But while a presentation by engineering firms to City Council doesn’t lend itself to much comment. It’s good the council checks over the firms’ merits, but the firms’ resumes simply don’t make for interesting blogging.

The Grinch and Mr. Camouflage are also parade winners. I think the award winners will be announced in the paper Wednesday.

The pirates are here for the Krewe of Bowlegs which took a first place in the Destin Christmas Parade awards.

No onwder we have two Peewee football teams in the audience (Red and White: They’re being honored for their performance in the Youth Football League.
Councilor Ted Corcoran reads out the names, but says first: “Let me assure you, every council meeting is this much fun.”

A representative of Rep. Jeff Miller presents Larrimore with a copy of Miller’s presentation in the House saluting Larrimore.
While she speaks, I unwrap a zinc throat lozenge. One of the Peewee football players is staring at me suspiciously—either he’s impressed by my laptop or he disapproves of my eating what looks like candy during the presentation.
(Edited for accuracy)

Today is officially proclaimed Destin’s Sue Larrimore Appreciation Day. Ms. Larrimore receives a standing ovation from the audience.
Larrimore says that when she first took the job “I thought it would be working with a lot of transients … it’s not a transient town, it’s a home town, like the one I grew up in. It’s a beautiful nest.”

The most recent cost breakdown on the Main Street/Legion Drive project comes out $64,000 less than planned–$150,000 where items came in below budget vs.$76,000 in added expenses.
The new change order for Airport Road, alas, is $183,000 more. City Manager Greg Kisela predicts work on that road will be finished before summer tourist season kicks off.

With a presentation to Sue Larrimore on the agenda, we have a large number of small kids and their parents swarming in to watch.
Why are two of them dressed like pirates? I’ve no idea.
There’s also a Grinch (which makes sense) and a guy in camo (huh?). I’m not seeing a theme.

Having announced in the last paper that I’d be liveblogging again, I was a bit alarmed when the city’s wireless internet didn’t register on my Airport. Fortunately, IT guy Webb Warren fixed things easily. Hooray for competent technical people!

A letter from the American Christian Heritage Center in Sunday’s Daily News argues, as conservative Christians are prone to do, that the purpose of the First Amendment is to ensure “no denomination would be established as a national church,” not to separate the church from the state. On the Center’s Web site, the author of the letter, one Calvin Longton, points out that “separation of church and state” isn’t actually in the Constitution.

Perfectly true. But neither is one single word about Christianity or God, other than the fact there shall be no religious tests required for federal office. So if Jefferson’s reference to the “separation of church and state” is irrelevant to understanding the First Amendment—since it isn’t in the Constitution—presumably the Founders’ Christian beliefs aren’t relevant either, since they aren’t included.

After all, it’s not as if they couldn’t have said “Congress shall make no law representing the establishment of a federal church” if they’d wanted to. Or “prohibiting the free exercise of any Christian sect.” Or said their shall be no religious test applied to any professing Christian.

Instead the First Amendment speaks about the free exercise of “religion”, as if they (unlike so many people) conceived of a nation where nonChristian believers might be free to worship as they chose.

Go figure.