Through the Shadowlands . . . and back again

Happiness is . . .

spending time with friends.

Just got back from a weekend reunion with four of my closest friends from college. We had a great time talking, looking at pictures of each other's past year, talking, playing games, talking, eating, talking, walking, talking, and singing. This is the fourth year we've done this, and it's been a great way to keep in touch despite the different paths our lives are now on. It's nice to know we'll remain friends even if we don't keep in touch as frequently as we would like.

In other news, I found the Alito hearings to be fairly perfunctory. At least there were no overused baseball analogies this time around. Although comparrisons of Alito to Roberts, although natural given the timing, are a bit like comparing Monet to Escher. They're both brilliant, but for different reasons and in different ways. Evaluate each on his own merits. Some of the Republicans' questioning made me as infuriated as the Democrats'. Is anyone else a bit disillusioned by politics? You just can't get away from it!

And in completely unrelated news, I visited John Marshall's home in Richmond this last week. If you're ever in town, it's a beautiful home and, unlike most homes of the era that I've visited, 70-80% of the items in the home are original to the Marshall family. One would like to think that in the era of the third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, life wasn't quite so politically-minded as today. But it wasn't. More needs to be written of this brilliant man who stood up to his cousin, Thomas Jefferson, and -- for better or worse -- solidified the federal government's position (and, of course, the judiciary itself) like no other individual. Neither Andrew Jackson nor Abraham Lincoln could have done their bit for the feds had it not been for Marshall. Makes you rethink that notion that "activist courts" are something of the past few decades!

posted by shadowlands7 @ 9:05:00 AM