9 February 2020

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 9 February 12020 is the last day of the first of my life. It’s Thomas Paine’s birthday (N.S.), along with Anthony Hope’s, Hyrum Smith’s, Garner Ted Armstrong’s, and Sheila Kuehl’s. My knee has stiffened up (from a fall a few days ago) and I feel like crap and my keyboard isn’t working and I don’t seem to have anything already prepared for the day so don’t expect much. In fact I’ll go further and say don’t expect anything at all. I spent some time today researching something my party sent me about amending the Constitution by simply reinterpreting the words legislatively—or even by executive decree—rather in the manner of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass. Thus, I suppose, when the Constitution refers to “Indians not taxed” we can simply pass a law defining that phrase as meaning “billionaires owning major utilities” or “foreigners in possession of desirable lands” and we’re off and running. I am not a fan of that concept—quite the contrary in fact—but I am aware that a nonsensical sentence like «prayer is not a religious exercise within the meaning of the law» can be perfectly sensible in the right legal context, however stupid it is outside of that context. I don’t really think the Constitution should be amended that way, but apparently certain Republicans (among them the ass we elected President) are in favor of the idea. Maybe I will write about that some day, but this probably isn’t that day.