Bronze flute. Egyptian, Ptolemaic period. Inscribed near the mouthpiece with: “The [divine] Nubian one and the gods of the resting place of the ibis to Thoteus son of Nekhtmonth.”

(Source: British Museum)

Hat tip to Ratak Mondosico.

Claude Moore Colonial Farm, McLean, Virginia

The Obama Administration sent the National Park Service out to shut down McLean, Virginia’s 1771 Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a privately funded and operated park, which is federally-owned, but which has received no federal monies since 1980 and which is not actually costing the federal government a dime.

The park’s managing director writes:

The first casualty of this arbitrary action was the McLean Chamber of Commerce who were having a large annual event at the Pavilions on Tuesday evening. The NPS sent the Park Police over to remove the Pavilions staff and Chamber volunteers from the property while they were trying to set up for their event. Fortunately, the Chamber has friends and they were able to move to another location and salvage what was left of their party. You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they don’t have the money to pay to evict visitors from a park site that operates without costing them any money.

Every appeal our Board of Directors made to the NPS administration was denied. They feel that as “landlord” they have absolute control of their property. The NPS is quoted today in the Washington Post saying “The monuments are closed because, during a shutdown, there is no money to pay the rangers who staff them”, said the Park Service spokeswoman, Carol Bradley Johnson.” And the agency is worried about the security of the memorials and the safety of visitors at unstaffed sites. “It is not something we enjoy doing,” Johnson said. “But it’s important that we protect and preserve our monuments for future generations.”

We have operated the Farm successfully for 32 years after the NPS cut the Farm from its budget in 1980 and are fully staffed and prepared to open today. But there are barricades at the Pavilions and entrance to the Farm. And if you were to park on the grass and visit on your own, you run the risk of being arrested. Of course, that will cost the NPS staff salaries to police the Farm against intruders while leaving it open will cost them nothing. …

In all the years I have worked with the National Park Service, first as a volunteer for 6 years in Richmond where I grew up, then as an NPS employee at the for 8 very long years and now enjoyably as managing director for the last 32 years – I have never worked with a more arrogant, arbitrary and vindictive group representing the NPS.

Matt Walsh puts it into the correct perspective.

The world has never seen an entity as expensive, inefficient and wasteful as the American government. Never. Today I’ve heard people lament that they are “ashamed” of their country because of the “shutdown.” I think they ought to be more ashamed when the government is fully operational. The federal government is embarrassing on a historic scale. Our Founders fought to escape the crushing tyranny of the British crown. Do you think they envisioned establishing a new government that would soon dwarf, in size and scope, every other government in the history of mankind?

Read the whole thing.

From Bill Kaplan:

The consequences of government shutdown:

1) Second graders will get off scot free after chewing their sandwiches into the shape of a gun.

Hat tip to Tristyn Bloom.

HuffPo:

A 36-year-old North Dakota woman who married herself in a commitment ceremony last March has now spoken about her self-marriage choice in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

The marriage took place among friends and family who were encouraged to “blow kisses to the world” after she exchanged rings with her “inner groom.” …

The Fargo-based yoga teacher also takes herself on dates to treat herself and “to invest in this relationship”.

According to a local Fargo newspaper, Schweigert first got the unusual idea from a friend.

“I was waiting for someone to come along and make me happy,” Schweigert told Inforum. “At some point, a friend said, ‘Why do you need someone to marry you to be happy? Marry yourself.'”

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time a woman has chosen to tie the knot solo. In 2010, a 30-year-old Taiwanese woman married herself.

Wikipedia:

The Washington Monument syndrome, also known as the Mount Rushmore Syndrome, or the firemen first principle, is a political tactic used in the United States by government agencies when faced with budget cuts. The tactic entails cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government, from popular services such as national parks and libraries to valued public employees such as teachers and firefighters. This is done to gain support for tax increases that the public would otherwise be against. The name derives from the National Park Service’s alleged habit of saying that any cuts would lead to an immediate closure of the wildly popular Washington Monument. Critics compare the tactic to hostage taking or blackmail.

Although the strategy usually intends to highlight the government’s value to voters, it can also be aimed at lawmakers themselves. Faced with budget cuts in the 1970s, Amtrak announced plans to cease train routes in the home districts of several members of Congress.

The term was first used after George Hartzog, the seventh director of the National Park Service, closed popular national parks such as the Washington Monument and Grand Canyon National Park for two days a week in 1969. In response to complaints, Congress fired Hartzog and restored the funding.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

(We the people are the turkey.)

Charles C. W. Cooke, at National Review, responds to progressive complaints about gridlock, explaining that one branch of government preventing another from acting is a design feature of the American system, not a bug.

Separation of powers is inefficient; it is an obstacle to substantial change; and it will not only “allow” gridlock but it is explicitly designed to encourage it. Where [leftist critics] are wrong is to conclude that this should change with the times. The Constitution is the product of abiding insight into politics — an insight that does not change with the wind. Rather amazingly, Yglesias claims the opposite to be the case: The problem of gridlock, he wrote in 2011, stems directly from the Founders’ having had “little in the way of experience to guide them in thinking about how political institutions would evolve.”

This is not simply untrue, it is the perfect opposite of the truth. Having watched the radical transformation of the British system during the 17th and 18th centuries — and studied undulations of the classical world, for good measure — most of the Founders were strikingly well versed in political theory. The introduction of limiting tools such as the rule of law, term restrictions, a codified constitution, a bill of rights, and divided government were intended to dispense with the presumption, famously termed “elective dictatorship” by Lord Hailsham, that the man who is voted in as leader every four or so years should have carte blanche to get things done. In other words, the Founders sought to block precisely what [Matthew] Yglesias and his cohorts covet. Nobody is perfect, of course, but I would wager everything I own that the architects of America were more au courant with the vagaries of human nature and the concentrating tendency of political actors than are the writers at Slate.