Watch your words.

Harry Truman's vice president, Alben Barkley, was delivering the keynote address at a mock Democratic convention at Washington and Lee University on April 30, 1956. Barkley, newly returned to the Senate after his term as veep and a failed attempt at the Oval Office, spoke of his willingness to sit with the other freshman senators in Congress. He concluded with an allusion to Psalm 84:10, saying "I'm glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty." Then he dropped to the stage, dead of a heart attack.

quote unquote: Gerard Manly Hopkins

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (God's Grandeur)

Political Stockholm Syndrome:

So often does the kleptocratic political class betray working and middle class voters, that the victims, under continuous economic stress, unsettled by scaremongering media, and persuaded they must cooperate to survive, develop an emotional identification with the con men and grifters holding their futures hostage.

Musical Interlude

Pick your poison

Former House Speaker John Boehner, who is the chief spokesman for the cannabis industry, is one of SXSW's keynote speakers this year, talking about medical pot. Inquiring minds want to know: will he be drunk or stoned?

From the Silver Linings Desk:

"The top U.S. military official in the Pacific defended the Navy on Tuesday concerning two embarrassing collisions at sea that combined killed 17 sailors, saying that 'the fact of the matter is 280-odd other ships weren't having collisions.'" -- The Washington Post

Let's Have a Party

The ever-growing pack of Democratic presidential contenders includes six female candidates five of them politicians; two black senators; a Latino former Cabinet secretary; and an openly gay mayor. And we're just getting started.

Factoid

Here's a big number in the news that's absolutely meaningless: Facebook has amassed 2.3 billion users — more than there are followers of Christianity.

quote unquote: James Madison

"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” -- James Madison (The Federalist, No. 51, 1788/02/06)

James Madison: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments [The Federalist No. 51], Independent Journal, New York, Wednesday, February 6, 1788.

Fact