Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Overheard on the bus

The driver had pulled over, and we assumed he was waiting at his time point. (He'd have done as well to keep going: traffic was extraordinarily slow in the construction zone.) After a while I noticed the sound of a noisy phone conversation: It was the driver. I only heard fragments of his half, but that was certainly enough to spur on curiosity:
"looking around through books in the Bible, you know, the Old Testament.."
"referenced in a couple of the gospels, let him who is without sin cast the first" ... "attention"
"But you know those folks, they want to kill all the black people."
"I agree completely, only a judge can decide a crime."

I suppose they were talking about the news story that a judge overturned a jury's verdict when he found that a few jurors had looked up some things in the Bible. Don't ask me about that case: I don't know the details well enough to say whether the judge was out of his mind or not. Perhaps the driver didn't mean exactly what his words said, but I've heard things like them before.

They say Madison is a liberal town. You have to wrench that old word "liberal" inside out and stamp on it to make it fit.

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