Rhode Frog: Happy Mother's Day

Mama frog wanted it simple - a trip to the Cumberland Monastery (a favorite place), and thai food. Well, and an angel statue from Hallmark, a sparkly card, and some maple fudge. But I'd give my mom the world if she asked for it.

The perfect weather made it possible to sit and relax at the monastery, watch people walk dogs and kids play. A little girl with a braid climb the gigantic rock with the agility of a squirrel and stood on the top, arms high, victorious, even as mom told her to get down here, be careful, go slow. Moms never get a day off.

If you haven't been there yet, just know that it's the most peaceful place on earth. Even if you don't take on one of the many long walking trails, or go for the many veteran monuments, even type-A personalities like me can be calmed by the atmosphere. That is, after I've taken dozens of pictures (see flickr box).

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

Happy Mother's Day

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