Sign on the dotted line or else

June 15, 1215 -
All the English Barons of the realm gathered with King John at Runnymede and presented him with a little document they'd prepared. They asked him either to sign the document or to specify what they should do with his remains. The king signed.



This was the Magna Carta, and therefore historical.



The terms of the Magna Carta (aka, The Magna Charta, aka The Big Chart) provided that freemen should be free, that freemen should not be put to death, that freemen should be able to get married, that freemen should only be judged by juries of other freemen, and that a measure of wine should be a measure of wine. The only people excepted from these liberties were the People.



(Our own Bill of Rights borrowed heavily from the Magna Carta, although it allowed that the People included people not previously considered the People, except in those cases in which the people were still not People.)

Today in Olde England

June 13, 1381 -
In the village of Maidstone, Kent, there lived a Pheasant (or Villain) whose daughter was about fourteen years old. The day the Taxman came around to collect, the Villain was away. Only his wife and daughter were home. The Taxman didn't believe that the girl was less than fifteen. She and her mother insisted that she was. At last the Taxman tore the girl's clothes off to see for himself.

After stripping her, he quickly determined that a more tactile examination would be necessary. When she resisted, the situation took a violent turn—and at that volatile moment, the girl's father came in and saw what was going on. Like any good father, he crushed the Taxman's skull and stomped on his brains.

News of the event spread. The Pheasants (Villains) of southeast England rallied to the father's support. They began Wat Tyler's Rebellion on this date.

They made the skull-smashing father their leader because his name was Wat Tyler. Over the next few days, Wat Tyler led the Pheasants (Villains) against the government, burning the Archbishop of Salisbury at the Stake (whence the expression "Salisbury Steak").

The purpose of this rebellion was to secure a pardon for having rebelled. When Wat Tyler confronted King Richard II in Smithfield, he voiced this demand and was consequently stabbed to death, by the Lord Mayor of London (something you just can't imagine Mayor Bloomberg doing.)

Upon Wat Tyler's death, of course, it was no longer possible to have Wat Tyler's Rebellion, so everyone else went home (hence "Pheasants coming home to roost").

Many of them were later killed.

When the going gets tough ...

The tough board a yacht and go cruising around the Greek Isles.

The entire top echelon of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign resigned on Thursday. This mass exodus that left his bid for the Republican nomination in serious doubt.

Yeah, it's not about drugs

June 1, 1967 -
It was 44 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. The Beatles officially released their new album on this date.



The album is a strange mix of songs about drug use, contrasting personas of the songwriters, heroin injection, teenage runaways, circuses (yeah right, more drug use), deep introspection, aging, amorous traffic enforcement agents and everyday life.





Hey, be thankful I didn't play George Burns singing Fixing a Hole.

This is utter devastation

From the website The Daily What:

Before And After Photo of a neighborhood in Joplin

I've looked at this picture several time and just kept thinking how do you pull it together to go on.

Here's a tip for Mr. Gingrich,

You should immediately withdraw your candidacy for president when you tell people

it's none of their business how you spend $500,000.00 showering your mistress/ third wife with jewelry but you will tell them what they can do with their reproductive organs, how they will get health insurance or whom they can marry.

Here's a tip for Mr. Santorum

When Former Sen. Rick Santorum tells Sen. John McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years enduring brutal treatment at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, doesn't know how effective waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques can be,

it's time to STFU. IMHO.