People disgust me.

Alternately, if you pick 1000 people at random, I'll know more about our Constitution than all but one of them.

So say this extraordinarily alarming article.

I'll admit that I have crammed a whole lot of useless information into my head, at the expense of potentially more important things. To wit, Jenn is consistently impressed with my almost infallibility in naming the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation within hearing one or two lines of dialog, at which point I'm 99% of the time able to offer the title of the episode and the season in which it appeared.

But enough about me. This is about you. More to the point, this is about you if you haven't read through the First Amendment of the Constitution. It's really short, but really important. There are lots of places to read it. I recommend going to the source.

You know, I was lamenting with BD just last night about the variety of woes that appear to be befalling our great country and what the motives of the players behind them may be. Now it makes sense.

Folks in positions of power feel free to take bolder and bolder steps to abuse that power because they know they can get away with it. They already know that 0.1% of the public - the voters - even know the most fundamental of their rights as citizens. Far fewer than that know the extent of the government's power - and more importantly, its limits - and they use that overwhelming ignorance to their advantage.

Do yourself a favor... I'm begging you. Please go read the Bill of Rights. Try to process it. If it doesn't get through on first read, or seems hopelessly arcane, do yourself a huge favor and go buy The Words We Live By by Linda Monk. She explains the entire Constitution and brings in relevant, present-day issues in very easy-to-undertstand language.

There really is no excuse for a story like this to ever come out. Join me, won't you, in the One In A Thousand club.