by Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion,
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie.

]]> http://ramcharanlaw.com/blog1/2010/02/17/wednesday-night-burns/feed/ 0 http://ramcharanlaw.com/blog1/2010/02/17/an-armed-citizen-may-still-be-an-idiot/ http://ramcharanlaw.com/blog1/2010/02/17/an-armed-citizen-may-still-be-an-idiot/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:34:05 +0000 Administrator http://ramcharanlaw.com/blog1/?p=182 We like the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Since review never hurts, said Amendment reads:

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The whole Bill of Rights (including our favorite Amendment, the IIId) lives here.

Although it’s not explicitly stated, Americans have the right to go downtown and behave like idiots, but only up to a point.  That point was reached yesterday by two members of Generation We.  From today’s edition of the Topeka Capital Journal:

Phony gun spurs real arrests

The "No Guns" sign is used to prevent gun violence in Kansas

By Kevin Elliott

Created February 16, 2010 at 8:51pm

Updated February 17, 2010 at 12:06am

Two teens were taken to Shawnee County’s juvenile detention center Tuesday after shooting an air gun at buildings in downtown Topeka, police said.

Topeka police received a report about 4:20 p.m. of three juveniles shooting an Airsoft pistol in the area of S. Kansas Avenue and 9th Street. Police said the teens fled the area on foot before they were located near S.W. 10th and Harrison, just west of the Kansas Statehouse.

Juvenile cases are generally closed to the public in Kansas, which is why the names of the two alleged shooters don’t appear in the report.  Likewise, unless Mr. Elliot is more enterprising than the usual run of local journalists, we won’t hear much about the outcome of this case.  Our guess is that their defense will be along the lines of nobody was hurt, they didn’t realize what they were doing, possibly because of shortcomings in the public education system or because they’re morons, but  they’re really sorry, yada yada.

On the other hand, we have concealed carry in Kansas.  Had someone been in a position to return fire, as the police spokesman observed,  ”If someone doesn’t recognize it as an Airsoft gun, it could be bad.”

At some point, yes.  Generation We will end up running the country.  In the meantime, they have to demonstrate that they should be allowed outside the house without a grownup.

W

October 21, 1917

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

新年快樂;

By William Blake
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could Frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

By Robert Burns

Also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, etc., etc.

To the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right
Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met on the 23rd of May last at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, who, as the Society were informed by Mr. M’Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. Macdonald of Glengary to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing-Liberty.

Long life, my Lord, an’ health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger’d Highland boors;
Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar,
Wi’ dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger,
May twin auld Scotland o’ a life
She likes-as butchers like a knife.

Faith you and Applecross were right
To keep the Highland hounds in sight:
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better,
Than let them ance out owre the water,
Then up among thae lakes and seas,
They’ll mak what rules and laws they please:
Some daring Hancocke, or a Franklin,
May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin;
Some Washington again may head them,
Or some Montgomery, fearless, lead them,
Till God knows what may be effected
When by such heads and hearts directed,
Poor dunghill sons of dirt and mire
May to Patrician rights aspire!
Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville,
To watch and premier o’er the pack vile, -
An’ whare will ye get Howes and Clintons
To bring them to a right repentance-
To cowe the rebel generation,
An’ save the honour o’ the nation?
They, an’ be d-d! what right hae they
To meat, or sleep, or light o’ day?
Far less-to riches, pow’r, or freedom,
But what your lordship likes to gie them?

But hear, my lord! Glengarry, hear!
Your hand’s owre light to them, I fear;
Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies,
I canna say but they do gaylies;
They lay aside a’ tender mercies,
An’ tirl the hallions to the birses;
Yet while they’re only poind’t and herriet,
They’ll keep their stubborn Highland spirit:
But smash them! crash them a’ to spails,
An’ rot the dyvors i’ the jails!
The young dogs, swinge them to the labour;
Let wark an’ hunger mak them sober!
The hizzies, if they’re aughtlins fawsont,
Let them in Drury-lane be lesson’d!
An’ if the wives an’ dirty brats
Come thiggin at your doors an’ yetts,
Flaffin wi’ duds, an’ grey wi’ beas’,
Frightin away your ducks an’ geese;
Get out a horsewhip or a jowler,
The langest thong, the fiercest growler,
An’ gar the tatter’d gypsies pack
Wi’ a’ their bastards on their back!
Go on, my Lord! I lang to meet you,
An’ in my house at hame to greet you;
Wi’ common lords ye shanna mingle,
The benmost neuk beside the ingle,
At my right han’ assigned your seat,
‘Tween Herod’s hip an’ Polycrate:
Or if you on your station tarrow,
Between Almagro and Pizarro,
A seat, I’m sure ye’re well deservin’t;
An’ till ye come-your humble servant,

Beelzebub.
June 1st, Anno Mundi, 5790.

Slain Department Head Supported Accused Killer’s Tenure Bid

By Thomas BartlettFrom the Chronicle of Higher Education

Huntsville, Ala.—The chairman of the biology department at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Gopi K. Podila, had supported the tenure bid of Amy Bishop, the biology professor who has been accused of killing him and two other professors and critically injuring two more.

The whole thing lives here.

The Crossbill

The Legend of the Crossbill

by Julius Mosen

On the cross the dying Saviour
Heavenward lifts his eyelids calm,
Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling
In his pierced and bleeding palm.

And by all the world forsaken,
Sees he how with zealous care
At the ruthless nail of iron
A little bird is striving there.

Stained with blood and never tiring,
With its beak it doth not cease,
From the cross ‘t would free the Saviour,
Its Creator’s Son release.

And the Saviour speaks in mildness:
“Blest be thou of all the good!
Bear, as token of this moment,
Marks of blood and holy rood!”

And that bird is called the crossbill;
Covered all with blood so clear,
In the groves of pine it singeth
Songs, like legends, strange to hear.

Race & Gender of Judges Make Enormous Differences in Rulings, Studies Find
By Edward A. Adams
Feb 6, 2010, 06:20 pm CST

A judge’s race or gender makes for a dramatic difference in the outcome of cases they hear—at least for cases in which race and gender allegedly play a role in the conduct of the parties, according to two recent studies.

The results were the focus of a program about “Diversity on the Bench: Is the ‘Wise Latina’ a Myth?,” sponsored by the ABA Judicial Division at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Orlando on Saturday afternoon.

In federal racial harassment cases, one study (PDF) found that plaintiffs lost just 54 percent of the time when the judge handling the case was an African-American. Yet plaintiffs lost 81 percent of the time when the judge was Hispanic, 79 percent when the judge was white, and 67 percent of the time when the judge was Asian American.

…

A second study (PDF), looked at 556 federal appellate cases involving allegations of sexual harassment or sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The finding: plaintiffs were at least twice as likely to win if a female judge was on the appellate panel.

But not to worry:

University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Pat K. Chew, who co-authored the racial harassment study, said she found “the rule of law is intact” in the cases she reviewed.

Senate approves ban on lighters

By The Associated Press

Created February 12, 2010 at 7:01am

Updated February 12, 2010 at 7:11am

LAWRENCE – The Kansas Senate has approved a bill that would ban novelty cigarette lighters. Those who supported the ban say the lighters are dangerous to children because they look like cartoon characters, toys, or regular household items.

The bill was approved 32-8 without debate Thursday. It now goes to the House for consideration.

State Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, authored the bill. State Health Officer Jason Eberhart-Phillips also testified in favor of the bill.

A city ordinance banning novelty lighters went into effect in 2007 in El Cajon, California, where the local fire department discerned a connection between juvenile firesetting (“the fastest growing fire threat in the United States”) and novelty lighters, which have features attractive to children,  ”including visual effects, flashing lights, musical sounds, and toy-like designs.”  Similar bans are in said to be place in Maine and Tennessee.  An in-depth explanation of why we need more state regulation of novelty lighters lives here, at the U.S. Fire Administration web site.

We’re relieved that the Legislature is paying attention to the important issues, and is no longer wasting time on things like the budget.

Geez.