I’m a mother prone to a little hyperbole. “You took the longest nap in the world!” is a regular comment of mine on the rare occasions when the Bean does nap. Because he’s still battling jet lag, he’s been napping quite a bit this week. He’s always accepted uncritically the idea that whatever we’re talking about at the moment was the [biggest, best, coolest, longest] in the world. Until last night. He looked at me suspiciously and remarked, “Some people take longer ones.”

Sigh.

Or, Is Justice Stevens Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?

Supreme Court overturns D.C.’s handgun ban 5-4.

Rachel Lucas points to a snotty, annoying, and oh yeah, completely off-rocker piece of rhetoric by Justice Stevens:

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

No evidence that the Framers would much rather have limited, and did limit, the actions of our elected officials rather than limit the actions of free, innocent citizens?

Has he ever read the Constitution? I Am Not a Lawyer (as everybody reading here has had plenty of evidence to show), but even I can parse this: Whatever the available tools may be, Justice Stevens, they do not include infringement. That word means exactly what everybody thinks it means, no matter how hard you and others of your ilk try to convince us otherwise. There are only four lights.

Even in our public schools, at least back when I was attending them, which was since D.C.’s gun ban was enacted, thanks, it was made perfectly clear from the moment we started studying the American Revolution that the Framers had every intention of limiting most widely the actions of our officials rather than the rights of citizens. Stevens still sucks.

If any flight attendant ever supposes she has the right to do anything regarding my child other than telling me what she wants him to do, I’ll get kicked off the plane for telling her to go to hell. You do not touch or tighten my child’s seatbelt–and, thankfully, no flight attendant on any of the many flights we’ve taken has ever felt it necessary to do so. They do not interact directly with the child; they go through me. The most annoying it’s ever gotten was an attendant who insisted–while he was dead asleep–that he could not be lying down during landing, even with his seatbelt on. I complied and sat him up. (Yes, I do know the meaning of the word “comply” and have even suited action to the word on occasion.)

This mother wasn’t so lucky. The flight attendant seems to have been, though–because if I were the mother she would have been bawled out the first time she touched him. Seems she got to extend her power trip through several more incidents.