Jack wrote this in September, 2005:

Morning blog readers.

The lure of news is almost as insidious as the lure of having opinions.  Both tend to sneak up and catch a person unawares.  A person can be going along fine, only picking up the occasional piece of news of the world overhearing conversations of others or a glance at a newspaper headline or two in a rack, then something happens to drag you in, and you're back into the game.

It's not just the particular thing you're interested in, once you're hooked.  Those newspapers are cunning in that way.  They throw in all this other matter that are none of a person's business, but that tend to snag the mind like a treble hook.  (None of my business, I define as things I can do nothing about, can't influence in any imaginable way, and aren't happening to anyone I know personally.)

Then, there you are (me), suddenly knowing a lot of things about what's going on in the world that I had no intention of knowing about, finding myself having opinions about them.

I see Biloxi was hit fairly hard.  Not much being said about it because it was lacking in the drama of the Super-dome anguish feeding frenzy.  Sorry for those Mississippians, sorry about Biloxi.  If Mississippians want to join the tribe of Native Americans that will almost inevitably be formed they'll probably have to have a name and a Reservation of their own.  Maybe Fort Jackson, SC, can be vacated and given them.

It doesn't work, putting different tribes on the same Rez.  The Navajo almost killed off all the Mescalero during those 15 years at Bosque Redondo.  It's better the Mississippians have their own Rez.

I see where old Judge Rindquist died.  Whew.  Haven't thought about that guy in a couple of decades.  I recall when Tricky Dixon appointed him, me, everyone so full of news and opinions, all of us young minds fairly certain it was the end of Life As We Knew It.  (I'll point out for you king-lovers that he had to have the consent of Congress, Tricky Dixon, appointing Rindquist.... I know it must gall you, but the Constitution required it.... might still for all I know)

In some ways I suppose it was nearing the end of Life as We knew it, though that appointment hadn't much to do with the matter.  A few decades of retrospect and the appointment was roughly a non-event, though it had our juices flowing at the time.  In those days everyone I knew was full of the opinion that what this country needed was a Supreme Court stacked with judges who could read popular opinion into the words of the Constitution, which it had been doing since Franklin Roosevelt.

What we didn't know was that it wasn't a good thing we wanted, but that the appointment of this one and a court full of judges who were 'conservative' by the post-WWII definition wasn't going to save the Constitution.  Those new ones couldn't read the words it said any better than the Douglas Court.  They just read it more to the flavor of Republicans, than Demos, which was considered an offense.

The framers of the Constitution wouldn't have liked either of those courts much.  They'd have chided themselves for not anticipating descendants who didn't want a hard-and-fast Constitutional document with things all nailed down with words that meant something, and maybe done something to prevent it.  But, of course, they'd chide themselves for not anticipating a lot of things they might have prevented, such as a series of presidents riding along on Emergency Powers for half a century fighting wars without declarations by Congress, getting the military and Federal cops into the business of kicking down the doors of Americans for various reasons, all that sort of thing.

Ah well.

I see a couple of 18 year old Albuquerquanisto youths got themselves in jail by going into a titty bar and having a series of 'lap-dances' they didn't know the cost of on a per-dance basis.... ran up a bill for $2500 bucks and didn't have the courtesy to pay.

That's the sort of thing you don't know unless you read newspapers.

Jack

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