Finally, a full night's sleep. I awoke nearly recovered from the previous night's wake-a-thon, greatly relieved that we weren't tested any harder than we were.

Of course, I'm assuming Squeeky slept as well, or nearly as well, as I did. Perhaps I just didn't wake up with Little Roo last night. I'll have to wait to find out, as both of them remained unconscious as I slipped out of the bedroom.

for once, the state legislature has pleased me. The only bill I felt compelled to contact my rep and senator about was this one, pertaining to the red-light cameras that sprang up all over Dallas this year.

I've always hated that kind of Big Brother stuff. People are not robots, and they should not be surveilled and indicted by robots. There are too many variables in law enforcement that need the human touch. Robots lack discretion and know nothing other than zero-tolerance. It's just not keeping with the American way of treating each other.

Plus, they're eyesores, and a local company gets a cut from each citation, which I find deeply disturbing because the incentive is there for mischief. Matt Labash at Weekly Standard wrote the kind of article I would write if I were a full-time journalist, on this very topic. The corruption he found suggested to me that our Sen. Carona would be unsuccessful in his bid to untangle the smarmy public-private conspiracy that brought this nanny-state project to life. Sometimes, there's too much money and too many cronies for a decent legislator to fight.

Which is why his success astounded me. I'm going to guess that ACS, the company making a buck on the Dallas traffic-camera deal, lacked the lobbying horsepower to stall Sen. Carona's bills. They may have also been weakened by a recent stock-option backdating deal that ended in a couple of resignations at the top.

Regardless, I'm a happy guy over this. I was ready to go all Minuteman on them. I had even video-recorded the duration of yellow lights at one of the monitored intersections just before the cameras went up, hoping to catch the city shortening the light to run up the ticket count. That's one of the aspects Labash wrote about, and it didn't surprise me. Government has no shame when it comes to shaking down its citizens.

squeeky just came in to tell me she was awakened only once all night. Praise God. We have what might be a very busy weekend coming up. Good to head into it with a full load of sleep behind us.

I hope you have a good one, yourself. And remember to have some kind of fun.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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