Access

Shhh, don't tell anyone in my apartment complex, but I'm using an unknown someone's open wireless network. The signal is very low, but it works. Very low speed is infinitely faster than no speed at all, which is my normal state when in the apartment.

First significant rainfall of the month and it all comes at once. Gale force winds, flash flood rains, and dramatic lightning displays in the dark sky have been Houston's Halloween trick-or-treat. Poor kids. But then lots of children wouldn't have been going out to trick-or-treat anyway, as the idea of walking one's neighborhood with a parent or other trusted adult(s) and interacting with strangers is unacceptably risky. And apparently cavorting with make believe ghosts and vampires and witches puts one on the path to selling one's soul to the devil. I'm not sure Halloween-style witches say anything whatsoever about Jesus, but maybe I've been foolishly unobservant.

Samuel Alito Jr. seems like an intelligent man, polite, well mannered. I understand and respect that he is quite conservative; this is not a problem for me as a point of fact. I also understand and respect that conservatives feel the letter of the Constitution must be adhered to and nothing more (that there is, in essence, no spirit to be found in the Constitution, a point to which I heartily disagree, but I accept others feel that way). Deciding that a strict interpretation of the Constitution means a husband must be notified of a wife's abortion doesn't make sense to me at all though. I'm not sure how it isn't exactly what he argues against--judicial activism. Can someone explain this to me? For more on the Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey case alluded to above, check out a conservative view, a liberal view, a summary and actual words of the case.