Justice Blackmun Papers Released: As I note here, though it's important to remember that public officials are not average citizens, to have respect for their office, it is also important to sometimes keep in mind the more human aspects of their personalities. A public official is not just a machine, but a human personality, and this is both interesting and important in that it affects how s/he serves the public. Therefore, it useful that Justice Blackmun's papers are being released, as agreed upon, five years after his death along with interviews with a former law clerk that were part of an oral history project. Four hours of the interviews were aired over the weekend (a bit too concerned with his retirement), and are accessible with further background materials here.

A modest, shy, hard working, and somewhat tentative individual (he never quite was sure if it would have been better if he went into medicine), Justice Blackmun was an ideal public servant. Others on the bench overshadowed him, but that only made him that much easier to relate to. He is best known for writing Roe v. Wade (and for some, his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick, now the law of the land), but his career is much richer than that. Over time, his concern for the "little people," average individuals in need of justice truly showed itself. As Justice Blackmun noted "It's their [the people's] Supreme Court." And, in the end, he was their (our) justice.

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Good Snack: Hummus ... especially on Ritz Crackers.

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Excellent analysis of President Bush by a disheartened Republican can be found here. Putting aside the subject matter of this particular post, the guy in general deserves a regular column in some major magazine. He is consistently excellent, if perhaps a bit too eloquently expansive sometimes. A bit of the William Buckley Jr. disease, perhaps. lol.