Friday Morning Blog-o-rama

Good morning everyone. I'm seriously wishing I hadn't gone out with my roommates last night. It's making sitting in my office kind of unbearable right now. Someone has the heat set way too high.

Two things to get your Friday going right. First, it's not really news when a man kills a dog. It may be news however when 1) the man is allegedly suicidal 2) he asks the dog to shoot him and 3) the dog is a cockapoo. Just another case of southerners polluting the north if you ask this Yankee.

Second, and more importantly, the Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on Indiana's voter ID law. The law, so far as I can tell, requires voters to present a state issued photo ID before they can vote. That, in a sense, seems like a very prudent requirement, but as with any law, the devil is in the details, or as the law kids can tell you, the innane hypotheticals.

The problem here boils down like this. First, as you can imagine, voting is a very important right, a fundamental right. In order for the state to infringe upon it, the state must have a very, very good reason. And there seems to be some infringement upon the right to vote, especially for poor people who can't afford to get a photo ID, or those who might be denied an ID for reasons that would have nothing to do with voting or voting fraud. Liberal folks get that argument.

For the conservative folks, the idea is law and order and keeping fraud at bay. That's an easy one to understand. But, as the folks over at SCOTUSBlog point out, this issue a political football, with both liberals and conservatives accusing each other of voting shenanigans.

On a side note, I just took a fantastic poop. I'm feeling much better now. I love the restorative power of a simple poop.

Vermont governor reverses track on drug cases

Since I've been writing about this for about a month or so now, I thought I'd offer what seems to be the last of it. Governor Jim Douglas has announced that he's reversing his policy of skipping State's Attorney Robert Sand on major drug cases. The Governor's reasoning: he'd originally thought that instead of exercising discretion, Sand had a blanket policy of sending first time drug offenders with no history to a court-sponsored diversion program.

The governor's excuse is that when the story broke, he was misinformed. Seems he was encouraged by Sand's recent meetings with local (and Sand-supporting) law enforcement. It probably helped that the newspapers around were also flooded with letters chastising the governor as well as prominent folk like Vermont's former Chief Justice taking the governor to task, but if the governor wants to say he was misinformed, well, there you go.

As an interesting side note, kudos to the newspaper the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus for the thoroughness of their coverage here. They pinpointed what actually may have been the cause for all the problems: a local TV station doing what television reporters often do, gloss over the facts. Compare WCAX's coverage on this with the earlier link. So much for checking your facts before going on air, eh WCAX?

General rants about the quality of television news coverage to be had in the comment thread. Buenas suerte!