A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a boat below.

She shouts to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consults his portable GPS and replies, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolls her eyes and says, "You must be a Republican!" "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answers the balloonist, "everything you tell me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you're not much help to me."

The man smiles and responds, "You must be a Democrat." I am," replies the balloonist. "How did you know?" "Well," says the man, "You don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it's my fault."

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"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed, where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once." -- Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court, 2003

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A college student at a recent UCLA football game challenged a senior citizen sitting next to him, saying it was impossible for their generation to understand his. "You grew up in a different world," the student said loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "Today we have television, jet planes, space travel, man has walked on the Moon, our spaceships have visited Mars, we even have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with light-speed processing .... and uh.."

Taking advantage of a pause in the student's litany, the geezer said, "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young; so we invented them, you little twit! What are you doing for the next generation??"

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Freedom does not imply freedom to destroy freedom.

1984 was supposed to be a warning not an instruction manual!

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” - Thomas Jefferson

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Mahatma Gandhi

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary -- H.L. Mencken

During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. -George Orwell