Give me all my crazy judges.

Right Now!!

(I just viewed this and realized that linking this pic knocks my blogroll a little off-and-down, but 'cmon, talk about a cute kid...and a picture being worth 1000 words. So I'm going to leave it like this until I can get to a PC where I can properly download/export/reload this little guy in a more blog-friendly size.)

Another meal at, believe it or not, another cool little hippy joint, this one closer to home, featuring live guitar and sparrows flitting in and out of the greenhouse dealie they open up out to the sidewalk when the weather gets warm enough.

And it is warm enough! Thank Clementaena– my made-up goddess of temperate evenings -- the shirtsleeve climes has finally gotten a foothold.

So I’m grading papers and enjoying a Snakebite and some pretty good chicken fajitas, and this interesting fight breaks out between a couple of children two tables over – Little Lord Majority Leader obviously wanted the toy that his younger sister obviously did not want to give him.

He: “But we have a RULE, so give it to me.”

She: “What rule? We never had a rule. I never even heard of this?”

He: “Doesn’t matter. We have one NOW, so gimmie!”

She: “Mom!!”

Brevity being the soul of it, I must admit I was impressed.

Impressed enough to write it down as verbatim as I could, because frankly it would have been really rude of me to go over to the tired looking couple in the invisible Blue Peacekeeper U.N. Helmets and askthem to have their kids rerun their brief tiff like SCA geeks restage the The Battle of Agincourt down at the mall retaining pond…just so I could get every little word just right.

Anyway, I was impressed: whole digital oceans of digital ink have been spilled by the Mainstream Media, topped off, and then spilled again without ever coming within sniping distance of this succinct a description of the vicious reality of political life under One Party Fundamentalist Rule.

So this morning, this from the Associated Press seemed to dovetail too nicely with last evening’s, eavesdropped, prepubescent exchange to let it pass:

Schumer Urges Bush to Rein in Judge Fight
Sen. Charles Schumer, a leading Democrat in the fight over judicial nominees, urged President Bush to intervene and rein in the strongest conservative critics of Democratic opposition to some candidates.
Schumer, D-N.Y., delivered his party's weekly radio address Saturday, in which he decried ''a whiff of extremism in the air the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.'' Without naming any, Schumer criticized ''small groups ... trying to undermine the age-old checks and balances that the Founding Fathers placed at the center of the Constitution.''
Democrats have blocked 10 of Bush's appellate court choices with the threat of filibusters, which means those nominees would need 60 votes to be confirmed. Republicans are considering using their majority to change rules to require a simple majority vote for confirmation.
In his radio appeal, Schumer sought to draw Bush more directly into the fray by urging the president to denounce some conservatives who have used harsh language to criticize the Democrats.
''I am making a heartfelt plea to you, Mr. President. When you came to Washington, you said you wanted to change the climate in D.C.,'' Schumer said. ''Those stating these abhorrent views count themselves as your political allies. One word from you
will bring a halt to these un-American statements. That would be a way to strengthen democracy here at home.''
The senator referred generally to some activists comparing judges to the Ku Klux Klan and terrorists
…

Rules?

When the Republicans need ‘em, the rules are the Inviolable Moral Code to which we must all be bound, like it or not. And if following the rules just happens to end in a convenient bit of partisan butchery – say a failed Special Prosecutorial Coup against Bill Clinton, or putting dozens of secret holds on Clinton’s judicial nominees while cowering like lichen in the dank, dark, safe anonymity of the Senate cloakroom – well that’s just the way it goes. Rules are Rule after all…

…until they no longer serve raw, partisan interests and then they’re scrapped and forgotten like last year’s Christmas toys. They become just so many disposable two-ply ass rags.

And if you dare to suggest that maybe, since the Right made such an almighty moralizing stink for seven years over acting in Draconian fidelity to the Beloved Rules – no matter how trivial the offense -- as long as they were making Clinton bleed that maybe...maybe...they should actually live up to their own rhetoric and follow their own precepts, well fuck you!

Turns out, their rules, their principles, their core beliefs – all their pretty words – were just so many blunt instrument to be used to club their way to power. Or as one of their older, minor deities -- Leona Helmsley – said years ago about taxes, “Rules are for little people.”

I believe in the New Testament these sorts were referred to as the Pharisees (Man, I just hope nobody tells Jesus.)

At least when children fight, the worst that usually happens is one side or another exercises the “Mom!” Option. The "Day The Earth Stood Still" Gort Protocol. An appeal to a higher authority; a cooler intellect.

We used to have “Moms” in this country. Referees. Wiser heads. Not many of them, and they were often deeply flawed…but they used to exist, and not during the Devonian Era, but recently. Very recently.

Back before Newt Gingrich declared Total War on liberals and decreed that the word “compromise” was now a smutty pejorative only ever to be spoken of sneeringly – mockingly…reasonable men and women in both parties could have gotten together and worked these things out.

And back before Ronald Reagan murdered the Fairness Doctine and unleashed the Disinformation Age, we had another such institution: a Free and Fair Press. A media who believed, for all of its imperfections, that it was simply and obviously the job of the press to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

(Aside: For Wingnut Trivial Pursuit fans, it’s worth noting that the Great Communicator would never have been able to liquidate the Fairness Doctrine had he not been eagerly abetted in his filthy work by two of the most reliably “activist” judicial henchmen of the Right – Robert Bork and Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia.)

But now Mom has gone and taken sides. And now it doesn’t matter how unhinged or frightening Little Fundy Jimmy becomes, she’ll relentlessly praise him, extolling his nonexistent virtues as prolifically as Augustine musing about God. And it doesn’t matter if he stomps and beats his sister until her bones snap, Mom is still going to snarl, “Play nice Suzy! Little Fundy Jimmy’s just upset because you won’t play nice!”

And as Little Fundy Jimmy runs berserk, setting fires, poisoning puppies and kicking the elderly, neutered, senile Mainstream Dad sits in the corner and mutters impotently to himself: “If you ask me, it seems like maybe Suzy and Jimmy are both right!”