Missouri Mountain Lions

DNA test results show that four mountain lions seen in Missouri last year had traveled east from the West. One was from central Montana, two from the Black Hills of South Dakota, and another from Colorado.

Fourteen reports of mountain lions were made in 2011, a sharp increase. There were only 12 documented cougar encounters during the previous 16 years. There have been two sightings so far this year.

2011 remains a puzzling aberration in Missouri’s mountain-lion history. The largest number of sightings . . . in any previous year was two, in 2006 and 2010.

No one knows why these big cats are moving around so much these days.

Large carnivores have big home ranges, and males disperse long distances in search of females. It seems logical that the rate of dispersal would be greater when cats have repopulated available habitat in neighboring states, but there is also an innate drive to travel . . . but last year’s spike is hard to explain. What we now know for sure is that mountain lions are traveling a long way to get here.” – Scientist Jeff Beringer

Awhile back I wrote about one cougar making his way from South Dakota to Connecticut.

ajh

Lot 494

A 25-inch baseball bat from a bygone era is for sale. It is engraved with the name R. Huff of Fulton, Missouri, the year 1936, Ku Klux Klan, and KKK. No one knows much about the item nor its original owner, Mr. Huff, presumably a racist. The bat is considered to be in excellent condition.

ajh

Obligations

I suppose I should write something. So this is it.

AJH

The Strange, Continuing Saga

A forgery? Doctored? A mistake by the writer? Deliberate fabrication? Or actual fact?¹

The story of President Obama’s birthplace refuses to die, for a myriad of reasons. What lends credence to Hawaii rather than Kenya is the newspaper announcement, and vice versa for this short bio. I suspect that he was born in Hawaii. Regardless of his birthplace, what is more important is his frame of mind, his worldview, which I find disconcerting.

Prior to this I had never heard of his book Journeys in Black and White.²

ajh

1. A watermark with a B and Breitbart, the source for this image, is noticeable behind the first sentence.
2. He abandoned this title and apparently whatever he had written. It would be nice to find a copy of it.

‘Like Father, Like Daughter’

Oops. It’s been described as “a remarkable case of family history.”

Golfer Caroline Inglis, a student at Churchill High School in Eugene, Oregon, “was en route to a fourth consecutive state 5A golf title, something no boy or girl has done in Oregon, when she was disqualified . . . ”

Inglis signed an inaccurate scorecard.

Her father, Bill Inglis, also signed an incorrect score card at the state tournament 41 years ago, knocking his team, South Eugene, out of title contention.”

The story has been making the rounds, with accounts in The Register-Guard, The Oregonian, USA Today, and even a paper in Tuscon.

I don’t know how I missed it. I guess I was just caught up in the excitement. My dad, after every round I play, says ‘Check your score twice. Check your scorecard.’ One of my friends said, ‘Like father, like daughter.’”

Another girl was awarded the win.

“It doesn’t really feel like a win, because I know Caroline really won the whole thing,” she told The Oregonian.

ajh

James Abdnor

Before today I’d never heard of James Abdnor. He passed away today at the age of 89.

From South Dakota, he knocked off George McGovern in 1980. Tom Daschle then ousted him, and John Thune, once a member of Abdnor’s staff, did the same to Daschle.

Abdnor’s biography on Wikipedia might be indicative of a lackluster, mediocre time in the US Senate, although I don’t know enough about the man and his career to make a judgment. It’s more of a hunch.

Politics is a funny business. I guess you could say it is cyclical.

ajh

Sedition

May 16, 1918

Congress expands the Espionage Act of 1917 with the Sedition Act of 1918. Offenses include the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language” about the federal government, the American flag or the armed forces or speech “that cause[s] others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.”

Such Senate stalwarts as Republicans Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Hiram Johnson of California also opposed the legislation, as did former President Theodore Roosevelt. Lodge spoke out in defense of free speech . . .

Amended many times through the years, the law survives as Title 18 in the criminal code. It is reminiscent of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

So what is sedition?¹

1. incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.
2. any action, especially in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.
3. Archaic. rebellious disorder.

Synonyms
1.  insurrection, mutiny. See treason.

ajh

1. My source for the definitions and synonyms: Dictionary.com.