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Sat.Jul.10.2004

3:11 am EDT        58°F (14°C) in Austinburg, OH

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The new truck will apparently be mine sometime tomorrow or Monday at the terminal in Pennsylvania. I have a delivery to make on the way in there; then I will take about a day to move.

While driving earlier today, and listening to a Toledo, Ohio radio station, it came to my attention that an Ohio state legislator is seeking to place an indoor smoking ban on this upcoming November's ballot. I don't smoke, and quite frankly I'm none too thrilled when the guy three seats down the restaurant counter lights one up, so it would seem that I'd be all in favor of such a measure. However, Rep. Lynn Olman's proposal, in my opinion, has one fatal flaw: it is being proposed as an amendment to the state constitution, not as a regular law.

This is a very dismaying, and frankly anti-American, trend we're seeing these days. Vocal minority groups are attempting to stifle or bypass debate on the rights of other (usually unpopular or persecuted) minority groups, as well as castrate the judicial branches of our various governments, by using state and federal constitutions to regulate behavior. Constitutions, in both the state and federal flavors, are frameworks within which government is to operate — a sort of "by-laws" which, in effect, govern the government. Laws and regulations which cover aspects of behavior most certainly do not belong in a place where they cannot be challenged or overturned. I mean, we don't bother with putting laws prohibiting rape, assault, murder, robbery, or Enron-style corporate crime into constitutions — we deem the anti-crime laws in plain old state and federal codes sufficient — so why do certain people feel it necessary to use constitutions to ban gay marriage or indoor smoking? (Well, I know the answer to that. They know their hatred and intolerance won't stand up in court when their pet law is challenged, so they attempt to head off their inevitable court defeat with a constitutional amendment.)

I should have been asleep an hour ago …