Why aren't we all talking about the "secret plan to evacuate some residents of Chicago in the event of major trouble during the NATO summit next month"?

3 days ago CBS 2 reported on an e-mail that the Red Cross sent out to volunteers in the Milwaukee area:

It said the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

According to a chapter spokesperson, the evacuation plan is not theirs alone.

“Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service,” she said.

What's going on?

You know I'm already agitated about the potential for Chicago folk to come up to Milwaukee to vote in the Scott Walker recall election. (Remember: "Chicago is up in the house!"/"Everyone left is from Chicago"?) The Wisconsin courts, conveniently, have blocked the voter ID law.

And now there's this secret evacuation plan, with the City of Chicago and the Secret Service — the Secret Service, will there be prostitutes?! — working together? And Milwaukee is the evacuation zone?

Sorry to verge into the conspiracy-theory area of thinking, but why isn't this evacuation plan story big news?

ADDED: Instapundit links and says "Well, I did have a post last week, though this sounds bigger." That link goes to this:

Residents of a Chicago condo whose building will be in the eye of the NATO storm are being warned that they should move out for the weekend ... or risk being trapped inside by rioters.

Wow.

What do Bob Dylan, Toni Morrison, John Glenn, and Madeleine Albright have in common?

Obama is giving them all a medal — the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)

Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.



Finally, back to the subject of freedom, here's one of my favorite obscure Bob Dylan songs, from the album we listened to all the time in college, "New Morning":

If dogs run free, then why not we
Across the swooping plain?
My ears hear a symphony
Of two mules, trains and rain
The best is always yet to come
That’s what they explain to me
Just do your thing, you’ll be king
If dogs run free

Run, dogs, run!

"It can get a little gory, watching the parents tear up rabbits and squirrels, but that's nature."

"I just think it's been nice for us to be able to put it out there so a worldwide audience can watch these hawks."

"Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"

That's the fifth most "liked" quote on the topic of "sin" at goodreads. It's from Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (which is a novel, not a diary). The forth most liked also involves poor old Adam. It's by Mark Twain:

Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

But I've heard snake is tough, tougher than dog (and less crunchy than grasshopper).

Sorry for the gratuitous Obama-eats-dog/snake punchline. It was not my motivation to look up quotes. I was actually searching for a quote about boredom, something like the only sin is being boring. Interestingly, the most-liked goodreads quotes on the topic of "boredom" are boring. Seriously, how many ways are there to say If you're bored, it's because you are boring? And now I've lost track of what somebody said that made me what that sin-of-boringness quote, which might not even exist.

“Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.”
― Elizabeth I

Am I boring you? You must be boring.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sweetbriar and Jody both point me to the answer: Christopher Hitchens, in his memoir, "Hitch-22." Page 13. His mother used to say:  "The one unforgivable sin is to be boring."

And I think what got me looking in the first place was a comment by Patrick over in the "Predictable Althouse Is Predictable" post:

Honestly, when I first came to this blog, back in the day, I assumed that you, a law professor especially at Madison, would be a typical lefty law professor. In fact, I likely put off reading the blog for awhile because I assumed it would be the same old boring lefty stuff. This is a very interesting blog, and your political opinions or votes are part of that, but really, there's a lot more to it. Vote for Ron Paul for all I care, or Dennis Kucinich. Just don't be boring about it!

Dalai Lama: "I love George Bush... the younger one... as a human being."

"As a person: very nice person. I love him."

"Alleged proposals to allow Egyptian husbands to legally have sex with their dead wives for up to 6 hours after their death have been branded a 'complete nonsense.'"

"The controversial new 'farewell intercourse' law was claimed, in Arab media, to be part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament."

Who even thinks about making laws on this subject?

But now that we are thinking about it, what do you think: How much physical love may a husband express toward his newly dead wife (or a wife to her husband)? Clearly, kissing the dead loved one is considered normal, but where is the line? If you had to make a law defining what constitutes a crime with respect to the treatment of a dead body, how much leeway would you give to the new widowers and widows?

Let's not get all embroiled in what the Egyptian Islamists do. Let's look at our own values. We're talking about when the state should prosecute somebody. Who should go to prison? Take into account that, under the Constitution, we have a right of privacy:

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.

ADDED: This subject makes me want to reprint the last paragraph of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame":

About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

Tages-Anzeiger "starved to death after embarking on a spiritual diet that required her to stop eating or drinking and live off sunlight alone."

Another saint, gone.

Having gotten that far drafting this post, I went looking for saints who have starved to death. I found the story of Maximilian Kolbe. Now, I'm ashamed to have begun this post so sarcastically, but I'll leave it the way it is and invite you to contemplate the extent of the contrast between these 2 stories.