May 11, 2005 -

JUGHEAD JUDGERY!

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Monsters roam the land.

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Now, details...

There is no doubt that Texas has a long history of association with monstrous people. Start at any point in Lone Star history and you will find people who might make you wish that birth control could be retroactive. A distant relative of my late stepfather, for instance, was John Wesley Hardin, who once murdered a man whose snoring irritated him. Fast forward to today and see that a distressing number of miscreants have a connection to Texas.

And to hear the Senate Democrats tell it, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen is another in a long line of Texans bent on doing great harm. Now we elected Justice Owen several times and had every reason to believe she is a supremely bright scholar of the law. But President George W. Bush nominated her for a federal judgeship and Washington Democrats would have us believe Priscilla is a composite of Bonnie Parker and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Senate Majority Wimp (sometimes known as "Leader") Bill Frist finally has had enough of the Democratic lying and stonewalling and plans to change Senate rules to allow a vote on Judge Owen. Good for Frist, even if his action comes months too late.

Texas Democrats lawyers and judges admire and respect Justice Owen – even though she is a Republican. "They don't know the woman. They've made no effort to get to know her, and they're not treating her fairly," says former Texas Supreme Court Justice John Hill. Hill is a Democrat.

The most outrageous attacks, of course, come from the biggest jerk in the Senate. That is, of course, Teddy Kennedy, the Massachusetts White Whale. Teddy referred to Justice Owen and other Bush nominees as "neanderthal." "Ted Kennedy doesn't know her," said Darrell E. Jordan, a Republican and a former president of the Texas Bar Association. He added: "Anyway, didn't Ted Kennedy have to cheat to get out of law school?" Kennedy got kicked out of Harvard for cheating on an undergraduate Spanish exam.

In Kennedy's defense, however, he did ace his swimming test. If you don't believe that, have your medium contact Mary Jo Kopechne and ask her about Teddy's swimming ability.

Teddy noses out Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in the race for the bottom of the "class" listings. The Nevada Democrat, whose hometown of Searchlight qualifies him to be known as "Whorehouse Harry," told a group of school children that President Bush is "a loser."

Priscilla Owen is brilliant and stable and I hope she is confirmed as a federal judge. However, there is no guarantee that she won't lose her marbles and go the way of another Texas-born judge, Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice O'Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan and for many years was a competent justice who tried to interpret the law, not make it. In later years she has joined the "legislative" branch of the court and often sides with those who want to make law, not rule on it.

Justice O'Connor appeared at a Harry Truman celebration in Missouri and gave a statement about courts that amounted to a Freudian slip. Meeting with federal judges and staffers at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, she praised judges and court professionals. She said, "The law of the country is not made in the courthouse where I sit...It's made here."

She is, of course, not telling the truth. The Supreme Court has been making law for years. But some of us still believe courts should interpret law, not make it. (Yeh, I know. That's so very "old school.")

My friend Toby sends an example of the quality of message computer users get from the scam artists who prowl on the Internet. The scammers pretend to be legitimate businesses, such as PayPal, and ask for credit card numbers, Social Security information, etc., to "validate" the information about your supposed account. These guys apparently didn't make it very far in public school, however. Toby's would-be scammer wrote this: "Protecting the security of your PayPal account is our primary concern, and we apologize for any INCONTINENCE it may cause." (Emphasis mine).

I told of this to a urologist and he almost wet his pants laughing.

I guess you could put the voters of Hedwig Village down as being "pro-life." Hedwig Village is a suburb of Bonkers On The Bayou, sometimes known as Houston. Anyway, the pro-life Hedwigglers sent former Mayor Sue Speck back to City Hall with 64 percent of the vote. Incumbent Mayor Dee Srinivasan got 36 percent. Not bad, for a mayor who died on April 22. Srinivasan was 59 and going for her third two-year term when the Grim Reaper called. Speck lost to Srinivasan in the last election Srinivasan was able to attend.

QUESTION FOR THE DAY: If the late Mayor Srinivasan had run in Chicago, would she have won narrowly, or in a landslide?