that people either embrace the ACLU...or utterly LOATHE them. If you don't mind, give me your take on this... Sometimes when I think about this country, I think about how the Roman Empire just imploded as they had their tendrils in everything and when their light dimmed, Europe(as well as the other far-flung reaches of Empire) darkened as well. The Dark Ages...an apt name. Rome hit it's zenith and then it was all downhill from there. Now with China on the rise and poised to become the 21st Century superpower, how will Captain America take it as OUR empire continues to crumble? Ain't gonna be pretty... I sent you a couple of my blog entries from my other e-mail...did you receive them? More observations from "life on the road"... Flying out to M----s today to complete what we call HANDS-ON TRAINING...You know. Where I go to open and close some doors and actually pretend that we can survive a ditching into the ocean. (Orderly raft evacuation, anyone? I guess we have to go through the motions to give us the illusion of hope as we cross the Atlantic or Pacific...but a water impact at 400-600 miles an hour is not going to make a whole lot of difference...We'll all be shark-pizza... Hope all is well with you, sir. Continue being a gentleman and a scholar. G-- P.S.--A music discovery of mine: I was over at a friend's house, giving some stacks of cd's to load into his iTunes software. We clicked on an artist's icon and we were taken to the iTunes store and discovered all available albums to download. My friend used his $6.00 credit to "purchase" a cd-single from an artist known as JHELISA. He burned the songs onto a blank compact disc...and now I have a very cool addition to my collection. All thanks to an accidental click. Sometimes techonology rocks HARD! It's a digital world...All The Best...