Latin for “let it stand.” The legal principle of deferring to previous judicial precedents. The confirmation of Judge John Roberts seems so far to be primarily a debate between keeping the law as it is and overturning legal decisions (as has happened 174 times already by the Supreme Court alone), especially regarding the right to privacy, the right to abortion, and the right to non-heterosexual marriage. [Oh yeah, it’s coming.]

I’m impressed by Roberts’ articulate & concise opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although I’m never really comfortable with sports metaphors, his analogy seemed fitting: even though the umpire determines who wins & who loses, nobody goes to a baseball game to watch him do his job. After hearing so many other politicians and ideologues recently spew idiocy from their evil heads–particularly Pres. Bush, and now ex-FEMA Director Brown–I could listen to Roberts talk all night long!

On a more personal note, am I reasonably justified in my anger at Sigur Ros for not playing any venue even near Texas on their current tour? For fuck’s sake, I live in an international major metroplex!

Being a part–although, granted, only tangentially–of a rather conservative Catholic (is that redundant?) university is surreal: hearing the classmate that dresses & acts the most liberal in my afternoon class say things like, “Seattle is so liberal that you just can’t talk politics with those hippies” made my head want to explode. That was after walking past a closed office door & reading “Cogito ergo sum pro-vita.” [I think; therefore, I am pro-life.] on a sticker. As a thinking human being who does quite a lot of his own cogitare, my gut reaction was to shout, “Without choice, there is no life!” Instead I kept silent [fully aware that silence=death] and left campus as soon as I could. My “Our Father” goes something like this: Oh god! don’t let these fucking papists deny me my degree for not swallowing all that shitty dogma! Amen.