Robert Novak died today. Novak disguised any likable or admirable traits very well. According to David Broder, Novak was a journalism giant for The Washington Post in the '60's and '70's, long before most of us met him through cable TV and the Internet. By then, he was a nasty hollow shell, awash in his own bile, and, if still a "journalist", he produced the kind of "journalism" you find on FOXNews, or read in any Murdoch-owned yellow sheet.
In July, 2003, Novak outed Valerie Plame, a CIA agent. This is treason, exposing a secret operative in service to the US Government. This heinous and treasonous, cowardly act was a "punishment" of Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, an ambassador to Africa who in 2002 repudiated a linchpin in Bush's war on Iraq, publicly denying any efforts by Iraq to secure "yellowcake" uranium from Nigeria. Karl Rove's uber-flunky, Scooter Libby (really: a grown man named "Scooter") took the fall for the Administration.
Seriously, Bush is too dumb to ever orchestrate such an outrage, so this all stinks of Cheney.
Judith Miller of The New York Times served nearly three months in prison in this affair, while Novak, a Bush shill, was never indicted for his base act of treason.
May Novak burn in one of the hotter corners of hell.
I took a short drive this morning and saw five red tails, two flying and three perched. Pretty sure there were only three birds, with two repeats. One bird was roused by a tractor and landed on a pole directly above as I passed under.
A female was perched at the very top of a very tall pole and seemed regal, and majestic.
This evening I revisited some of my morning's route, and found one of the red tails, improbably perched on the side of a different pole. Odd spot, and you're nearly past when you see the bird.
In a thirty yard stretch of road I noted two Indigo Buntings and an American Goldfinch. Stir in the Northern Cardinal I saw on wing into trees and you have three very beautiful expressions of primary colors, the most accessible anywhere.
In counterpoint, a little meadow was blanketed with starlings. Starlings are proof positive love is blind, as they are prolific, and ubiquitous. Each feature is more hideous, from the tail feathers that look like every bird flew backwards into a fan, to the mottled brown mess that passes for "coloration", and closely resembles rotting foliage, the starling is ugly on ugly.
Introduced, whether or not intentionally, species have experienced too much success in the US.
Sparrows, starlings, lamprey eels, zebra mussels, purple loosestrife, nutria rats, kudzu vines, Norway rats. All are extraordinarily successful, prolific, nearly indestructible. Some proved not only a nuisance but rapacious and destructive.
In readings about raptors, I found a particularly disgusting product brand-named "Avitrol".
From their website: "Avitrol Corporation offers a solution that utilizes a bird's natural behaviors to eliminate or reduce pest populations effectively. Avitrol, an acute oral toxicant, acts on the bird's central nervous system. The toxicant causes birds to involuntarily display behaviors that mimic the fright response and frighten away the remainder of the flock."
Except, according to HSUS (the Humane Society) pigeons, the most targeted birds, are largely indifferent to the sufferings of other pigeons. Which leaves people to be affected, and they are, horrified at the distress, the vocalizations, the thrashing deaths.
One thing the website fails to mention is Avitrol can be taken up by birds, such as (and especially) raptors, who are, after all, diners of opportunity, and seldom pass a free meal.
If anyone you know even thinks of using Avitrol, shoot them.

And in a most unlikely spot, on a wire on a road separating two cornfields, perched a kestrel. No hunting here. The falcon flared, wondrously backlit, then flew, making a small loop and back on the same perch.