Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• Let me reach down and pull out this other box of slides I've got right here. 
• Seriously, I try not to post things you've seen a million times. Here's an example: You enter the Trump Hotel in the back. It has two main entrances on the street, but they seem to be blocked off. Here is where you check in. 
  
• I found out the Supreme Court is open to the public at 9:00 so I got over the at 8:30 in case there was a line. There was none. In fact I couldn't find the entrance so I asked a cop who told me, "It's not open yet but you can use that entrance right now until it is." Huh? But I go through it, go past security, roam about 30 feet to take a look at a portrait, and a security guard tells me I'm restricted to the cafeteria or the restroom until 9:00. So I hung out with some courthouse employees -- in the cafeteria -- for a bit.  
• That building is is fantastic. Right behind that Christmas tree (which I was a little surprised to see) is the door to the actual courtroom.
  
• Here it is. That's as close as you can get. 
  
• Check out its marble staircase with handrails carved (?) into the stone. 
  
• The Newseum is closing, and I'll give it a little love because it's fantastic. The reason for its closing are explained in a ton of articles dedicated to it over the past year but it is primarily financial.  In can't seem to exist in a city of free museums while it charges $25.00. Anyway . . . 
• The entrance has our own KXAS Channel 5 helicopter hanging above. I'm not sure I knew that before I got there. I certainly don't know why it was chosen. 
  
• They (meaning the museum) prints out the front page of over a 100 daily papers and displays them on the front sidewalk. They put one out for each state in addition to national and international papers. The two times I saw them they put out the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio paper. It was interesting to see the number of papers giving front page coverage to the White Settlement shooting.
• They had an FBI exhibit where they shoehorned in the journalistic aspect. It had some very cool things . . . 
• Here's the actual car from the thwarted Times Square bombing a few years back. 
  
• For those who know about Silk Road, here's his actual laptop which was seized while he was in a San Franscisco library.
  
• Remember the shoe bomber? Here's what he was wearing and the belts used to tie him up.
  
• Where did they get this stuff? All exhibits say it was "On loan from FBI." I'll take them at their word.
• They had a great exhibit of Pulitizer Prize winning photos. Here were a couple I didn't think I had seen. James Meredith of Old Miss fame on the ground after being shot and a famine stricken child with a buzzard in the background. 
  
  
  
  
• They had the actual "Bong Hits for Jesus" banner from the Supreme Court case!  I bet I've mentioned it a half-dozen times before. 
  
• In addition to parts of the Berlin Wall, there was a section of one of the World Trade Center towers with front pages from 9/12 on a wall next to it. 
  
• I went by the National Archives where the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are on display.  Man, they are so faded that you can hardly make out a single word. But I loved it. 
  
• Of he many other things the Archives had on display were just random objects they decided to put in a temporary exhibit. Right next to one other I saw . . . 
• A typed judgment from a federal district court (complete with errors and strike-throughs) convicting a Japanese man who refused to go to an American internment camp, 
• The actual signed order (not the opinion) from the Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education directing all school to inteorated with "all deliberate speed", 
• The handwritten petition to the Supreme Court written by Clarance Gideon saying it was unconstitutional to try him for an alleged criminal offense without a lawyer when he was too poor to afford one (he was right),  and
• The actual police offense report after the arrest of Rosa Parks. 
• Why no pictures? It's one of the few places in D.C. where photography is not allowed.
• And with all the majesty of the National Archives, you know we have to soil it by putting a gift shop in it selling this crap: 
  
• On Sunday, Mrs. LL and I went on a quick day trip to Baltimore primarily for me to add another stadium to my award winning list. The Baltimore Ravens were in town and RG3 was starting at quarterback so I went -- briefly. 
  
• You know the most amazing thing about that trip? It was all via rail. The DC subway has a station right on the block of our hotel, it took us to Union Station near the Capitol, from there we took a train to Baltimore's Union Station, and from there we took a light rail that dumped us off at the stadium. 
• Hey, I only saw a part of Baltimore which was the trip via light rail to the game and a journey to the nearby harbor. The harbor is great. The rest of Baltimore looked exactly like The Wire. And that ain't good. 
• The Ravens' stadium is right by Camden Yards. The only thing I realy knew about Camden Yards was you could see what looked like a huge warehouse behind the right field stands.  Well, it ain't a warehouse. It was part of the construction project (like the offices in the now old Rangers' ballpark.) 

  

  That's a Camden ballpark entrance at gametime. The top of the right field stands would be to your
  left after you go through the gate. There's another fence behind the stands so they can use that passageway as a pedestrian walkway in the off-season. 

• With the exception of Sunday, the weather has been fantastic. We walked from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial last night (no small walk, by the way) at dusk.  Us being us, we decided to walk to the back of the Memorial. Along the way we saw this guy shooting a great shot back up to the mall from the side of the Memorial. It's a little hard to see, but the top of the Washington Monument is covered in fog and that's the Captiol in the background at the base of it. 
  
• I also went to the back of the Supreme Court. Here's the actual entrance every Justice has to drive/ride though to get to the underground garage. (I wanted a pic straight on of it, but I was a little hesitant to take pictures of security features right in front of security personnel.)
  
• This is for all old school Cowboy fans: Once I found out the subway would drop me off at the old RFK Stadium, I had to take a look. Uh, it's not doing well, buddy.
  
• I had heard about the homeless problem in DC but I haven't seen it. The city is very clean.