"Great Day" is a big fave around here, where it has served for years as the theme number for a popular acoustic program—Two Penny Opera—on the local community radio station. Scott tours through here now and again, and gets a kick out of that, as evidenced below.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crQoudmHgkc]

Meanwhile, in other days, a Saudi Arabian court has upheld the sentence of 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for blogger Raif Badawi, convicted of "breaking allegiance with the ruler" and "going beyond the realm of obedience." The government is said to feel "surprise and dismay" at international reaction to the sentence.

In the United States, the Department of Justice has demanded the website Reason.com stand and deliver identifying information of six anonymous commenters who recently yammered online that the federal judge who presided over the trial of Silk Road potentate Ross Ulbricht should be taken out and shot. On June 1 of this year the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion that, in lay terms, "ruled in favor of people being scary dicks on the internet." However, in that case the scary dick railed mostly against his wife, with occasional bilious swipes at an FBI agent and miscellaneous schoolchildren. And the DOJ in this case will no doubt assert that Deep Meanness involving a judge is Worse. There are, after all, Special Laws no-noing the threatening of federal officials.

The Chinese government has heaved in the hoosegow blogger and multi-media activist Wu Gan for the offense of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," meanwhile saturating state media with thunderations that "wherever there is trouble, he is on to it like a fly chasing stink," he is "never serious at work," he "wrote a crude novel," and he hails from a no-goodnik family that includes a father who "destroyed a chicken farm." Various other Chinese citizens were earlier compelled to go "on vacation" with police in advance of the anniversary of the June 4 "that's all folks" to Tiananmen Square, while online money transfers involving Wrong Numbers that might invoke the Forbidden Date of June 4, 1989 were for a time derailed.

Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, out of jail for the moment, over the weekend traveled to occupied Siberia to encourage people there to vote in the occupying power's upcoming elections.

Indian blogger Jagendra Singh was set on fire after publicly accusing local politicos of corruption. He's dead. Ten people have been arrested in connection with his burning, though local police claim Singh set fire to himself.

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(CNN)House Democrats are invoking an ominous comparison as President Barack Obama considers sending about 500 more troops to Iraq: the war in Vietnam.

"This is exactly how Vietnam started," Rep. Charlie Rangel told reporters Wednesday morning.

"And if you don't think you're putting them in harm's way, you're not living in the real world," the New York Democrat said.

Rangel, though, said it's "not only unconstitutional, but it's immoral" to send more U.S. forces to join the 3,050 already in Iraq without Congress declaring war.

It would certainly be ironic if the Democrats destroy their party again over a war they don't want but don't know how to extract themselves from.