Valentine's Day

Dear Sis~
Valentine's Day in the joint...now there's a bummer. I received the neat pics of the doggies; I like the one of Natasha "pointing" out in the yard (she's probably tracking a grasshopper) and the one of Harley lollygaggaing on your bed-he's a real ham. You've got two, good looking dogs for sure & they're obviously great pals now. I can't identify the purple flower on a tall stalk, the stalk looks sort of like a small banana plant; is that some kind of lilly? Anyway, it's beautiful, it looks tropical so I'm sort of surprised to see it in your back yard.
Well, the so-called "Potomac Primaries" are over and Barack Obama swept all three of them. I'm beginning to believe he's actually going to pul this off & win the Democratic nomination. Hillary has now gone all-in, especially betting everything on the Texas and Ohio primaries in a few weeks. If she loses those to Barack, I think she's through dealing. In fact, if she even loses one of those two, she'll be in serious trouble. I've been routing for Obama from the beginning, even if he's a little long on rhetoric and short on details, but I doubted his ability to defeat the Clinton machine. That machine is now proving to be vulnerable and Obama has the momentum (never underestimate the importance of momentum in politics, which depends on the heart more than the intellect). If Obama is the Democratic nominee, he'll be our next president. I, for one, welcome some serious change ...
Last week the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that execution by the electric chair was unconstitutional (i.e., cruel and unusual punishment). You may recall that, of the 37 states with capital punishment, Nebraska was the only one that stuck with the electric chair as a "back-up method" which the condemned prisoner can voluntarily choose over lethal injection. This puts Nebraska in a real quandry: they now have no legal means of execution. I doubt they'll rush to pass a law imposing lethal injection, given the constitutional debate going on over that form of execution. The US Supreme Court will rule in a few months on the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedures. Anyway, all this is just another reminder of the unseemliness of "tinkering with the machinery of death" as one ex-Supreme Court Justice once described it, as he announced he no longer believed in capital punishment (unfortunately, he waited until he retired from the bench before reaching that conclusion). Hopefully, one day enough Americans will become tired of figuring out ways to kill people.
Light & Love,
Bill