There's been a lot going on recently: the Toyota craze, Anthem/Blue Cross having its little toesies held to a teeny tiny fire by legislators who get annual donations from them... you know, business as usual in Sacramento.

I know all this because I listen to NPR so, according to the litmus test of the elite, I am a Very Informed Person.

Of course, I also peek at Fox News from time to time when no one is looking, so I suppose that pushes me down to bigoted, racist pond scum again (and if you're asking at this point what prejudices pond scum could have, I have no idea... but apparently they're naaasty).

At any rate, sandwiched in between all these fascinating bits of information that both keep me from falling asleep at the wheel and ironically at the same time often make me want to intentionally drive into a bridge abutment, I heard a piece on the Constitutional Convention.  For those of you who aren't V.I.P.'s (Very Informed Persons), I'll give you a quick update: there have been more than a few people who have noticed that California as a whole, well... it isn't doing so well.  In much the same way that someone who has cancer, AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, AND a wart on his toe "isn't doing so well."  We aren't just circling the drain, we're walking around in the sewer and wondering what the heck happened to what used to be the "Golden State" and now seems more mucousy than golden.

But I digress.  At any rate, there have been a bunch of people who have been trying to get enough signatures together to get a ballot initiative that would authorize a Constitutional Convention to fix some of the glaring disasters that California has gotten itself into of late (no, I'm not talking about the fact that more soap operas are now filming in and around my office building than ever before... though that hurts, too).  I found it particularly interesting that part of the reason the pro-CC'ers were having trouble (one of them claimed) was that to get enough signatures to get a ballot measure online (onboard?  ontop?  on something, I'm sure...), you almost HAVE to have the help of professional signature getter people (that's the technical name for them).  And guess who opposes the idea of a Constitutional Convention?  Well, yes, the crazy lady who carries around a dead cat and insists that it's NOT a dead cat, it's really a dead puppy; but also the professional signature getter people businesses (again, technical term).  Why?  Because (so this pro-CC guy claimed) the Constitutional Convention might have, among other things, changed how signatures are gathered and put some of the pro-sig-get-peeps (I'm abbreviating now) out of business.

"That's horrible!" I thought.  Mostly because I had just driven over a dead possum at this instant.  But also some of my horror was about the fact that some people think The Phantom Menace was a good movie.  And a tiny bit was left over for the idea that the pro-sig-get-peeps would do such a rotten, underhanded, dirty-minded, spiteful, evil thing.

Then I brightened.  Because I realized something: they may have saved our butts!  How so? you may ask (and if you don't, then pick up your bags and leave, I don't like your attitude).  Well, it's like this:

Say we had managed to get enough signatures to put the idea of a Constitutional Convention on the ballot.  And say further (say it!) that the ballot measure had passed.

What then?

"Well," says you, "I guess that the Convention process begins."

"I can see it now," I reply, "Congressional Booth Babes and free pens everywhere!"

"No," you explain patiently (because let's face it, if you're my friend you're patient by definition), "It's not that kind of convention.   People will get together to change the California Constitution."

"Oh," I say with downcast face, because free pens sounds more fun.  "And who will do this changing?"

"Well," says you (you always "says" things when you start off with "Well..."), "probably the legislators."

"Wait... " I respond, my teeny-tiny brain almost exploding into a teeny-tiny puff of smoke, "... so the people who will fix our problems... are the same ones who are currently in charge of them?"

Is it just me, or does this make almost as much sense as a coma patient performing open-heart brain surgery on itself?

So, thank you sig-peeps.  You have saved us from ourselves.  You're like Superman, only without the cape or good intentions and as near as I can tell Kryptonite does nothing to you (I've tried).

But even though it was evil that spared us, at least it spared us from evil.  Because probably my biggest problem with California is that while there may be one or two legislators in Sacramento who are bright, solid people of integrity (though I suspect they hide these traits as undesirable), I wouldn't trust most of them to hold a rubber band and return it still-springy.

Nor, it seems, is this solely a California problem.  Orson Scott Card - bestselling author of Ender's Game and a slew of other things (and something of a nice guy to boot - but don't tell him I said that or he'll kill me) writes an online column called "World Watch" (probably because "I Like to Rant" was too on the nose).   In his latest column, (click here to view the excitement!) he wrote about how North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction* recently proposed to stop teaching American history before 1877.

What is it with these people?  Card proposed that it was a planned attack designed to cripple children into believing only in Leftist ideals.  Me, I think that credits too many government officials with too much strategic aptitude.  I bet the average Congressman doesn't even know what Connect Four is, let alone how to play it, let alone how to win it, let alone how to then leverage that win into world domination.

So, again, thank goodness for our system.  It's broke, but at least we can't fix it!  So cheers!

* Yeah, I know that technically these are educators, not legislators.  But frankly I was too depreseed to think that professional educators are that evil and/or stupid, so I'm pretending they're politicians.  Politicians are like lawyers: they're fair game for abuse and no one feels bad about it!**

** I know, because I'm a lawyer.  STOP MAKING LAWYER JOKES!  If I had a heart and/or soul, it would be breaking.