Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Every organism, from bacterium to legislature, will strive to perpetuate itself.
This is why California's Democrats – who hold majorities in the state's Assembly and Senate –so strongly oppose Proposition 77, which would have district boundaries drawn by a panel of retired judges rather than by the Legislature itself.
Passage of Prop. 77 might eliminate "safe" districts in which incumbency is tantamount to re-election, so the Golden State's Dems are dead set against it.
On the other hand, Republicans in Ohio, where they hold the legislative majority, are dead set against ballot Issue 4, which would take redistricting out of the hands of elected officials and give it to a bipartisan board.
The Buckeye State is treating us to the spectacle of Republicans making the straight-faced argument that giving apportionment authority to an independent board would deprive the electorate of choice – as if voters had a choice under the existing system.
Democrats, being on the outs under the current process, are piously backing the ballot issue.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, where Republicans enjoy about a 5 percent registration advantage, Democrats supported a measure to set up a redistricting commission, and voters approved it.
However, when the commission drew new district boundaries, things didn't turn out the way the Dems had hoped, so they turned to the time honored tactic of political losers: They sued, tying things up in court.
One might discern hypocrisy here, but only if you view these conflicts from the narrow standpoint of conventional logic and fairness. The politician has no more interest in consistency and fairness than does the average bacterium.
His goal – regardless of party – is power, and if he can seize it by Gerrymandering electoral districts, he will do so. If he can attain it by promoting logical district boundaries, he will do so.
If circumstances change, he will change his stance – and maintain that he always has held his current position.
First and foremost, he will protect his own hide, which explains why few Republican incumbents have been campaigning hard for Prop. 77. It could threaten their "safe" seats, too.
The really big news last week was not the indictment of Lewis Libby; it was the passing of Rosa Parks. This courageous woman bore the weight of her role as catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement with lifelong strength and dignity. Some eulogists have called her an example for black Americans. In fact, she was an example for us all ...
Democratic Party leaders – like the snotty Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the unspeakable Sen. Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts and California's own limousine liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer – have labeled Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito the choice of the GOP's "right wing." These cheesy intellects are so far left, the middle of the road looks like the right.
President Bush's plans to contain a bird flu pandemic could include travel restrictions, to prevent infected persons from carrying the virus around the country. That sounds reasonable, but consider this: My Dad was born in Colorado's high country in 1913, making him five years old in 1918, and well able to observe the scourge of the Spanish influenza.
He used to tell the story of how he and all his siblings came down with the bug as the pandemic swept through the community. His father, who was the sheriff, quarantined his own family.
But the appearance of the flu in this jurisdiction was at least odd, perhaps verging on the supernatural. The flu has an incubation period of 24 to 48 hours, and when the first case was diagnosed in their Colorado alpine community, Eagle County was utterly isolated. It had been snowed in for weeks, with nobody entering to carry the disease.
Kenny Stultz of Lavalette, W.Va., adds a new commodity to the list of "gifts" proffered by charities seeking to shame recipients into making donations. To return-address labels, calendars and greeting cards, he adds T-shirts. He received a nice one from a previously unknown charity, which causes us to wonder: What kind of charity can afford to produce and mail garments in the slim hope of even recouping the cost?