Osler's Razor

I had a brief conversation with Chicago down on the first floor today. He seemed dispirited. Trying to cheer him up, I mentioned that a gridlocked government is as close as we will get for a while to a smaller government. He seemed slightly cheered.

In thinking about the election, I'm going to limit my comments to that extremely limited area in which I actually know something:

1) The MCC bond issue passed.

McLennan Community College is a very good institution. Some of the people I know who teach there, including Dann Walker and Ashley Cruseturner, are among the best teachers I have ever listened to. I really believe that as much as we need institutions like Yale Law School, we also need MCC, and for much the same reason-- to challenge and train people who will be doing important work in the future.

2) Chet Edwards won.

I think that Chet Edwards is a fundamentally decent person. The same may be true of Van Taylor; I just don't know. It makes me glad that Chet Edwards is going back to Congress and representing me. By the way, I'm told that he doesn't like being referred to as "Ched Edwards," or being mistaken for Mayor McCheese. Oops. Sorry, man.

3) The House Judiciary Committee will no longer be run by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.

Much of the oversight of federal sentencing comes from the House Judiciary Committee. Under Rep. Sensenbrenner, it has been the source of increasingly unrealistic and poorly-conceived proposed legislation, such as the conversion of the sentencing guidelines to a broad system of mandatory minimum sentences. The new chair will be Rep. John Conyers of Detroit. While he is disliked by some (and never answers my letters), I'm optimistic that he will refrain from any broad changes in federal sentencing not supported by the experts in the field, particularly those at the US Sentencing Commission.