Below is the “response” I got from Sen. Specter in response to my rant in Does He Have Nothing Better To Do, Part I (see below).

A quick summary of what you are about to read: Sen. Specter has time to try to dig up dirt on the New England Patriots — who, last I checked, were not located in Pennsylvania — but he doesn’t have time to respond to anyone outside of Pennsylvania who might have an opinion on the topic.

Is it any wonder our federal government is broken on many levels?

“Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

“I receive a large volume of E-mails, phone calls, faxes and letters every week from concerned citizens like yourself.

‘Unfortunately, due to the high volume of mail, I can only respond if you’re a resident of Pennsylvania.  If you need to find out who your U.S. Senator is please go to www.senate.gov.

“If you are a resident of Pennsylvania, and still recieving this message, it simply means that I need you to use my web form to send your message to me.  Please go to www.specter.senate.gov, click on the link “Contact Info” and then click on “Contact Form”. “

Sheesh,

How about just make Arlen Specter commissioner of the NFL, seeing as how the Pennsylvania senator seems to claim to have a better grasp on NFL matters than NFL employees themselves.

Soon after the NFL said it considered the Spygate controversy surrounding the News England Patriots closed, Specter implied he would demand further investigation into the matter.

This was the message I sent to Senator Specter via his Web site:

“Sen. Specter,

“First, let me start by saying I am a huge Indianapolis Colts fan, I despise the New England Patriots, and would like nothing more than to see the Patriots franchise disintegrate.

“That said … I think your continued pursuit of the Spygate matter is a waste of your time and of taxpayer money.

“Maybe the Patriots are guilty as sin in this matter. Maybe they are clean as a whistle. Either way, it is the business of the NFL; not the business of the United States government.

“I would suggest before holding your next national press conference to lambaste the NFL for its handling of the matter, you should first hold a press conference to explain how you have the solutions to rising gas prices, the war in Iraq, and the tanking economy. I would humbly suggest you consider focusing 100 percent of your attention to solving those issues before spending one second of your time or one cent of taxpayer money on the Spygate situation.

“Respectfully,

“- Kyle Wright”

My brother-in-law, his wife and their eight-month old daughter visited earlier this month.

Their advice to us on how to help our one-month-old sleep at night? Leave the lights on. “The baby will want to close its eyes to avoid the light,” said the mother, a nurse.

Made sense to me.

Crestview Mayor David Cadle also had some advice for me during the City Council meeting Monday night.

“Keep everything quiet at night,” he said. “Then the baby will learn that night time is quiet time.”

Also made sense to me.

Those of you out there who have raised or are raising little ones: Which bit of advice would you vote for?

Post your thoughts below.

Who are these people, and what happened to the ones who were here two weeks ago?

That was my thought during the Laurel Hill City Council meeting May 8.

All of the acrimony that spilled out during the April 24 meeting was gone by May 8.

Almost certainly, the ceremony to honor the late John W. Harrison as the city’s Citizen of the Year was the reason for the Meeting of Good Feelings.

It was neat to see folks put aside their political differences for one night to honor one of their own.

I stand by my opening line from my report on the meeting: It was Laurel Hill at its best.

I’ve had to break out all of the Disney movie songs I used to know to help sing my 30-day-old son to sleep.

That, plus Brian Hughes’ preview of the upcoming performance of Sleeping Beauty in DeFuniak Springs, got me thinking — which of the Disney princesses had it the roughest?

Here’s my ranking, from easiest to toughest.

EASIEST

Cinderella: The villains are an ill-tempered stepmother and two annoying stepsisters. Hardly pleasant, but not life-threatening. Plus, Cindy had a fairy godmother on her side, and the Handsome Prince only had eyes for her. She overcame the “hardship” of doing daily chores. This road to princesshood was relatively smooth.

SECOND-EASISEST

Jasmine: The heroine of Aladdin had direct help from a sultan (her father), a tiger (her pet), plus indirect help from a good genie. Her foe, the evil sorcerer Jafar, is a scary dude, but never gave indication he would do Jazzy harm. In fact, he offered to marry her. Of course, that could be interpreted as a fate worse than death.

AVERAGE

Snow White: I see her road to a happy ending as almost equal to Jasmine’s. The key differences: Snow White had help from seven dwarfs; not a sultan, a tiger and a genie. Also, Snowy wasn’t exactly the apple of her wicked stepmother’s eye, so to speak. Wicked stepmother seemed to want her to take an awfully long nap.

SECOND HARDEST

Sleeping Beauty: Anyone who has the evil sorceress Malificent as a foe is in for a tough time in my book. I always considered Malificent the most scary of the Disney villains. I wouldn’t want to mess with anyone with full magical powers who can transform herself into a dragon on a whim. Not to mention, Sleepy couldn’t do much to help her own cause since she was asleep for a good chunk of the movie’s time span.

HARDEST

Ariel: Let’s rattle off everything The Little Mermaid overcame: She was a mermaid on land, she couldn’t talk, she had three days to make Prince Eric fall for her, and her opponent, Ursula the Sea Witch, was providing active competition for Prince Eric’s affections. When the Disney princesses get together, Airy definitely can say she overcame the most.

As I’ve posted before, if not for bad luck, the Old Spanish Trail Festival wouldn’t have any luck at all.

A thundershower hit the festival Saturday afternoon. It didn’t shut down the festival, but it certainly didn’t help.

The festival has been a victim of bad luck as it tries to revive its fortunes.

It pushed to allow for the sale of alcoholic beverages at the festival at a time when the Crestview City Council had legitimate concerns about the wording of such an ordinance.

It got hit with the first big insurance bill as part of the city’s effort to standardize its liability insurance for special events.

And then the rain hit on festival day.

Here’s hoping it didn’t wash the festival away.

As I write this, Laurel Hill’s baseball team is two hours from starting its regional semifinal game against Paxton.

The winner will likely face a private school in the regional finals.

Many think the FHSAA should change its rules regarding private schools, saying they have an unfair competitive advantage.

My take? Heck yes, they have a competitive advantage. And heck no, the FHSAA shouldn’t change the rules.

Winning a championship isn’t supposed to be easy. And when a school like Laurel Hill breaks through against a private school to win a championship, it will be all the sweeter.

(Update: Let me add my own athletic background. I grew up in a town smaller than Laurel Hill. I attended a public high school about the size of Baker. At the time, all schools in my state competed in the same enrollment division. Was that fair? No. But when I made the state finals in my best sport and my sister made the all-state team in her best sport, there were no asterisks.)

I lost a chunk of what little hair I have left when our phone and Internet service went down during a fiber cut for a local communications company on Wednesday afternoon.

I spent the afternoon frantically picking up the phone to check for a dial tone and opening up Firefox to see if the Internet was up and running.

A watched pot never boils? No kidding.

Hard to believe now, but I remember doing our college newspaper without benefit of the Internet or a phone.

That was only eight years ago.

Amazing how far the technology has come and how we take it for granted.

How did you spend your Wednesday afternoon.? Did the technology outage affect your day? Post your thoughts here.

It probably didn’t get noticed, but to me, this was the key quote that came out of Thursday’s Laurel Hill City Council meeting:

“We’re all suffering. The reason for the suffering is to move city in direction it’s supposed to be going.” — Mayor James Dunn.

The comment came in the context of a contentious discussion following a vote to fill a vacant seat on the council, and inadvertently described some reasons for the political divisions in Laurel Hill.

Some stop after one sentence. “We’re all suffering.” For some, that is enough reason to oppose pretty much anything city staff wants to try.

Some are willing to accept the second half of the quote and are willing to pay a price now, hopefully for the future benefit of the city.

Who’s right? I’m not touching that one. I’m like the person who stumbles across a schoolroom brawl five minutes into the fight. I can see there is a dispute going on, but I can’t claim to understand how or why it started.

Until enough folks are on the same page — whatever that page may be — I fear more tiffs like the ones that marred Thursday’s meeting.

Bear with me on this one. I signed up for the 5 a.m. shift for the Relay For Life this past weekend, and I have a 15-day-old child at home. It’s not my fault if my brain is thinking weird things.

Two of my co-workers at a past job had a tradition when we would have a nightcap after work. One would drink all soda. The other would drink all beer.

Without fail, by the end of the night the one who drank pop would act just as weird as the one drinking beer.

I remembered those days when watching an event at the Relay For Life. Two guys went head-to-head to see who could drink a 2-liter of pop the fastest.

Both were drooling with severe headaches and acting strangely by the time they were finished.

Sound like the final end result of another kind of binge drinking?

So here’s a thought for those under 21 oout there who insist on having a drink in hand at your social gatherings: binge on soft drinks instead of on alcohol.

I’ll guarantee, whatever effect you are going for with the alcohol, you’ll get the same effect from soda.