Life in the Age of Non-Reason.

Linda Greenhouse in today's NYT:

I’m not counting the days, or the Supreme Court terms, until the court declares the death penalty unconstitutional. But from two courts, the highest in the land and the highest court of one of the smallest states, a fruitful conversation emerged this summer that will inevitably spread, gain momentum and, in the foreseeable if not immediate future, lead the Supreme Court to take the step that I think a majority of today’s justices know is the right one.

I wonder, how many people are able to connect the dots between dealth penalty jurisprudence and the #BlackLivesMatter protests?  So much in common, so much work to do, taking the "fight" out of the streets and onto the sheets -- of white legal paper, where arguments are built based on fact-based uncoveries like we've seen in the past decades in my native Illinois. *

That's what Change looks like, if you haven't seen much of it of late, my friends.  **
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* Politics makes for funny bedfellows:  Had then Gov. George Ryan not been in deep trouble at the time for his corrupt political actions that led to deaths on the roads, I don't think he'd have had the political courage to do what he did, when he did it.  There at the end of his rope, I think he had nothing to lose, politically.

 And you know what they say, right? 
"Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand..." 

Thank God we still had the old-school reporters out digging up stories in those days, not merely copping other people's work, as is rewarded too often in this double-down age.  Tales like those are not neatly delivered into your lap, or your email-in box.  You gotta be there.  Elite reporters have learned to "drop in", or do what I call drive-by reporting.  They've pretty much lost the skills, and in the digital era of surveillance and compliance, the truths are really more hidden than ever before...

When we hire on superficial identity characteristics instead of merit in getting the job done, we merely redefine the job, and the real work remains.  Then we divide up, to protect our ill-advanced gains.

** Being mired in political stagnation is a lot like your car being stuck in icy mud, with the likes of Washington's political establishment all talking, talking, talking about what it will take, but not willing, not knowing, or incapable of putting their shoulders down and pushing -- together -- to get us unstuck and out running on solid ground again.

Maybe we're still in the rocking-it-back-and-forth mode and the muscle is still to come?