Tomorrow night is the ACLU-WA Bill of Rights Celebration Dinner. The speaker will be Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, who was the lawyer that took his boss to court over his client Hamdan's unconstitutional incarceration and trial
. He won, though his victory may end up being Pyrrhic. You know, win the battle but not the war kind of thing. In return, he was denied promotion and will retire next spring under the Navy's up or out system. Unfortunately, I did not buy my tickets in time (deadline was Monday) so I will not be going. I would have loved to hear him speak in person. I heard an appearance he did on the radio and he was definitely not the knee-jerk type.
Every time I hear his name though, I can't help thinking of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans For Truth
who sullied the names of anything swift
including the careers of all actual swift boat veterans with their mud-slinging. Anytime I hear the word swift now, I think of the term swift-boating
and I don't recall the sacrifices that veterans made, I recall this group of yahoos.
And in other swift news, I will be going out tonight. I haven't been out on a Friday for some time because I work Saturday mornings from 7 a.m. until 11 a.m. shelving at the Pacific Place Barnes and Noble. I stayed up until 1 a.m. reading once prior to a 7 a.m. shift, and the lack of sleep severely hampered my already not the best shelving capability. However, tomorrow is an all-store let's-get-prepared-for-the-holiday-rush rah-rah meeting from 7 a.m. until 9 a.m. In other words, I don't need to be too swift for that, so I will be out.