And Becky is pretty. :)

Our flight is delayed.

P.S. This is why.

I’m at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of Discovery tomorrow at 3:48 pm EDT, and took this photo at 9 pm this evening from launch pad 39-B. There’s a 60% chance that the weather will violate launch constraints. The main concern is that anvil clouds from inland thunderstorms over central Florida may be blown towards Cape Canaveral. The launch window lasts only 10 minutes, because the shuttle needs to fly while Cape Canaveral passes through the space station’s orbital plane.

It’ll be just One Big Happy Holiday. Can’t we all Get along? :}

(Yes, gentle readers, with the annual Marching Season well underway & the Glorious Twelfth fast approaching, it’s time again for your occasional, always Eagerly-awaited ;> update on the very latest of the Durty Doings in Her Majesty’s Statelet of Norn Iron. :)

Disclaimer: now don’t Get me Wrong. Notwithstanding the True-enough grumpings of my Greenie comrades-in-Disarms :} as reflected in the Belowcited BBC article, I Like this. No really, I do. It’s a wee Creep in the right direction. :] Granted, it’ll take th’ Divil of a lot more than Pie-in-the-sky-high Hopes & £104,000 for to Get to the goal; but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as the Old Irish Saying says :}, and Gawd knows these Orangemen could use a little Chilling Out by way of a bigfat Peaceful Picnic to attract the Cultural tourists from Far & Near. (”Oh look, little Johnny, see the nice old men in their black bowler hats, playing their lovely Lambeg Drums.” :)

BBC (the which, may God Bless :) ~ internal Link added ~

A £104,000 government grant to help the Orange Order in Belfast develop the Twelfth of July as a major tourism event has received a mixed reaction.

The government said it was disappointed that the city centre was abandoned during the Twelfth period by those who were uncomfortable with parades.

Orangeman William Humphrey said the Twelfth was “one of the largest festivals in western Europe”.

…The money, to be paid over three years, will fund a development officer who will promote the day as a festival.

It is hoped it will become a family-friendly, fully-inclusive “Orangefest”.

Social Development Minister David Hanson said he hoped the money would help to regenerate Belfast.

…However, Sinn Fein assembly member Alex Maskey, a former lord mayor of Belfast, criticised the funding move.

“This is entirely the wrong decision. It is unacceptable that the British government should fund an organisation which continues to force its anti-Catholic parades through Catholic areas,” he said.

“The Twelfth of July for many nationalists in Belfast represents domination and sectarian violence.”

SDLP North Belfast assembly member Alban Maginness said the Orange Order failed “every test of inclusivity”.

“They are already helping tourism, but it is Donegal that gets the benefit every July because so many people - and not just nationalists - dislike the whole ugly atmosphere of intimidation and triumphalism,” he said.

[The County Donegal is in the far northwest corner of the Irish Republic ~ one of the three heavily-Catholic Province-of-Ulster counties ceded by PM David Lloyd George to IRA Commander Michael Collins when they partitioned off “Northern Ireland” from their newly-invented “Irish Free State” in 1922. / ~ the guestblogger ]

…The Orange Order is the largest Protestant organisation in Northern Ireland with at least 75,000 members, some of them in the Republic of Ireland.

Its origins date from the 17th century battle for supremacy between Protestantism and Catholicism. Prince William of Orange, originally of the Netherlands, led the fight against Catholic King James.

Read the Rest. Can’t we All get Along? :}

Casey offers a sedate, scholarly analysis of the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision.

Becky and I depart for L.A. at 8:30 tonight, kicking off our whirlwind tour of the West Coast. I’ll be posting occasional blog updates by cell phone, and probably by laptop-via-cell-phone too, throughout the holiday weekend. So, stay tuned!

Oh, and by the way, thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link to my Britney Spears post, my 61st Instalanche (a.k.a. “InstaBoost LXI”). Glenn has concluded that this must be “blog sweeps week,” given the number of posts about various sexual topics (such as the history of the blowjob), and my post about Britney fit right in with that meme. Not like I planned that or anything… [whistles innocently]

Holy cow! World Cup home team Germany just beat Argentina, Andrew’s predicted champion, in a quarterfinal thriller that was decided by a penalty-kick shootout (which I caught the tail end of, along with about a dozen other attorneys, in the attorney lounge). The Germans advance to the semifinals, where they’ll play the winner of this afternoon’s Italy-Ukraine game. Tomorrow’s quarterfinals: England vs. Portugal and Brazil vs. France.

Could an England-Germany final be in the cards? That’d be awesome. Bring on the offensive chants! :)

Preliminary autopsy results found no injuries, but indicated congenital heart abnormalities in a 12-year-old boy who died after a Disney ride in Florida, according to a statement from the medical examiner�s office. Visit CNN for the latest.