October Anxiety

As if there weren't enough worries in life, I've added a few more over the last couple of days:

• I'm worried about the Cardinals' bullpen. If one only looked at the final scores of the San Diego games, one might think the Cardinals won easily (which, for the most part, they did). But what you would miss is how the bullpen came in to make blowouts much closer than they should have been. I can see it coming a mile away--as soon as Tony LaRussa takes a good starting pitcher out to play his righty/lefty games, things start falling apart. Why, why, WHY would you ever bring Julian Tavarez into a game under any circumstances? LaRussa does it all the time, and always pays a heavy price for it. I see it coming, you see it coming, everyone in the ballpark sees it coming, and everyone watching on TV sees it coming. The only one who doesn't see it coming is LaRussa, who does it over and over again.

• I'm worried about the Astros pitching. In a short series, does anybody want to be facing Pettitte, Clemens, and Oswalt? Add to that reliever Brad Lidge (who made the Cardinals in last year's NLCS look like blindfolded children swinging at a piñata), and things become worrisome indeed.

• Did I mention how worried I am about the Cardinals' bullpen? In game one, "closer" Jason Isringhausen was brought into the 9th to extricate the Cards from a first-and-third jam, and instead gave up four straight hits before finally getting out of the inning. That's fine in an 8-2 game, but won't be too great in a 3-2 nail-biter.

• I also have some concerns about the Cardinals' bullpen. Taverez and Brad Thompson (who I'd never even heard of until last week) each have 13.50 ERA's for the post-season so far.

Which leads me to a letter I've been meaning to write:

Dear Mr. LaRussa, ESQ.,

I'm no expert, and while you are the third winningest manager in baseball history, I have yet to win even one game. But I do have two eyes and a calculator. And in running the numbers, I've come to the conclusion that whatever statistical advantage you think you might be getting from a righty-lefty matchup is, in my opinion, largely erased by pitchers with 13.50 ERA's. Perhaps you could consider allowing your starters, who amassed the lowest staff ERA in the league this year, to continue to pitch in these situations so that we could go to another World Series.

I know you are reputed to be a genius, but in the bustle of it all, this might be an angle you haven't had a chance to consider.

Hey, you and I have a lot in common! I know you are an ardent animal rights advocate, and my family happens to own three adorable cats. We enjoy them a lot. They're cute and furry, and if you saw them, I know you'd just love them. I just wanted you to know that each time you bring Julian Taverez or Brad Thompson into a game in the Astros series, I will painfully kill one of them. Your call.

Have a great series!

Sincerely,
John Rabe
Cardinals fan/junior mathematician

On The Road Again

I'll be in Minneapolis starting tommorrow for the annual Desiring God national conference. This year's topic is "Suffering and the Sovereignty of God."

I believe Tim Challies will be live-blogging it, for those who are interested. It would be hard for me to be more excited about this conference than I already am.

See you Monday, unless I get a chance to check in from the road.

The True Defeatists

If you are still having trouble understanding the angst of true conservatives over the Harriet Miers pick, I urge you to read Amy Ridenour's post from yesterday, "Defeatism in Defense of the Constitution is No Virtue."

It comes from one who's fought in the trenches on the Bork and Thomas nominations, and has poured out a lot of sweat on Capitol Hill over the past two decades trying to get conservative, originalist judges onto the bench who would be worth nominating when this time came.

Says Amy:

I say to the GOP-Uber-Alles crowd: It is not those of us who think we can do better than a stealth candidate who are the defeatists.

It is those of you who are afraid to fight for the Constitution.

In his clarion call of conservatism, Barry Goldwater declared that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Could defeatism in defense of the Constitution be any different?

Most of today's accomodationist, expedient Republicans would probably look at that and say "Well, Goldwater got creamed in '64, so what good was it? He should have toned it down and gotten elected." And in their historical ignorance, they'd be missing the fact that Goldwater's speech almost single-handedly spawned the modern conservative movement, inspiring thousands of young future leaders of the Reagan Revolution.

Hugh Hewitt keeps claiming that true conservatives don't understand that President Bush is governing for the "long-haul." No. It's Hewitt who doesn't understand conservatism. Fighting these battles and setting a vision, even against difficult odds, is governing for the long-haul. Expedience always reaps only a short-term benefit.

Breaking News

According to witnesses, President Bush tonight peed in a Schlitz bottle, which he then impishly handed to radio host and author Hugh Hewitt as a prank.

Hewitt immediately declared the liquid to be "the choicest Dom Perignon."

The Last Betrayal

From my standpoint, it's beside the point whether Harriet Miers turns out to be a great Supreme Court justice or not. I hope she will. Nothing would please me more.

What my outrage is about is the fact that we again have to wonder at all. That we have to accept the president's wink and his "trust me" again after he's burned far too many IOUs. Conservatives worked to give Republicans the White House, the House, and the Senate. The judiciary was a flashpoint, motivating issue in all of that. And the Bush Administration, with the selection of Harriet Miers, showed that what's most important to us isn't even a little important to them.

Conservatives--in fact the nation--deserved the opportunity to finally hash out the role of the courts, 18 years after the Robert Bork debacle. The time has never been better. People have awakened to the issue. The administration was given a gift several weeks ago when a federal court again declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. The time was ripe for a battle. And Bush sent up the white flag before a shot was fired.

I'm sick of conservatism being regarded as out-of-the-mainstream when it keeps winning election after election. I'm tired of conservatives tacitly agreeing to the notion that they have to hide or obscure their views. I'm tired of stupid, cant phrases like "compassionate conservatism" which imply that real conservatism isn't compassionate. I'm sick of the idea that solid, originalist constitutionalism has to be hidden under a plain brown wrapper while ACLU lawyers have an unimpeded path to the High Court.

By refusing to pick an open originalist conservative for either Supreme Court opening, this president has made clear that conservatism is something to be ashamed of, that it's certainly not worth fighting for, and that anyone who publicly admits to (or worse, takes pride in) merely reading the Constitution as it was read for nearly 200 years is now officially disqualified from being nominated to the Supreme Court. That's a disgrace.

The president nominated Harriet Miers for one reason and one reason only: he didn't want to fight that battle. He betrayed conservatives on the most important issue of our times--an issue more important, even, than Iraq and the war on terror. Even if Harriet Miers turns out to be more conservative than Scalia, it will not change the fact that Bush felt he had to nominate someone with no paper trail whose views were publicly obscure. It will not change the fact that he deemed true, bold conservatism to be not ready for prime time.

Over the last 24 hours, I've had a smoldering anger that's been actually growing in intensity. I keep thinking it will subside, but it just keeps getting worse. If any substantial numbers of conservatives feel the same way I do, President Bush just effectively ended the "Republican Revolution." Many are beginning to realize that the president frittered away the issue that was most important to them. Those are people who are not going to bust their tails in the next election cycle trying to get more of the same elected. If I'm right, the president has just decimated his base heading into the '06 elections. It's the beginning of the end of the hold on the White House and Congress. Which isn't all that bad, since this lock on power was never particularly conservative to begin with, as we now all know.

Conservative Reaction on Harriet Miers

From David Frum, former Bush speechwriter:

I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning. But there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or--and more importantly--that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.

...The pressures on a Supreme Court justice to shift leftward are intense. There is the negative pressure of the vicious, hostile press that legal conservatives must endure. And there are the sweet little inducements--the flattery, the invitations to conferences in Austria and Italy, the lectureships at Yale and Harvard--that come to judges who soften and crumble. Harriet Miers is a taut, nervous, anxious personality. It is hard for me to imagine that she can endure the anger and abuse--or resist the blandishments--that transformed, say, Anthony Kennedy into the judge he is today.

From William Kristol:

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized...It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.

From Manny Miranda, former judicial aide to Bill Frist:

The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas, who had been the president's lawyer. The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it.

From the editors of National Review Online:

Being a Bush loyalist and friend is not a qualification for the Supreme Court. She may have been the best pick from within Bush’s inner circle. It seems impossible to maintain that she was the best pick from any larger field. It seems highly unlikely that she will be the kind of justice who, in combination with Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas, will attract additional votes by the sheer force of her arguments. This nomination was a missed opportunity.

But as always, Hugh Hewitt has the pom-pons on, scolding real conservatives for stubbornly having taken the president at his word. Anyone who's still cheerleading for the Bush Administration after this choice cares nothing about conservatism nor a Christian worldview, and is simply a partisan hack. The administration promised us a Scalia or a Thomas, and it's now official: they lied to us.

Gotta Serve Nobody

The White House has pulled off an amazing feat. At a time of dismal unpopularity, this president actually managed to make a Supreme Court choice that (based on my radio listening on the way into work this morning) has drawn outrage on the conservative Laura Ingraham show, the semi-conservative Glenn Beck show, and the ultra-liberal Air America network all at once.

I guess you don't get popularity ratings this low without learning how to make lots of choices that please absolutely no one.

That Karl Rove--what a Machiavellian political genius!

I Feel Fine

Leo Sternbach, the inventor of Valium, has died at 97.

Strangely, I feel totally peaceful about that. A bit euphoric, even.

How High Shall I Jump, Congresswoman?

President Bush may be excruciatingly slow in responding to major national disasters affecting millions, but he's decided he won't be caught flat-footed when it's time to dance for the masters of political correctness. Suddenly, he's a veritable first responder.

Only this morning did I first read Nancy Pelosi's strange demand that the president (with whom Bennett has never had any sort of professional relationship that I'm aware of) condemn William Bennett's remarks. And by this afternoon, the White House had actually done it. Maybe if Bennett had gone up and sat on his roof in his underwear, the president might have given it a few days before doing anything.

That's the Bush White House. Always looking after the base.

I Thought They Liked Abortion

Hey, this is America! So why are the Democratic Party and Al Sharpton stomping all over Bill Bennett's right to choose?

Those Crazy Republicans!

In a move to bolster sagging morale among conservative Republicans after the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) is going to nominate David Dreier (R-BJ) as the temporary replacement.

This should provide a big boost to the reeling conservative party, since Dreier is widely reported to be gay.

Good times!

So Ya Thought Ya Might Like To Go To The Show

Eating dinner while awaiting my flight out of LAX Monday night, I read through a copy of USA Today (since I've found newspapers and magazines easier to manage while eating than books). In it, I stumbled across an article about former Pink Floyd mastermind Roger Waters, who has apparently composed an opera about the French Revolution called Ça Ira.

Now, I always liked Pink Floyd as much as the next guy, and was even fond of getting weird and watching the overwrought film version of "The Wall" with some regularity back in college ("Whoa, dude, check out that flower!"). It was interesting and compelling (at least for a while), though underneath it all, you suspected, beat the heart of an insufferable, pompous blowhard.

So I wasn't too suprised when Waters removed all doubt in the following paragraphs of the story:

Waters initially resisted trying to draw parallels between late 18th-century France and current social conditions. "But then I thought: 'Well, in France back then, you had this rigid, hierarchical structure where the king was considered divinely instructed by God and had absolute power. Then you had the nobility and the clergy, but the majority of people had nothing.'

"Here it comes," I thought. "I see where this is going." Sure enough:

"That's very much like the situation we have now with some Western civilized nations. I think George (W.) Bush believes that he's operating on a license from the Almighty. And you have a very, very small number of people who control 99% of all the stuff in the world, whereas the rest are like the French peasantry were."

Right, conditions here are just like those preceding the French Revolution. What makes this typical celebrity piffle doubly-amusing is the setting for Waters' interview. Again, I quote from the article:

Waters' mission, like that of the rebels who defied King Louis XVI, was influenced by forces beyond his control. Sitting in the vast, elegantly appointed den of his lakefront Hamptons home, where Louis would have felt quite comfortable, the 61-year-old rocker explains how Ça Ira, billed as his first classical opera, came about.

A real man of the proletariat, that Roger Waters. We can all be thankful he deigned to throw us some crumbs ("Let them eat cake!") from his lakefront home in the Hamptons.

See, Roger is at the very top of that supposed 1%. But because he is sufficiently enlightened, he isn't one of the evil ones. It's the other evil profiteers in that 1% who are wrecking everything.

I'm sure that when the stage version of Ça Ira opens in Rome, admission will be free. And according to Amazon.com, the newly released CD version is retailing for $34.98 a pop, but undoubtedly that's a misprint. Since the physical materials for the CD set cost maybe $2, I have no doubt that's what he'll actually be charging us peasants.

An opera by Roger Waters about the French Revolution. Well that shouldn't be too pretentious.

The Terrordome That Wasn't

It turns out that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with the nation clamoring for information about what was happening in New Orleans, the media did what it does best: ran nuts reporting unsubstantiated rumors.

Who can forget Fox's Geraldo Rivera, a name we've all come to associate with stability and level-headedness, standing out in front of the New Orleans Convention Center breathlessly anticipating (fomenting?) the riot he was sure was going to break out at nightfall, while mostly bored-looking refugees yawned behind him?

And who can forget the many television reporters who kept assuring us there were "bodies everywhere" at the Superdome while only showing us that same, one, poor, covered woman in a wheelchair?

I even saw one report that said the crowd inside the Superdome had divided into different tribes, with each occupying a different level of the stadium, the top level besieged by roving bands of gangmembers shooting, raping, and beating the innocent at will.

It was all unbelievable, gripping, compelling stuff. And it was all crap, as we now know. There were no shootings in the Superdome. There were no young children (or anyone else) raped. There were just a bunch of blow-dried teevee reporters who were too gutless to actually go inside themselves, and instead stood outside passing off wild rumors as fact.

Rest assured of one thing, however: when all is said and done, the media will tell us that their colossal mishandling of the New Orleans story was somehow our fault rather than theirs. We pushed them too hard, demanded too much information, and were too ready to believe the worst about the mostly black occupants of the dome and convention center. Our insatiable desire for up-to-the-second information made things too competitive, leaving nobody time to actually check rumors before they report them.

What they won't say is "Gosh, we really blew that one. We got caught up in what seemed to be an incredibly dramatic scenario, and in a way we wanted it to be true, so we went off half-cocked." The one who does say that (if, indeed, there turns out to be anyone) is the only one I'll ever even consider believing again.

Big Ol' Jet Airliner

I'm in Southern California today for some business. I figured it was the perfect time to come, considering the no-landing-gear plane incident last week and the recent tremors they've been having.

My old friend Brad met me upon arrival to take me out for a SoCal staple--sushi. I was among the uninitiated, but I didn't throw up, and thus far I'm showing no signs of e-coli poisoning. It's amazing how quickly your food gets to you when they don't have to cook it.

After a long day of flying our fair commercial skies, I've noticed a couple of things:

• I have a theory that the only real, operating gates are the ones at the very end of the terminal. No matter how often I fly, I never fly from any gate other than the very last one. If a terminal has gates 1-72, my flight will be leaving from either gate 71 or 72. This is true of everyone else I've ever asked about it too. My theory is that the other gates are actually staffed by underemployed actors, with fake planes parked outside. No flights actually land or take of from there.

• Attention America: the people-mover is not for standing. It's for walking. If you stand on it, it actually moves you slower than you'd get there by walking. However, if you put forth the minimal effort to walk on the people-mover, you'll find yourself hurtling through the terminal at an exilerating speed that allows you to pretend in your mind that you are the Bionic Man. Or maybe only I do that. But either way, if you actually stand on the people-mover, just know that you are one of the elite, most sedentary people in the most sedentary nation in the history of the world.

• I'm six-foot-two, about 220 lbs. There were 36 rows on the plane I flew out on. If you count each side of the aisle seperately, there were 72 rows of three seats. And once again, I found myself sitting in the middle seat, smack dab between two people who were both substantially bigger than I am. They were the biggest people on the airplane. The odds against it are staggering. I'm convinced the check-in agents do this on purpose to amuse themselves.

Bouncing Around

• "Griffey's season ended by injury." Wow, there's a story you don't see very often. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah you do.

• Brian at Terrible Swift Word has once again had contact from Nigerian scam artists. This time, the Nigerians are going heavy on the god-talk, attempting to prey on gullable Christians.
  
  My favorite part: the Nigerian has confessed to being a rotten guy before a profound conversion experience at a Benny Hinn crusade. Brian (a.k.a. "Avery Lunch") responds:

  Barrister, if I may be so bold – you seem to be kind of hard on yourself about your past. Don't be. I know a certain other person who also had some skeletons on his clothesline. He liked to pick on Christians. He would throw rocks at them, and gave them no end of hassle. I think you know who I'm talking about ... that's right, Stevie Simpkins, a kid I went to fourth grade with.

  I've seen other people publish their Nigerian correspondence, but nobody on the web does it better than Brian. Watch as he reels them in, beginning here.

• Byron York at National Review Online almost succeeds in making me feel sorry for forgotten-attention-hound Cindy Sheehan. The arrival of her "Bring Them Home Tour" in Washington D.C. yesterday was an exercise in comical mishap and apathy.

• The new TV season is getting underway, and I feel like I'm missing the boat. I've never seen full episodes of "Lost," "24," "The Apprentice," "Survivor" or any of the other hot shows. I did finally see "House," which people have been telling me about, and found it disturbing. "24" looks good to me, but I just feel like I can't commit to it when they tell you right up front how many hours of your life they're going to demand. Even with TiVo, there are only so many hours in the day, and I don't have 24 of them to spare.

• The baseball playoffs are a great time of year. Check out the comments section in the below previous post for some spirited baseball discussion. Arguments are the best part of baseball.

• Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost scores some rhetorical points in his fable "In the Beginning was Nothing: A Creation Story for Young Materialists." The fact is, evolutionists do have their own metaphysical creation myth. They simply hope that by labeling it "science," everyone else will accept it and shut up, regardless of the empirical evidence. They've been trying for 150 years though, and still haven't convinced most people. They can only respond to counter-evidence with ridicule, because they have no real answers. But fortunately the emperor's cloths are being stripped off rather quickly these days.

Cardinal Numbers

I haven't said much about the St. Louis Cardinals this year, feeling that silence was the only appropriate response after the national embarassment of last October.

But with the regular season nearing its end, I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to hail the remarkable accomplishment of the Cards this season. Last year, the Redbirds won an MLB-best 105 games during the regular season. As I write this, they've won 95 games already this season, and with nine games remaining they have a solid chance of cracking 100 again.

What makes this remarkable to me is the fact that they are about to lock down the best record in baseball for the second year in a row while playing with exactly one player from last year's infield. As a result of free agency and injuries, only returning first baseman (and ought-to-be-MVP) Albert Pujols remains in the daily lineup, with an entirely new cast at second, shortstop, third base, and behind the plate.

Just as remarkably, Jim Edmonds has been the only steady presence in the outfield from last year's team. Both Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker, the other two starting 2004 outfielders, have been sidelined for months with injuries this year.

To boil it down: the Cardinals are going to have the best record in baseball for the second year in a row with only two regular starters from last year's team consistently being in the lineup.

Everyone will want to give manager Tony LaRussa credit for this, and I suppose he deserves some. But what it really proves is that Walt Jocketty is the best general manager in baseball.

Nobody knows what will happen in the post-season, and after 2004 I'm certainly not going to venture any guesses. But what the St. Louis Cardinals have accomplished in the regular season is impressive indeed.

Mother Sheehan Joins The Onion

Cindy Sheehan has left Texas to follow all the reporters who suddenly couldn't care less about her to storm-ravaged Louisiana. Issuing a communique on MichaelMoore.com (you really just can't make this stuff up), "Mother" Sheehan (who's fame clock just struck its sixteenth minute) writes:

George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self [sic] from power.

Yes, lets hope he excuses hisself.

Beating the (presumably disappointed) Onion to the punch, Cindy Sheehan calls for the end of the military occupation of....New Orleans. She also adds this gem:

...what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me.

And wouldn't all of America love to find out? That's the first question she's asked yet that I'm dying to see the answer to.

Hey, Cindy, Charlie Manson just called. He wants his crazy back.

(Hat tip: Drudge)

Active Imaginations

Leftists have recently adopted the tactic of calling the late William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and other judges in their mold "judicial activists," presumably appropriating that term because they know most Americans hate judicial activists.

Today, Ann Coulter appropriately dismantles their sophistry:

If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.

But liberals have recently taken to pretending judicial activism is — as The New York Times has said repeatedly — voting "to invalidate laws passed by Congress." Invalidating laws has absolutely nothing to do with "judicial activism." It depends on whether the law is unconstitutional or not. That's really the key point.

That's why we have a judicial branch, Mr. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times. It's not a make-work program for the black robe industry. It's a third branch of our government. You'll learn more about this concept next year when you're in the seventh grade, Pinch.

Rolling back previous judicial activism is not "judicial activism," any more than putting handcuffs on batterers is battery.

The Department of Creating Departments

Doug Wilson nails it today regarding the slow federal response to Katrina:

Political observers should recall the debate over the creation of Homeland Security, along with moving a bunch of agencies under the new department, creating a whole new layer of bureaucracy. "There! That should do it." This is the liberal's idea of streamlining -- make something big and bloated. The liberal thinks that if something is streamlined on paper, then it must be ready to leap into action being all streamlined like it is. The old Soviet plans would streamline things so that there was only one gas station at an intersection, which made much better sense, and looked so much more streamlined on paper. The only problem was that there wasn't any gas. In a market economy, there are three to five gas stations at an intersection -- looking quite messy on paper -- but at least there was lots of gas. Now, is the point streamlining the flow chart on your agency wall, or streamlining the flow of gas into the tank?

Someday we'll be saying the same thing about the TSA and other federal "fixes" that will result in future miasmas.

Mr. Roberts

The John Roberts confirmation hearings are underway, and while my heart wants to be positive about his nomination, the actual evidence still keeps going the other way.

Yesterday, in his opening statement (after the usual blather about "judicial restraint" to which all nominees, conservative or liberal, pay lip service), Roberts said:

Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath. And judges have to have the modesty to be open to the considered views of their colleagues on the bench.

Slavish devotion to precedent (stare decisis, as the lawyers call it) has ruined our legal system, with bad ruling built upon bad ruling until the U.S. Constitution has become unrecognizable. In fact, it's the very opposite of humility. Rather than being subject to the Constitution, this view says that judges ultimately trump the Constitution, and that we dare not overrule them when they do because "stability" is more important than the rule of law.

The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, while fairly conservative, will ultimately go down as a middling chief because of his own unwarranted devotion to "settled law." The reason most conservatives did not consider him to be on the level of Justices Thomas and Scalia is because, while frequently conservative, he'd ultimately jettison an originalist reading of the Constitution when the incorrect ruling of some addled judge (or previous Supreme Court) came into conflict with it.

Roberts has already, in less than seven minutes of testimony, indicated that he too will sill submit the Constitution to the judges. It certainly doesn't make him unusual--that's the dominant judicial philosophy in the legal profession today. But unfortunately President Bush promised us a Thomas or Scalia, a promise he has quite evidently welshed on.

(UPDATE: Even as I write this, Judge Roberts is facing questions on day two of his hearings. We're not even an hour in, and in response to a question on Roe v. Wade from Arlen Specter, Roberts has said Roe is "..entitled to respect under those principles"--i.e. stare decisis. He also said that it is “a jolt to the legal system when you overturn precedent. It is not enough that you may think that a prior decision was wrongly decided." Hmmm. And finding, say, a right to abortion in the Constitution after nearly 200 years of nobody finding it isn't a jolt to the legal system? Funny how liberals are quite satisfied to "jolt" the legal system--repeatedly--when it suits their ends. Only "conservatives" do this silly fiddling while Rome burns.)