Yesterday...
...I turned my heat off. It was actually getting too warm in my house so I just cut it off. Then, I forgot about it when I went to bed. By the time the dog wanted to go out for his middle of the night pee, the right side of my face was pretty damned cold. The thermostat said 54. I don't think it was that warm. Now I have it up to 64. That's not bad if you come in from outside but it's certainly not barefoot warm.
When I got back in bed, I turned to the other side of it and grabbed a buddy and decided to turn him on. In the lack of a big warm blob for me to spoon with, I just use a heating pad. The blobs are nice, but you have to feed them in the morning. I'll mix some kibble into a can of Alpo but I'm not frying eggs when I wake up. The heating pad works just fine and the dog doesn't seem to mind the heating pad as much as he would a real live big warm blob.
My ex was a good blob but sometimes he didn't smell just right so that was hit or miss. Most guys at least wear Mennen...as I said early on, his sudden interest in personal grooming gave him away so badly that it should have been prima fascia evidence of an affair. The daily tooth brushing was the first sign, before long that nimrod bought clothes without me...something he hadn't done since we met. What a dufus.
Anyway, between the dog and the heating pad, I've pretty much replaced the need for that blob. I'm not cold at night and I have a friend who never runs off with trailer park trash.
I saw some guy was advertising to "Rent a Gent" or something like that. I guess he's one of those fixer types that I never seem to marry. I had one and called it my son, but I never married anyone who knew anymore than I did about most things. All I lacked was the physical motivation and men seem to come pretty well equipped with that stuff so I just let them do what they do...work. I wouldn't ever rent a guy though...all you need are boobs. Why the hell would I pay someone to do work when I have 2 perfectly good tits right here on my chest? Hell, if I got implants I could probably get my kitchen redone.
I haven't bothered with implants and I don't know why. I guess it's because most men have said that they didn't like them. Even if you do it for yourself, you don't like knowing that most of the men fondling your ya-ya's would prefer your natural old knockers. I don't anyway. Besides, it's like a tattoo. If I want one, I can always get one. If I don't, I'm good. But for now, I don't have implants, tattoos, more than 4 piercings (all on my earlobes), horns OR a cell phone. And, there's none of those things that I want. Hell, I still have pubic hair and apparently that's like my rotary phone, outdated and too much work for the fingers.
By the way, I can't run off without saying something to Hickey Dude.
You seem to have stumbled a bit while you were writing that last comment. I can imagine what it would have sounded like in real life. Man, I CANNOT believe that I was afraid of you in high school! You're just a really sweet big warm blob. Well, I have to go now, I just caught a chill and now my nipples are hard so I have to put on a bra. See ya!
OK then, I guess that's it. I don't even know what the hell I was talking about. I just know that I'm a sneaky monkey.
...I turned my heat off. It was actually getting too warm in my house so I just cut it off. Then, I forgot about it when I went to bed. By the time the dog wanted to go out for his middle of the night pee, the right side of my face was pretty damned cold. The thermostat said 54. I don't think it was that warm. Now I have it up to 64. That's not bad if you come in from outside but it's certainly not barefoot warm.
When I got back in bed, I turned to the other side of it and grabbed a buddy and decided to turn him on. In the lack of a big warm blob for me to spoon with, I just use a heating pad. The blobs are nice, but you have to feed them in the morning. I'll mix some kibble into a can of Alpo but I'm not frying eggs when I wake up. The heating pad works just fine and the dog doesn't seem to mind the heating pad as much as he would a real live big warm blob.
My ex was a good blob but sometimes he didn't smell just right so that was hit or miss. Most guys at least wear Mennen...as I said early on, his sudden interest in personal grooming gave him away so badly that it should have been prima fascia evidence of an affair. The daily tooth brushing was the first sign, before long that nimrod bought clothes without me...something he hadn't done since we met. What a dufus.
Anyway, between the dog and the heating pad, I've pretty much replaced the need for that blob. I'm not cold at night and I have a friend who never runs off with trailer park trash.
I saw some guy was advertising to "Rent a Gent" or something like that. I guess he's one of those fixer types that I never seem to marry. I had one and called it my son, but I never married anyone who knew anymore than I did about most things. All I lacked was the physical motivation and men seem to come pretty well equipped with that stuff so I just let them do what they do...work. I wouldn't ever rent a guy though...all you need are boobs. Why the hell would I pay someone to do work when I have 2 perfectly good tits right here on my chest? Hell, if I got implants I could probably get my kitchen redone.
I haven't bothered with implants and I don't know why. I guess it's because most men have said that they didn't like them. Even if you do it for yourself, you don't like knowing that most of the men fondling your ya-ya's would prefer your natural old knockers. I don't anyway. Besides, it's like a tattoo. If I want one, I can always get one. If I don't, I'm good. But for now, I don't have implants, tattoos, more than 4 piercings (all on my earlobes), horns OR a cell phone. And, there's none of those things that I want. Hell, I still have pubic hair and apparently that's like my rotary phone, outdated and too much work for the fingers.
By the way, I can't run off without saying something to Hickey Dude.
You seem to have stumbled a bit while you were writing that last comment. I can imagine what it would have sounded like in real life. Man, I CANNOT believe that I was afraid of you in high school! You're just a really sweet big warm blob. Well, I have to go now, I just caught a chill and now my nipples are hard so I have to put on a bra. See ya!
OK then, I guess that's it. I don't even know what the hell I was talking about. I just know that I'm a sneaky monkey.
posted by Meg Kelso | 3:16 AM
5 Comments:
How do you write something like this and then write those heavy duty articles like the 2 on judicial activism? It's hard to believe it's the same person writing them all.
Because I'm gooood.
:)
OK, for you, I'll post them. But these have been published already...don't bother using them.
Judicial philosophy has long been a subject of debate in this country. In their attempt to create a “more perfect union” the Founding Fathers created the foundation upon which we would build this scary new land. They wisely set in place a set of checks and balances that would keep any one person, committee or body from amassing too much power. As any 8th grader can tell you, they came up with 3 branches of government which would all, equally, rule the new country. They called the document that explained all of this The Constitution. (1)
In their infinite wisdom, they decided to have a legislative body which would create the laws, a judicial body which would interpret the laws and an executive branch that would enforce the laws. One things that members of ALL 3 branches have in common is the fact that when they take their seat in the houses of our government, each and every one of them takes an oath to protect the Constitution. (2) Each branch, in it’s own way, protects the source of the powers granted them by the United States Constitution.
Creating the law is pretty clear cut, you debate and then take votes on different issues. And enforcing existing law isn’t really hard to understand either. But how does one define “interpreting” the law? Although the framers of that great document didn’t actually grant judges the massive power of total judicial review, statements by some of them, like Alexander Hamilton’s assertion that, “The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.”, have been taken to mean different things by different people. (3)
Over the centuries, many different judges have done some rather questionable interpreting of the Constitution. In their defense they simply claim a more liberal interpretation. Early US legal precedent set by Marbury v. Madison set some basic protection for the courts when it was decided that, “The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” (4) What that means to a judge in Georgia might be a bit different than what it means to a judge in New York.
But many claim that some judges are exercising what they call “judicial activism”. That is, “the theory under which judges may ‘actively’ interpret the law on a broad plane and are not necessarily constrained to relying on the sources and issues strictly before them.” (5) The oft overturned Ninth Circuit Court out of San Francisco is the court that many think of when they think of judicial activism.
On the other hand, the point has been made that, “In the same way that excessively “activist” judges may exceed the boundaries of the judicial power by concocting law out of whole cloth, excessively “restrained” judges may unwarrantedly contract protections and rights conferred by the laws and the Constitution.” (6)
Many people believe that when the law is perceived to be unfair by some, judges must create a fix for the inequity. Courts can make rulings based on laws but it has been ruled that “The Supreme Court cannot rewrite statutes and cannot remove language from the statutes; such must be done by the legislature.” So, courts may take some heat for some rather unpopular decisions such as the decision by the US Supreme Court to allow Nazi’s to march down the streets of a predominantly Jewish community. (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie) (7) As unpopular as that was at the time, Jewish attorneys argued for the Nazi’s based upon Constitutional ideals.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow at times but like it or not, “Our system is not one of justice, but of laws.” (
The appointment of a judge is a heavy burden for any thoughtful person. To think otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the intricacy’s of politics and governance. In the United States, a judge potentially holds more power than most elected officials.
The specific function of the judiciary branch of government, interpretation of the law, changed drastically in 1873 with the Slaughterhouse Cases. “John A. Campbell, representing the Butchers’ Benevolent Association, argued that the amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause secured the right of butchers to pursue their calling without unreasonable interference from the state. Writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice Samuel F. Miller disagreed, holding that “the one pervading purpose” of the clause was to protect the rights of former slaves, not to expand the rights of white butchers.”(1) Of course he was right.
But, in a dissenting opinion, “Justice Stephen J. Field took a far wider view. The phrase “privileges or immunities,” he argued, describes those “natural and inalienable rights” that “belong to the citizens of all free governments.” (2) And, “Field’s reading of the due process clause of the amendment would prevail in future cases in which the court read the amendment broadly to protect property interests against hostile state laws.”(1)
Thus began judicial activism.
Of course, “The defining characteristic of libertarian legal theory is its insistence that the primary or only legitimate function of law is the preservation of individual liberty.” (3) In a nutshell, libertarianism is the “right of all to pursue happiness, free from arbitrary interference, and government dedicated to securing that right.” (4) Beyond that, libertarianism hands very little, if any, power over to government at any level. Therefore, “Perhaps nowhere is the congruence between libertarian principles and American values clearer than in the domain of judicial philosophy. Americans don’t want judges running their lives. But they do want them checking overweening, unconstitutional government.” (4)
Some have noted that the Founding Fathers specifically designed our system of Checks and Balances thinking “that the various branches-Executive, Judicial, and Legislative-will be jealous of their own powers - that, to the extent it can, the Legislative branch would never let the Judicial branch take to itself authority that ought to have been its own. The Constitutional founders never foresaw that parties in the legislatures would collude with political parties within the judicial branch to circumvent the need to pass laws.”(5)
But considering that in the US Supreme Court alone, “…the liberals voted together an amazing 95% of the time…”(6) it would not be unreasonable to ask, “Are the liberals steadier or are they trapped in group-think?” (6) On the other hand you have, “Conservatives, outraged at judicial lawmaking, demand(ing) “judicial restraint,” thus marginalizing the courts.” (4) Perhaps we needed, “neither activism nor restraint, but courts responsible to the Constitution.” (4)
Of course, it took a court to come up with a right to privacy. The Constitution never contained any such notion. That idea came originated in “Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which struck down state laws against condoms to protect the “right to marital privacy.” The judges were searching high and low to find something in the Constitution on which to base a right of sexual privacy. Justice William O. Douglas claimed to find “penumbras” and “emanations” from rights in the Constitution that extended to a right to privacy.” (6)
So, is judicial activism a bad thing? It might be too early in this exercise in Democracy to tell. But one thing is for sure…in this country, judges have the power to make changes that can last for generations after they’ve left the bench. At the very next opportunity, the president should “Nominate more libertarian-conservative judges like Clarence Thomas to the courts who care about protecting individual liberty, not just traditionalist-conservative judges like Robert Bork who care most about the “liberty” of the majority to enshrine its preferences into law.” (4)
How do you choose a judge? It can be difficult as Reagan learned when he nominated Sandra Day O’Connor ”because he wanted to be the first to nominate a woman for the court. He assumed she was OK because she was an insider in the Republican circles of Barry Goldwater’s Arizona. However, the lady had no paper trail to provide a clue about her judicial philosophy. Sure enough, she had no philosophy whatever…” (6) Of course, should a nominee have an opinion on anything, especially abortion, there is something for legislators to argue with so it would stand to reason that the weakest of nominees have a much better chance to win a seat on the highest court in the land. That doesn’t bode well for our country.
Thomas once famously wrote that “A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister…For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.”(7) It is such bravery that we should seek in our judges.
When I had the sources in there, it dropped the entire blog to the bottom of the page. If you want them, let me know.
I don't know how I stumbled, unless you were trying to get me shook up .....not going to happen remember I was once too a married man...married to a 9.9 on the richter-bitch scale...and trust me you don't EVEN come close. And how long has it been since we were last together??? You should be afraid...very afraid. :~)
Meg, you are good! and funny, had me laughing my head off. Please don't take down the judicial posts as yet. I'll have to come back to them soon. Need some sleep first.
BTW, found 9 Bremens in the USA and various versions of the same State. Like Bremen....whatever, or whatever....Bremen. There must be more.
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