Don’t celebrate just yet, Fred, it’s only for a week or so. I’ll be busy with my wife’s graduation from undergrad school this weekend, and then out on business and pleasure in Florida. I’ll be back on the fifteenth. Of course, Fred will probably accuse me of lying about all this… 
So, I didn’t do to well in the first round, did I? So, for future refernece: if you use my picks for gambling purposes, large men with names like “Vito” will come and have long discussions with you about interest and debt repayment obligations. For the record, here is how I did in the first round:
Ironically, I have seen far more Western Conference games than Eastern Cofnerence games. I think the fact that every underdog won testifies to the strength of the teams in the West. 4-4 overall. Good enough to make the playoffs in the NBA, so let’s continue.
First, out West:
Out East:
First, Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, does this:
Barbour wears a lapel pin with the U.S. and state flags and he is in a photograph on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a neo-Confederate group accused of racist views. Barbour says he doesn’t know anything about the council. The picture was taken at a council-sponsored barbecue in July used to raise money for private academy school buses.
(and anyone who believes that Barbour and his staff knew nothing of the well known CCC is a liar or an idiot. Barbour, by the way, refused to ask the racists to take his picture down.)
Then he does this:
Gov. Haley Barbour won’t grant a posthumous pardon to a black Korean War veteran who was wrongfully convicted in segregationist Mississippi after he tried to enroll in an all-white university.
Clyde Kennard was convicted of purchasing $25 worth of chicken feed he knew to be stolen in 1960 and sentenced to seven years in prison, but the only witness against him has recanted his testimony. Kennard died in 1963, after being released early because he had intestinal cancer.
Barbour agrees Kennard was wronged but says he won’t grant a pardon, despite calls for him to clear the man’s name.
So. Appear with known racists, refuse to ask known racists to take your photo of their web site, then refuse to pardon a black man now known to be innocent. Who could Barbour possibly be trying to impress? How many national Republicans will repudiate this former chair of the Republican National Committee?
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
