About 1978 or so, I met a guy named John. John had a nice big suburban house, but didn't make that much money, so he rented out three rooms of his house to people. His house became a popular place to hang out, smoke dope, whatever. He had a big wolf-dog hybrid that was usually outside, but sometimes he'd be in the house too.

Anyway, one time John pulls out a scrapbooks of his photos from when he was in 'Nam. In one picture he appeared to be wearing a necklace of something that looked like dried apricots.

"Know what that is?" (pause) "Gook Ears!"

He then went on to describe how he and his buddies, after killing Viet Cong, would cut off their ears as souvenirs.

I haven't thought of this very often, but with Kerry's testimony about war crimes coming up in the latest not-so-Swift Boat Liars ad, the thought came back.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/20/112017/125

Why Can't Ex-Felons Vote?

By Kevin Krajick
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A19

On Election Day it will not matter to some 4.7 million Americans whether they are Republicans, Democrats, independents or whether they have an opinion on anything at all. Under various state laws, they are barred from voting because they have felony records. This includes not just prison inmates (48 states), parolees (33 states) and probationers (29 states) but also a large number of people -- one third of the disenfranchised in all -- who are off parole and "free." Minorities are hit particularly hard by these state laws: They deny 13 percent of African American men the vote.

Incarceration in America is up 600 percent since 1974, and the absence of this fast-growing shadow population has been altering the nation's politics.

They're going to hide in a great big wooden horse.

http://michellemalkin.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/174

Check out this piece in Slate.

I saw this at Wonkette:

Andrew Tobias has an interesting piece:

http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/040819.html