A wildflower partisan

From my good friend Prairie Weather:

Lady Bird Johnson died this afternoon. Her flowers are still blazing outside our house though the July sun may make them go to seed soon.

She was a wildflower partisan, as all Texans know. I made so bold as to steal the drying seed head of one of her perfect, rare, Venetian red galliardias, at the old Johnson ranch, put it in my pocket, and scrunch the seeds into my garden about five years ago.

The next spring I had a beautiful single red galliardia plant.

The next year genetics took over and I had a lot of galliardia plants in the same area of the garden but they were mostly of the more common, less beautiful red-and-yellow variety. The following year, more. This year, thanks to the tremendous amount of rain, galliardia are blooming as far out as a couple of hundred feet from the house. There's still a display of pure Venetian reds right outside the sleeping porch, mixed with mealy-blue sage and some lilac skeleton flowers. The cattle and deer leave them alone.

All wildflowers native to the seven very distinct eco-regions of Texas are now popular, thanks to Lady Bird. "I want Vermont to look like Vermont, and Texas to look like Texas," she said. We may have more authentic, water-saving native gardens in this state than any other. Lady Bird won't be forgotten anytime soon.

PGA tour pro plays a muni with a weekend duffer

On the sixth tee, Marino stood behind me and watched my tee shot slice over the trees on the right side of the fairway . . . over the course fence . . . over a road . . . over a jogging trail . . . and splash into the Potomac, 150 yards out of bounds.

"I thought you said there were no water hazards on this course," Marino said.

I stepped back, too ashamed to respond, and watched Marino hammer an intentional fade that arched left to right. It soared down the middle of the fairway, cutting a path that mirrored the hole's shape, and dropped to the ground 350 yards away. One of my co-workers from the paper, out on a golf course for the first time in her life to watch this round, offered her evaluation.

"Wow," she said, "his shots even sound different than yours."

Thanks to Tom K for the link.

It depends on what the meaning of "verified" is

Hell, what are we going to do about this? Call for his resignation? Demand Bush fire him? Impeach him?

Can't prosecute him for lying to Congress because Bush will just give him a pardon:

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

What time does the tea party start?

Yo, Mrs. Vitter: David calls your bluff

and raises you two testicles:

"Vitter, 46, then became Louisiana’s first Republican senator since the end of Reconstruction, and has built a reputation as a solid conservative, opposing abortion rights, same-sex marriage and gun control. Last month, he took a leading role in efforts to kill the comprehensive immigration overhaul bill.

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse News reporter: If her husband was as unfaithful as former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”

Oh, my. Alimony or sliced baloney. What a dilemma the Vitters are on the horns of.

Personally speaking, Mrs. Vitter, I never discount fear as a motivator, but apparently you just weren't taken seriously by your whore-mongering husband.

Who's going to take responsibility for hiding the knives in this God-fearing household? Their children?

One may think it apropos at this moment to express brotherly empathy for a fellow man's impending emasculation, yet given that Vitter doesn't give a damn about the private parts of 150 million American women for whom he has repeatedly voted to deny anything resembling reproductive or contraceptive freedom, I would merely take this moment to suggest to the junior Senator from Louisiana how much it must suck to have someone else tell you that they, not you, own your body.

Tired of the "media filter", Bush makes a YouTube