Weekend wound up

I love when I get to post a Weekend Wound Up on Thursday morning, especially since the clients I write for are closed today! And just in case you need a place to celebrate tomorrow, you're welcome at my house. The shindig starts at 4 and wraps at 7. It's a potluck (with barbecue and sweet tea provided). Bring a side dish or a dessert, your bathing suit, and maybe a lawn chair ... hope to see you here. Address is Four-fifty-one Lakeshore Lane. Chapel Hill.

Flaming liberals, moderates, conservatives, Libertarians, unaffiliateds, whatever, you're invited! The 4th of July is one day we can share our common ground in freedom.

Free-market extremists say they want to run government like a business, except in one really important way. They don't want government to compete. Odd isn't it? If what they say is true about free markets, the Invisible Hand of Capitalism depends on competition to do its magic.

Let government compete?

What a day!

It looks like the original author deleted his/her post about Blackwater and Womble Carlyle. It's probably just as well given how heated things were getting. But just to be clear, I didn't do it.

OMG. Maybe we were hacked!

Not for the birds.

Provisional tallies for 2007 show that nesting for some shorebirds is down significantly from the last count in 2004. Nest numbers for gull-billed terns declined 9 percent and those for black skimmers fell 11 percent. Nesting for the common term went down 13 percent.