TWO HUNDRED thirty-one years ago today, in their "Leave us the hell alone" missive to King George, the Founding Fathers set in motion a grand experiment in self-government that continues to evolve today. There have been some spectacular failures, including a lengthy, bloody civil war to settle the question of whether the ownership of people is a desirable thing, yet even our darkest moments have not halted our progress. Twice our most powerful leader has been called on the carpet and asked to account for his actions in office, and a third chief executive resigned in advance of his trip to the principal's office, yet the republic survived. These days we wrestle with the very complicated question of how to fashion a true nation, one with a common culture, language, history, and future, out of so many disparate parts, and how justly to integrate into that nation those who would join us from other countries out of the common human desire to build a better life for themselves and their descendants. These are important questions without easy answers, but the fact that we're having the discussion says something good about us.
Recent events -- the unsealing of the CIA's "Family Jewels" of the '60s and '70s, the current administration's sneering disdain for civil liberties -- remind us that, well more than two centuries on, we remain a work in progress. Vigilance is required to ensure that the ideals articulate in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are protected and nurtured. The natural way of people is to be free; the natural way of governments, even one as based on individual liberty as is ours, is to erect barriers. Between those two opposite desires lies the struggle to create a system that provides for the common good while leaving people as alone as possible. Sometimes we lean too far in one direction, then too far in the other. But never have we bent so far as to break.
Happy birthday, America, and many happy returns.
We fall today into the entry on Phyllomedua tarsius, the Rana Lemur, a South American frog species threatened by habitat loss. But, geez, aren't they all? I mean, you can't shoot a blow dart in the Amazon without sticking some poor endangered amphibian, for crying out loud. Maybe if they spent more time getting the hell out of harm's way instead of bellyaching about their dwindling numbers, they'd hang around a little longer. Ingrates. 
AS A daily watcher of (by which I mean, "person in the same room while his daughter watches") Playhouse Disney, I'm familiar with the short pieces that air between programs such as Higglytown Heroes and Little Einsteins. And so when today's random Wikipedia article turned up 26-year-old Canadian actress/voiceover person/TV-radio personality 
