Toyah

hello everyone.
it has been forever since i have been able to post on here, so prepare for non-exciting dallas updates.
-i have been spending a lot of time at home with jennifer and the most beautiful baby ever (can anyone sense my partiality?)
-for labor day the three of us walked the mackinac bridge. jennifer doesn't like bridges, so walking across a five-mile long bridge wasn't her dream vacation, but it was good.
-football has begun. go buckeyes. i am also looking forward to nfl football. my friends from home got together for a live fantasy draft. that was a good time for me, and i got to show sarah off to more people.
-a new boss started at work, but i had the week off, so i haven't found out if that is a good thing or not.
-sarah had her 2-month doctor visit which included multiple parent saddening vaccine shots.
-i have tried to pay a bit more attention to the political world as of late. that hasn't been too hard with the 24-hour convention coverage. al gore served to make the most compelling case for mccain in his speech. he said there could be as many as three supreme court appointments in the next four years. there is no way i would want obama making those choices. the sarah palin stuff has been fun to watch, but the trifling 'controversies' will be annoying to hear about continuously. as part of my effort to maintain political interest, i have signed up to be poll worker in november.

that's all i've got for now.

John Mellencamp, Van Halen, Heart. All three of those bands/artists (and possibly more) have asked that the McCain campaign not use their songs at events. There are some lawyers in this commune, so I was hoping to get their opinions on whether it's legal to play these songs at campaign events without permission.

On the one hand, anyone can buy their CDs or download the tracks from iTunes and they should be able to play the songs whenever and wherever they like. On the other hand, if songs are to be used commercially then the rights must be purchased. Rush Limbaugh uses The Pretenders' "My City Was Gone" for his theme, and lead singer Chrissie Hynde (a devout liberal) apparently arranged that all royalties go to PETA (how's that for irony?).

It sounds like these artists are simply asking that their songs not be used and that they don't have the power to demand this. Does the campaign have to respect their wishes?