President Bush Commutes Harry Potter Death Sentence

Here is some interesting news off the wire. Biff Scuzzy from Postcards has presidential news I missed. With the current Harry Potter blitz, I guess many are mixing Potter and the President with some clever satire.

From the site:

President George W. Bush announced yesterday that he is prepared to commute Harry Potter’s death sentence should he die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the grossly popular series.

"I respect J.R. Rowling and her decisions as an author," said Mr. Bush in a written statement, “but I have concluded that killing Harry Potter would be excessive and would serve no purpose, other than giving millions of young readers nightmares. Therefore, if Harry Potter dies in Harry Potter and the Deathly Gallows, I will move swiftly to commute that portion of his sentence. A young life is a terrible thing to waste."

The president refused to establish a timetable for commuting Mr. Potter’s death sentence, but sources close to the White House expect the commutation to follow swiftly on the heels of the final Harry Potter book’s publication.

Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial 2009

Texas First Ladies

I'm a little behind with this post, but I've been travelling...which means that I'll have a post on the Eisenhower's Gettyburg farm in a few days.

There was a nice AP story that compared Lady Bird and Laura Bush:
But Lady Bird Johnson and Laura Bush were both instrumental in their husbands' rise to power. And each endured harsh criticism of the White House over a faraway American war — Johnson for Vietnam and Bush for Iraq.

"It's got to be a very wearing ordeal for either family to endure the kind of disapproval and unhappiness that the American people visit on the presidents of unpopular wars," said Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas in Austin whose expertise is the presidency.

Teddy Roosevelt and the River of Doubt

American Presidents have been known to do many things when they leave office. Some are noble while others are less so. However, Teddy Roosevelt may have the distinction of being the only one who became an explorer! He went on to explore a newly discovered river in the Amazon and to have that river renamed in his honor.

In 1913, after suffering defeat in 1912 in his bid to regain the presidency, Teddy and his son Kermit went to the Amazon. Their subsequent adventure became known as the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition. The River of Doubt had recently been discovered deep in the Amazon and Teddy was eager to explore it to see if it connected to the Amazon River.

The expedition did not go well. Wikipedia notes, "Almost from the start, the expedition was fraught with problems. Insects and disease such as malaria weighed heavily on just about every member of the expedition, leaving them in a constant state of sickness, festering wounds and high fevers. The heavy dug-out canoes were unsuitable to the constant rapids and were often lost, requiring days to build new ones. The food provisions were ill-conceived forcing the team on starvation diets. Native Indian cannibals (the Cinta Larga) shadowed the expedition and were a constant source of concern - the Indians could have at any time wiped out the expedition and taken their valuable metal tools but luckily they chose to let them pass (future expeditions in the 1920s were not so lucky). One of the camaradas murdered another, while a third was killed in a rapid."

Teddy is reported as having almost died from a wounded leg that was infected. His death five years later was credited partially to the health problems he never recovered from on this trip. He survived and the expedition reached the Amazon River. Teddy later wrote a book on the expedition titled Through the Brazilian Wilderness. The river was renamed the Rio Roosevelt in Teddy's honor.

I think this is quite the story! Yes, Teddy was tough. And what better way to get over losing a presidential election than to go hike around the Amazon Jungle?