Since there's hardly anything more common, at least from atop a bar stool, or key board connected to a social media site, than the opinion that politicians are universally corrupt, ignorant, and ineffective, I'm going to drop in here a clip of a US senator performing his job well. For context, the Trump administration has nominated the witness, Jeremy Carl, for a position in our State Department sufficiently high up to require Senate confirmation.

About a week ago, Trump said that the federal government should "take over"--"federalize"--voting procedures in 15 states. He didn't say which 15, but probably not South Carolina or Idaho, right? They get the right results. He did name three cities that he thinks are "crooked": Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit. These are in the "swing" states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. But what really puts a target on them, I think, is that they are majority African American and overwhelmingly Democratic in their political orientation.

I'm on a blood thinner, because I have a tendency to form blood clots--DVTs (for deep vein thrombosis) in the professional jargon of the white coats, which can be dangerous when hiking around in your circulatory system. The only danger of the blood thinner that scientists have warned me about concerns the increased possibility of a brain bleed if I should fall and strike my head.

Don't know anything about Bad Bunny, but based on his enemies, I'm beginning to look forward to the halftime show. I remember that the Speaker of the House, when Bad Bunny was first selected, opined that Lee Greenwood would have been a better choice. Maybe Lee wasn't available, like there was a conflict with a planned activity at the rest home, because I see they secured instead, for their alternate show, Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett.

Daughters are with their mom for the weekend, but I got a text from my high school senior that makes me think my work is nearly done. I'm not saying other parents shouldn't feel at least as proud. Just today, one of my fellow dads here in the Peoples Republic of Minneapolis posted the following to social media: My goal as a parent was always to raise better men than me.

Reading emails addressed to Valley View Staff can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster these days, especially if those muscles have been atrophied by the accumulation of years augmented by Scandinavian heritage. We were informed a few days ago that a judge had ordered the release of our now world famous pre-k student and his dad, and then that the two of them were safely back in Columbia Heights.

I confess I take a generally dim view of things, which inclines me to think there's no justice in the world, but, on the other hand, look who's inhaling even Fartcoin's exhaust:

Columbia Heights has become one of the epicenters of the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the country and it’s rippling through the local school district.

Consecutive posts from the FB group, Columbia Heights Public Schools. Last night: This morning: Also, there is a measles outbreak at the detention center in Texas where four more of the district's schoolchildren are being held.

Journalist and author Garrett Graff has been looking into the crime rate among agents and officers of CBP (Customs and Border Protection). Some of his findings, as recently revealed in testimony before an Illinois state commission: Criminality is so rampant within CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005 .

As predicted, I stalled along the long open road of Henry Adams's History of the US, but, as reading in bed is still my Ambien, I was lucky to stumble again upon the novels of Evelyn Waugh. The one everyone knows is Brideshead Revisited, which was made into a movie as well as a lauded miniseries starring Jeremy Irons.

One day a few weeks ago I was dining in the school lunchroom when a kid a table over suddenly began vomiting just as a first grade teacher was striding into the room to collect her class. She veered from her original course and, as she'd already been moving, arrived at the scene of the trouble before anyone else. From behind, she put one hand under each armpit of the puker and lifted him out of there before too much more could drip into his lap.

A picture of the 5-year-old Valley View student being detained by ICE Tuesday afternoon after school. According to our superintendent, the family has an open asylum case with a "no deport" order. Nevertheless, the pre-k student is "being held at a detention center in Texas." A report by the local CBS affiliate, here. And Sahan Journal, here. The picture, in the Sahan Journal piece, of his teacher wiping away tears while listening to district officials talk about her student at a press conference today, is just about more than I can tolerate.

Regarding the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, it's clear that people are going to believe (or say that they believe) whatever it pleases them to believe. It seems a short step from there to the claim that the shooting is essentially a "Rorschach Test" and that objective truth concerning the event doesn't exist: some will "interpret" the evidence this way, some that way, and there are only "interpretations," no truth.

I saw a Replacements tribute show at the Turf Club a week ago and have been listening to their records again ever since. My God. A friend and I like to play the game, Favorite album? Favorite song? For me, it's changed, and it will again, but tonight my answer for the first game is Tim. Notwithstanding the most common free association responses to "punk rock," so many of their songs are, um, …

At first glance, I thought the phone in her right hand was a cigarette, which is about the only thing that could have made for a more indelible image: like Pam Grier contemplating the dumb white cops in Jackie Brown. Unless someone is completely cropped out, I think there are seven of them. Note that the fellow at the left has his hand on the stock of his holstered pistol--because, I guess, two rifles at the ready might not be enough when you're face to face with a black lady wearing slippers. Careful, darling, everyone now knows that they don't call 911, either.

Bought a copy of the Minneapolis daily paper for the first time yesterday in a couple of decades. I think I could have read every word, excluding the sports box scores and the ads regarding mortgage foreclosures, in around an hour and a half. Is it always so skimpy? The sports box scores did not include one for the Timberwolve's game the night before.

Probably it would be prudent for me to stay off of social media when events in my stomping grounds are the lead story in international news reports, and not for the first time in recent memory. But being a boomer, I occasionally peruse what my kids derisively refer to as BoomerBook, and unfortunately cannot give myself an order to regard with equanimity, for example, Tom Emmer, who represents probably Minnnesota's reddest congressional district.

It's a footnote to a sidelight, but watching Trump speak about the events in Venezuela last night, I almost felt a little sorry for the guy. He can barely read a text that's been prepared for him, and when, perhaps impatient with his own bumbling progress, he freelances for awhile, the result is comically irrelevant asides that slink away toward incoherence.

Shoveling snow. Watching sports on TV. Ubering teens to their New Year's parties. Debating with myself whether to be asleep at midnight or to stay up till my young reveler is delivered home by someone else's dad. In short, living life all the way up. According to the actuarial charts, I have maybe 15 years left, so how could I do anything else?

I used to think that law school must be pretty boring, but maybe not. As for the reading, it seems that sometimes even the footnotes to judicial decisions are enjoyable. For example, here is the text of a footnote to an appellate court's opinion in U.S. v Murphy, 406 F.3d 857, 859 n.1 (7th Cir. 2005): The trial transcript quotes Ms.

Got back this morning from running some errands and discovered a dog biscuit sitting atop my mailbox. My mailman--though it's a she--loves dogs, and always has a treat ready when our ways cross on walks. It's to the point that the dog gets excited when he sees those postal service vans, and can hardly be restrained when she gets out. If it's the wrong postal worker .