Did anyone else ever wake up feeling so highly intellectual  and literarily competent that a long post explaining the world  -- with unprecedented insight and elegance -- was a sure thing?  Then you wrote it down. Then you drained the coffee dregs as you "edited."  Then something inside you whispered, or, rather, shrieked, "what utter, banal, bullshit."  

So you decided to clean the damned house instead. 

Hit delete. Confirm delete.  Sometimes a guy's most important contribution to the world of letters.

Me. This morning.  That's why  my kitchen almost sparkles. It's also why you don't get my analysis of Fox News thighs as a marker of societal decline.

School non-shootings

I like to think of the big school in Wells, Minnesota, as the best disciplined one in the country. For at least one day a year it is as thousands of gun freaks crowd the halls. Probably the rest of the year, too. Politeness is contagious.

We made our annual pilgrimage Saturday and came home happy even if not significantly more lethal -- except for our youngest loopholer, 10. He loopholed a tactical sharp thing. It has so many "features" I refuse to honor it with the term "knife," but it made him smile and that's the general idea.

I settled for about 300 pages of hilarity, an excellent hardback copy of the 1960 "Professional Guides Manual" by Minnesota's own George L. Herter.

(Sample: "If a bull moose will not give you a good sidewise look and you have to judge his rack from the front, look carefully at his ears. If his ears are real long, you can be sure he has a trophy rack.")

Plus an almost unused 1950-ish powder measure and stand, also from Mr. Herter. I've set it up and it  works as expected.  How could a measure weighing something like 20 pounds be less than perfect?

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Next week is our little local loophole. Y'all come.  I'll be the guy with the interesting useless crap on his table, waving Federal Reserve Cartoons, begging you to sell me something made of steel and walnut.

The Rand Paul Filibuster: Condensed

Eight hours is a long time to listen to even an articulate libertarianish thinker drone on. So, for what it's worth, here's how it might have been said:

"Obama, Holder, and even some famous Republican munchkins say they own plenary shoot-to-kill authority over American citizens on American soil.  No warrants, courts, due process or any other technical mumbo-jumbo which just slows things down. 

"All they need is a sincere belief that the death-marked American is a bad guy who might do wrong. 

"Then they sing us the lullaby 'Of course we wouldn't really do it. Well, hardly ever anyway, just when we're pretty sure we need to.' But we demand the authority.

" The idea of entrusting my life or yours solely to the competence, judgement, and good will of guys like that  -- or anyone, for that matter -- scares Hell out of me. How about you?"

"So the answer is 'No'."

"We like to trumpet the moral and practical superiority of government by law rather than men, so let's get with the program. Thank you and good night."

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Aside No. 1: Joel has a related take on "dangerous people"  over at his place.

Aside No. 2: Television news. as usual,  is missing the point by parsecs. The morning gruel -- especially on MSNBC --  is turdfully dense with panicked concern about (1) Whether all this means Sen. Paul will run for President and (2) whether it "exposes a rift in the Republican party."  For krissakes Joe, Mika, the point here is whether or not the  DoD should program into the president's football the coordinates of every coffee shop known to harbor loud-mouthed nonconformists.

A Jayhawker Stands His Ground

As a general thing, I oppose Kansas farmers shooting down Iowans, but I'm not unreasonable on the subject. Even a good herd benefits from an occasional and careful culling.

That leads me to applaud the actions of the sherf and prosecutors down in the Free Soil country of Sumner County where an unnamed farmer ended the career of a probation jumper from Creston, Iowa. They're giving him a self-defense pass, and knowing my fellow rustics as I do, I suspect his neighbors will throw a barbecue in his honor.

Kansas has a stand-your-ground law, and it appears to me that it was written specifically to cover cases like this where fugitive Joe Lamasters died in barn after making a bad tactical decision -- to leap from behind a pile of feed sacks into the enfilade area of Farmer's shotgun. As the sheriff reported, the perp "deceased right there."

Cops across the area had been looking for Lamasters and added the courtesy of going door-to-door to tell citizens of a bad guy skulking around. (in a county with a rural population density of maybe four per square mile, "door-to-door" takes on a special meaning.)

It's worth noting that Farmer had Lamasters under the gun twice. The first time the fugitive turned and ran. Farmer decided to have no truck with  back-shooting. But the perp made the mistake of fleeing toward another farm where the good citizen believed a woman might be home alone. Farmer went there, found the house empty, and decided to check the outbuildings.

Courage, good judgement, and the shotgun did the rest, but please don't take this as an endorsement of Double-Barrel Biden. My take on the subject would be just the same even if the Kansas farmer had used a Bushmaster with a shoulder thingie and 40 bullets in the clip. But he probably didn't even own one.

Ain't no call for that plastic crap when a feller's got a real nice 12-gauge hanging over the back door. :)