Tonight, while reading up on this whole O’Donnell “Separation of Church and State” thing I came across the Wikipedia entry for the Treaty of Tripoli. This was one of several treaties the United States made in the late 1700′s with the nations of the Barbary Coast and is “cited as historical evidence in the modern day controversy over whether there was religious intent by the founders of the United States government. Article 11 of the first treaty has been interpreted as an official denial of a Christian basis for the U.S. government.”

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Read that first sentence again, keeping in mind that this document was ratified by the US Senate and signed by President John Adams just shy of 21 years after independence was declared.

Yeah. It seems like the country may have lost its way in the subsequent 213 years.

For the past few months I’ve had a bit of an obsession with Nikola Tesla.  It started with me reading Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla and has grown to me getting documentaries, going to a live show-  Tesla Lives at the Discovery World in Milwaukee and has even involved me doing some research into building a Tesla Coil of my own.

So one of the first things I wanted to see at the Smithsonian was the National Museum of American History which houses the “Lighting a Revolution” exhibit.  This exhibit is mainly about Thomas Edison, but Tesla does make a slight appearance so this was our first Smithsonian museum stop.

Mark your calendars everyone.  Friday, July 10 is his birthday, so celebrate accordingly.

Now that we’re safely back in Illinois the task of sorting through all of the photographs and videos of our time in the District of Columbia is at hand. I wanted to take a moment, however, to expand upon something that Becca and I went a little nuts over on Twitter: we met Cookie Monster.

On July 3rd we had worked our way down to the Capitol building for the ‘Capitol Fourth’ concert dress rehearsal. We were really early and had secured a spot pretty close to the stage behind a group of people standing around looking impatient. Two men arrived a few minutes later with a small entourage. A woman removed some puppets from duffle-bags as the two men sat on a couple of short boxes.

It turns out these people were there to do an interview with Elmo and Cookie Monster.

The two men, David Rudman as Cookie Monster and Kevin Clash as Elmo, took up their respective puppets and were immediately in character. I could go on, but perhaps it would be easier just to show you.

You can see more photos from the day here.