So many choices of photos. The Pulaski Blue Devils marching band of New York, because General Pulaski was a hero of the American Revolution.

Or twirling, dancing, hat-wearing girls of Bolivian heritage, because no D.C.-area parade is complete without Bolivian dancers. (Really. They’re ubiquitous marchers.)

But instead we’ll post this American automobile, a staple of Fourth of July parades since the dawn of the motorcar era. No poignancy, please.

There were probably many, many stranded Blue and Yellow line passengers this morning saying, “Taking? I don’t care if it’s Pelham, just take me someplace!”

When “Independence Day” came out, did the Metro sell space for the movie poster, the one with the spaceship destroying the White House?

(Hat tip: Marc-Anthony Signorino)

Just something you don’t see that often.

From the marquee of the Warner Theatre, around the corner  from NAM HQ. This is the theater that usually features comedy acts, musical groups and the like.

Tonight it’s Leon Kass, the bioethicist, speaking at the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture.

Leon Kass, noted humanities scholar and bioethicist, to deliver the 2009 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities
WASHINGTON (March 23, 2009)—Dr. Leon R. Kass, a widely published author, award-winning humanities teacher, and one of America’s leading moral philosophers and experts on medical ethics, will deliver the 2009 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

“Leon Kass is an outstanding scholar, a gifted teacher, and one of our nation’s leading humanists,” said NEH Acting Chairman Carole M. Watson. “He has brought the wisdom of the humanities to bear on many topics, from bioethics to courtship, and his dedication to undergraduate teaching in the humanities has benefitted a generation of students.”

From The Washingon Post, “NBC Sticks to the Script for Six New Prime-Time Series“:

The other comedy, “Community,” is about a study group that perfectly reflects the student body at a community college — community colleges, NBC notes, being a gathering ground for losers, newly divorced housewives and old people trying to keep their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. The old-person role has gone to Chevy Chase, while Joel McHale of “The Soup” is our hero/loser — a lawyer stripped of his law degree because he lied about graduating from college.

This series could represent the kind of popular endorsement of a setting and an idea that energizes the culture, bringing more and more skills-seeking students into community colleges. You know, like Barney Miller did for the police.

Oh, wait. It stars Chevy Chase. Never mind.

Cautionary e-mails are going out all around the nation because of the swine flu outbreak, messages telling people how to avoid being exposed.

Most of the instructions are common sense, but it seems to us there should be special guidelines for the D.C. trade associations. No, nothing about the jokes about earmarks and legislative pork, which have already been beaten to death.

Just reasonable guidelines because of all the personal, face-to-face communication that lobbyists do. Thus…

• No rubbing elbows.
• Truffles are safe to consume.
• Let that Mexican truck issue settle out for a few weeks.
• Contracting swine fever is NOT an excuse for swinish behavior.
• That swill you call coffee? Not dangerous.
• You can still put lipstick on a pig, but for goodness sakes, don’t kiss it.

That’s all, folks!

“Schwarzenegger says his `Terminator’ might be back”

Schwarzenegger confirmed in a Webcast interview that his image might appear in next month’s “Terminator: Salvation,” the fourth movie in the franchise about a showdown between humanity and machines.

The governor says he made it clear he had no time to shoot new footage but that the filmmakers are playing with technology to insert his image from the earlier “Terminator” movies.

The movie is released May 21. Shoot, too late for him to use his appearance to urge Californians to join him in voting for the $16 billion in tax increases on the May 19th statewide ballot.

But maybe there’s a PR angle if the measure passes: “California’s economy has been terminated. Now see the movie. That’s the only salvation you’ll get.”

An Earth Day thought from Conn Carroll at the Heritage Foundation, “Morning Bell: Free Markets Better for Earth“:

Despite its 25 million year age, Baikal’s life sustaining beauty almost did not survive communist rule. Russian scientists believed that Baikal’s pure water would help produce better rayon cord for airplane tires. The scientists turned out to be wrong and the aviation industry switched from rayon cord to metallic cord in tire production. In a free market system, the plant would have closed and resources would have been allocated elsewhere. But under communism, jobs were the number one priority, and the factory supported 3,500 of them. So it continued polluting the lake for decades unabated.

Big government’s failure to balance environmental quality with other economic goods is not limited to communist Russia. Throughout history big government has a well established track record of tolerating and even perpetuating environmental degradation. The left knows this, which is why they have tried so hard to drape their latest big government plans in free market rhetoric.

We were thinking about Communist totalitarianism while reading the Washington Post’s comics section on the bus this morning. In April 1980, we spent a few days in Prague and really got a sense of how the dictatorship forcibly aligned all aspects of culture toward reinforcing state control. Red flags on every building, guidebooks that rewrote Czech history, Jan Huss as a proto-communist revolutionary, etc. The thought at the time: There’s no relief, no break, no escape from the constant reiteration, didacticism, propaganda. Awful.

Twelve of today’s Wash Post’s comics promoted some Earth Day, green theme. Spiderman, Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey, etc., all preached.

No escape.

From Kotaku: Update: EA Ships Illegal Weapons To Press, Wants Them Back:

Electronic Arts today contacted game writers around the country asking them to return the brass knuckles they were sent as part of a promotion for Godfather II.

The representative that contacted me said that the company wanted to make sure that the brass knuckles were “properly disposed of.” He declined to comment any further. Contacted by email Friday, an Electronic Arts spokesperson verified that the company is asking that all of the brass knuckles shipped out be returned.

Brass knuckles or metallic knuckles are illegal in many of the states that they were shipped to. They’re also illegal in California, where EA is based.

As electronic gaming targets a lot of kids under the age of 12, they should probably be more concerned about violating the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, what with brass having minute amounts of lead in it.

(Hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy.)

The Swedish Embassy in Washington has embraced a new promotional theme through June, “Living Green.” The Washington public radio station, WAMU, carried a piece this morning on the embassy’s PR effort, in which arts reporter Stephanie Kaye interviewed Mats Widbom, an embassy cultural counselor. The gist was how much better Sweden is than the United States on the environment.

Nothing notable there; we’ve been hearing that since Max von Sydow was a youth. But Kaye’s intro was a hoöt.

The towering, white-haired Widbom cuts an elegant figure in an equally elegant place, the House of Sweden.

We are trying to communicate difficult matters around the climate change, but in a very holistic way, I would say…

He seems like President Obama, using carrots, not sticks, in a diplomatic way to entice people in discovering what they can do to affect the environment.

Carrots? Diplomatic, enticing carrots?

Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion

President Obama’s climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate of the so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

Carrots!

From the Screen Actors Guild Constitution and By-Laws, October 2007:

Section 3. The President, Secretary-Treasurer, Members of the Board of Directors and Alternate
Directors shall be nominated and elected as follows:
(A.) Elections shall be by secret ballot in which all qualified members shall have the right to
participate.

If it’s good enough for Martin Sheen and the other West Wing actors who are in D.C. today touting the ballot-destroying Employee Free Choice Act, it should be good enough for America’s workers.