Eclectic Amateur is not entirely fallow, but posting is infrequent (weekly, when I'm lucky), and less Eclectic than I'd hoped -- it's been too much on the current SNAFUs of the Episcopal Church and less on everything else.
Life
... is good. Work is busy, which in the current economy is A Good Thing™.
Politics
MichaelCrawford, while I do think there are some very troubling problems in the USA that the "War on Terror" has exacerbated, here are some points to consider:
Suppose George Bush loses the upcoming election. Do you think he will cede power?
Oh boy. Not to rehash 2000 in great detail, but (1) the local officials on the ground in Florida, plus most of the Florida Supreme Court were Democrats, and (2) the SCOTUS ruling was not "for" Geo. W., it was against the Florida SC making up election rules not addressed by the legislature ex post facto. This was not a defeat for the rule of law.
So yes, if George Bush loses the 2004 election, I fully anticipate that we will see a new President. You may not believe he won, but I think he does. And we are not so far gone in this country that a President can simply refuse to step down.
I am very fortunate to have married a citizen of another country so that I can be sponsored as an immigrant in a safe haven. I've been in what I hope to be my new permanent home of Canada for a couple of months now ... Even though I have fled to another country where the rule of law still applies...
No offense (and I know that you have some very good personal reasons to emmigrate to Canada, so I don't begrudge you that), but have you considered that Canada may not be a "safe haven"? And not because of the big bad neighbor to the south, either. From my observations, Canada is further along to a soft totalitarianism which abandons the rule of law than the USA is. Don't let your anger at GWB blind you to the possibility that you're moving from the frying pan into the fire.