Back from a couple days away. While I was gone, Delmarva won twice and Lexington lost last night, so the second half SAL North title is ours! Bring on Hagerstown for the "Battle of Maryland!"
This is the quote of the day, taken from a person who stayed in New Orleans and has somehow gotten back online to blog.
Anyway, I'm sure there's been human error in this catastrophe. How could there not be? But what I'm saying is that I've come to expect poor decision making and a total lack of initiative from government. They can't even balance a budget, at the federal, state, or local levels. I could balance my checkbook and spend within my means when I was a teenager. But I'm not gonna point fingers and get into the blame game. If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It's too big, it's too slow, it's too inefficient, it's too bloated, and it's too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It's a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government.
[Hat tip to Duvafiles. The Transchoptankia Gazette (named after our local Choptank River) is one of my daily reads, he's a local resident.]
I'm going to say something quickly about the passing of Chief Justice Rehnquist. Obviously I didn't know the guy, but he did a lot to stem the tide of judicial activism by his rulings. Unfortunately, by and large his was a minority view. The timing is unfortunate in that now the left-wing fringe has a solid working majority on the court (Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens, and Breyer) - so expect the obstructionist Democrats to try and slow the confirmation process as much as they can. Not sure I agree with elevating Roberts to Chief Justice right away but I can see President Bush's logic. His other choice was probably Justice Thomas and it's possible he may not have wanted the job. (Justice Scalia, at 69, is probably too old now.)
But it'll be interesting to see now that Rehnquist is no longer among us, whether the death watch starts on John Paul Stevens, who's the oldest of the justices at 85. I know every time Rehnquist had a cold it was big news - now let's see how the media treats that coming story.
