And now out of Africa
 
We’re back from Kenya, and had a great time.  Highlights (other than filling 7000 plastic tubes with soil for tree planting, along with 5 other volunteers) included a trip to the Masai Mara, the Kenyan extension of the Serengeti plain, where we watched lions kill two wildebeests (spelling?) and try and kill a third, only to have the third wildebeest chase them around a hillside before it ran off.
 
While it was beautiful, it was also more expensive to be there than we anticipated, and the flights were very expensive.  My top recommendations for travel remain Indonesia first, Bolivia second, Nepal third.

So, back to politics!  How about that John Edwards?  I had been meaning to blog long ago about how Kerry should borrow policies from other candidates, and at the top of my list, at least as an example, is Edward’s idea of funding 100,000 additional parole officers.  This seems to me to be a great, politically viable way to get funding for rehabilitation, as opposed to putting people away in prison for ever-longer periods.  We’ll see when the convention comes through if Kerry adopts some useful ideas, like this one.
 
I would love to hotlink to Edwards-the-presidential-candidate policy positions, but it's gone down the memory hole.