Turkey babies!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to announce the hatching of Goat Rope Farm's first baby turkey. If all goes well, there could be as many as six more to come.

The proud parents are Frida (pictured above) and Diego. The father was unavailable for comment as he was busy displaying to anything he could find and attempting to mate stray feathers left on the ground.

Unlike turkeys in industrial type farms, which are over bred mutants incapable of natural reproduction, Diego and Frida are heritage breeds which retain more of the features of their wild ancestors. As a result, the baby pictured above came into the world in the time-honored fashion; that is to say with a great deal of showing off on the part of the male and a great deal of apparent indifference on the part of the female. Something, however, must have worked.

THE BANALITY OF TORTURE. Here's NY Times columnist Frank Rich on the torture policies of the Bush administration.

ON THAT NOTE, some people close to the situation have argued that Bush era torture policies were so counter-productive that they may have contributed to the deaths of many US soldiers in Iraq.

OH GOOD. Executive pay at investment banks is going up.

JOHN BROWN REVISITED. The 150th anniversary of John Brown's historic raid on Harper's Ferry in what is now West Virginia will occur this fall. Here's some new insights on this event by a history professor from Shepherd University.

MORALITY AND POLITICS. Here's a good article on the research of psychologist Jonathan Haidt on how liberals and conservatives share many key moral values but place difference emphases upon them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED