Being horribly sick with the flu, I've been forced to watch (because our Internet connection was down for two days) a lot of television (my vision was blurred, so reading was not a pleasurable experience). Caught a cable showing of John Grisham's A Time To Kill, which was my first Grisham read, now seemingly long ago.

I confess to loving police procedurals and true-crime novels. The Sage, who thinks they're depressing, nonetheless appreciates the novels of his old school chum Scott Turow (The Sage was sports editor of their high school newspaper when Turow was managing editor). But Grisham, I protest, is often a neat read, especially because he writes about The South, my home turf.

Seeing the film's ending again, where defense attorney Matthew McConaghey asks the jury to imagine not a little black girl, but a blonde blue-eyed girlchild being assaulted by three men who not only rape her but hang her and then toss her supposedly lifeless body into a dump, I suddenly thought, "What if American voters imagined some unnamed Democrat doing -------- (promoting choice, like Schwarzeneggar, Giuliani, and Pataki; criticizing the troops, as did Giuliani; revealing the name of a covert CIA agent, as did Republican/conservative pundit Robert Novak from administration sources; I'm too sick to go on (so many things sprang to mind)?"

Is there any real question on who's compromising their "deeply held beliefs" in order to retain power?