September, 2015 archive

My father once told me that his father was a natural left-hander, who was forcibly trained out of it in school (that would have been before WWI). Granddaddy resented that for the rest of his life.

A professor of constitutional law points out the Republicans in Congress are trying to do unconstitutional stuff. A snippet:

Though no one is talking about it, this most recent dust-up over federal funding for Planned Parenthood is very clearly an example of an unconstitutional bill of attainder: Congress is singling out Planned Parenthood and punishing the organization for allegedly improper and illegal actions.

More specifically, a bill of attainder has to meet three legal requirements: The law has to “determine guilt and inflict punishment,” it must act “upon an identifiable individual,” and it must do so “without provision of the protections of a judicial trial.” All these requirements are met here.

When I was growing up, Virginia did not permit “liquor by the drink.” Restaurants could not serve cocktails (I’m not sure about the laws on beer and wine, but no decent eatery out in the country, where I grew up, served them). You could buy whiskey and other liquors at ABC (“Alcoholic Beverage Control”) stores, where the clerks wore uniforms and fetched the bottles from the shelves behind the counter.

The local still was located in the woods across a field behind the courthouse . . . .

Afterthought:

Virginia still has ABC stores, but the clerks no longer wear uniforms and customers can browse the shelves. The prices, though, compared to Delware prices which I have observed on my trips to Philadelphia, are somewhat–er–elevated. A monopoly will act like a monopoly whenever given the chance.