“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” said a 10-year-old cancer patient, waiting to see Pixar’s latest movie. The girl, Colby Curtin, was too sick to go to a theater, so a family friend called Pixar and Disney to ask if they would help her watch the movie before she died.

A Pixar employee brought a DVD to the Curtin family along with movie-related toys and stayed while the family watched. Colby couldn’t open her eyes to see the film. Her mother described the scenes to her. The family didn’t know “Up” focuses on an old man holding on to the dreams he had with his departed wife. They knew primarily that the story had lots of balloons and that Colby wanted to see it.

She died that evening.

It amused me today, for some reason, to recall that I know where to find a washroom at the fish market in Bergen, Norway. Oddly, I experienced almost as much pleasure in remembering that accomplishment as in the thought of being published (which just goes to show you there’s something very, very wrong with me).

Mark you, it’s not the greatest washroom you’ve ever used. For one thing, you have to pay to get into a stall. You pay an attendant, who—although I used the Men’s Room—was a woman, at least the last time I was there.

See, that’s what comes of Socialism. Verily I say unto you, if Pres. Obama (peace be upon him) and the Democrats have their way, soon all our washrooms will be pay toilets, and all the men’s rooms will have female attendants.

And it’ll do you no good staying home, because private washrooms will be outlawed. THIS WAY TO THE PEOPLE’S FACILITIES. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK. PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER.

OK, I think I’ve taken this train of thought far enough down the track.

It’s one thing for an editor or columnist to call for censorship of bad or disfavored ideas by rounding up people who hold those ideas. It’s another thing for the attorney general to call it. I wonder if hate crime law is inacted, will it make attempted assault just as harshly punished as assault under some circumstances? Worse than that, the current bill apparently allows the federal prosecutors to try a person twice for a single act of qualifying hatred.

The US Commission on Civil Rights says the bill currently in the Senate “will do little good and a great deal of harm.” In a letter to several senators, the commissioners wrote:

“We regard the broad federalization of crime as a menace to civil liberties,” stated the commissioners. They pointed out that the loophole to “double jeopardy” exists because the authors of the Bill of Rights “never dreamed that federal criminal jurisdiction would be expanded to the point where an astonishing proportion of crimes are now both state and federal offenses.”