Justice, et al.

 As Uncle Hugh used to say, “Thinkin’ is the cheapest way to travel.”

Texas Hero

And it occurred to me just now that I let the passage of Billy Wayne Justice slip by without comment last week.

I should have known better.

The Hon. William Wayne Justice was, if not the most decent man I’ve ever met, certainly the most honorable.

And the bravest.

He was all that is best about the law: it protects us from ourselves.

It would be easy to throw criminals to the wolves and forget that some of us are simply weak, some unthinking, some uncaring, some dangerous, but all human.

It would be easy until someone you cared about stood on the brink of the wolf pit.

Particularly now that we have learned that no small number of those he insisted we treat decently were, in fact, not guilty of any crime.

Judge Justice made the State of Texas simply be humane, even to the undeserving among us.

And we hated him for it.

He made us educate children who had no say in where they were born or where their parents traveled in search of a better life.

And we hated him for it.

He made us teach black and brown children together with white children to be better people than we were.

And we hated him for it.

His enemies were all the worst things about Texas.

But he was, taken as a man, of all the best things about Texas.

Weep not for him, but for ourselves.

Vote 4

Amendment 4 on your the Nov. 3 ballot will create a fund to assist “emerging” Texas universities’ research efforts.

That is, someplace other than College Station or Austin might have some good ideas.

And we might actually want to bring those good ideas to fruition.

As I write this, I sit within a stone’s throw from a new herpetology research center that collects,

analyzes, and sends snake venom all over the world.

If you vote against Proposition 4 next week, try not to get snake bit.

What have you got . . .

for sale?

James Dean’s former high school is selling the stage where he did his first acting.

Officials in Fairmount, Ind. have no idea what it’s worth, but they ought to get something out of the only famous guy from there.

Never mind that he couldn’t wait to get away from there.

A letter jacket or a senior ring, maybe.

But a stage?

Put that in your knick-knack cabinet

Jeez, people, just turn it into a museum and sell movie posters or red poplin jackets and tours of places he disliked most or something.

Speedy Delivery

Finally, we in the Wild Horse Desert have set a legal precedent of a sort this week.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has taken up the case of Amber Lovill, a mother who failed a series of drug tests, notably for methamphetamine, while on probation for check-writing.

Nueces County probation officers and prosecutors decided that was not the best of prenatal care and jailed her in a felony treatment facility until her little boy was born.

Fine, except there are some legal complications. (You’ll like this; nobody’s clean in this one!)

First, that ain’t what the average speed freak gets for urinating in the state’s cup.

Not that Lovill is a speed freak; she was just pregnant and, if urinalysis is to be believed, took some meth.

Probably no candidate for mother of the year, but felony jail time?

Second, is jailing a woman for doing something that might be damaging to her fetus a good idea?

Damaging like speeding on methamphetamine or damaging like speeding in an automobile?

Or smoking cigarettes?

Or lifting heavy objects?

Third, did the unborn kid have anything to do with the sentence she got, which was to have the baby where she could be watched.

By jailers.

Who might not be the best of all possible nannies.

Finally, is taking speed necessarily more detrimental to a fetus than being in jail?

Which might not be the best of all possible nursaries.

All of which leads us all to ponder the ultimate question: Is jail better than speed?

Or, is urinalysis better than my analysis?