Excuses, excuses.....I received communication from Meadows Place Mayor Charlie Jessup about him peddling me around in a rickshaw as I serve as parade marshal in the Meadows Place July 4th parade.

Mayor Jessup declines for several different reasons, none of which I really empathize with except maybe the first: (1) He says he’s too old; (2) He claims his knees don’t work that well any more, (3) He admits he is not coordinated enough to peddle and wave at the same time; and he’s heard that the City Council is hurriedly working on an ordinance to ban rickshaws from Meadows Place !

So as of now, I don’t know what my conveyance will be. Maybe I’m supposed to walk along, dragging my oxygen tank and yanking a fan with a very long extension cord.

True believers.....After my last column when I washed my hands of the Republican party for at least a decade, I received a couple of emails from people who must have drunk the Republican kool-aide. You know the type. They still believe that Tom DeLay was really a public servant and would throw themselves on a sword for him to this day.

Hey, if you like the man personally, I have no beef with you. Tom can be charming and I even enjoy talking to him myself, but he and people like highway robber and former House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert treated the capitol as their private piggy bank. Before leaving congress, Hastert late night earmarked a $207 million highway to run right by property he sold for a $2 million profit after the road was planned.

Then we have Kotex heir James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, who was largely responsible for the Patriot Act, lead sponsor of a bill to make it harder to file bankruptcy, and racked up huge frequent flyer miles on lobbyist funded junkets.

And who can forget former tugboat captain and gold miner Ron Young of Alaska who was largely responsible for the funding of not one, but two “bridges to nowhere.”

Yep, all of these men are Republicans, but I’m sure there are some Democrat miscreants in Congress and there will be more after the Democratic tsunami expected in November.

I consider myself an Independent but one friend once told me (and it is probably true), “Independents are simply Democrats who are ashamed to admit it.”