[Caution: Geek content follows. Others may skip down two paragraphs.]
If you have read this blog before, and you actually visit the web site, you probably notice that it looks different. Well, it is different. A hard drive failed in the old machine that was hosting this web server. It was backed up and all, but I realized that this machine is 13 years old now, and some of its parts might be even older. The whole thing has been on borrowed time for years already, and I had an idea. In fact, it works. Everything that machine was doing is now accomplished within my regular desktop machine, by a virtual machine living inside it. In the process, I also ported The Plucked Chicken over to WordPress. Why WordPress? In the end, because it’s very well tested and supported. And of course, free, like Linux. (Try getting that much use out of a Windows machine originally built in 2000!)
So when there is time, I’ll spruce things up around here with some images and other media. There are a few little bugs or snafus from the blog conversion, but they can wait. In the meantime, just enjoy the simplicity.
In case you haven’t seen it, Gene Veith blogged about this case of deporting illegal immigrants. It seems the US Attorney General is very tough on them, and wants them deported, at least when they’re from Germany, and when they have obtained political asylum in the United States from religious persecution in their home country. And when they’re homeschoolers.
It’s worth reading about. I find the AG’s obtuse understanding of the religious freedom protected by our First Amendment to be sadly lacking. It may be a safe bet that he wasn’t home-schooled. Of course, it may not really be him behind it, but his minions acting under his name. Well, those minions need schooling too. So please read it, and click through the link Veith provides to read more about it. Note especially this, “Holder claims that the family’s fundamental rights have not been violated by Germany’s law forbidding families from homeschooling.”
This is really the same obtuse lack of understanding we find in the way our executive branch has dealt with the ACA (“Obamacare” for those who don’t recognize that acronym.) and its universal requirement for people like the owners of Hobby Lobby religiously to violate their consciences. In both cases, it seems our government has compartmentalized religious freedom into an area thoroughly insulated from public life. They have no clue that religion should affect every aspect of a person’s life. How far the United States has fallen from her founding!