...just in the nick of time too. Anyhow, with respect:

Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this.
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
which mannerly devotion shows in this.
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
and palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.
Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo: O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,
they pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake.
Romeo: Then move not while my prayer's effect I take.

Angus Dwyer worries about the general silence that has greeted Connecticut's civil unions bill. (My previous posts have all been rather short on content too). He and I disagree on the merits of the bill, but we do agree on this: All the fussing about legal process here seems to have distracted many (especially gay marriage opponents) from arguing the merits.

Now, as somebody who really likes legal process, that's fine by me-- the question about what things ought to be enacted by clear legislative command and what things ought to be interpreted out of vague constitutional and legal clauses is a fascinating one (and an obsession of many a constitutional lawyer). But for those who oppose civil unions, this could be folly.

If you rest the anti-same-sex-marriage coalition on a bunch of libertarianish moderates who agree that it would be on-the-whole better that gay rights come out of the legislative side rather than judicial side, your whole coalition collapses once the legislative proposals start to gain serious legs.

Those who oppose abortions don't seem to have made the same mistake, campaigning both about the judicial activism thing but also on pretty strongly on the merits of the question. Of course, the libertarianish moderates are easier for the pro-life forces to win over here because the potential third party harm (the fetus/child, depending on one's view) is much more easily identified. The third party harm has been much harder for anybody to pin down in gay marriage, which may be what made the legal process angle such a better hook.

At any rate, and I suppose this is what some folks are worried about, some ideas tend to catch on. If legislatively-created civil unions turn out not to lead to any real disintegration in Connecticut's social fabric, maybe a few more states will create them too. That would be good.

Via Heidi and Three Years of Hell, I find English Cut, the blog of a Saville Row tailor. It's an astounding blog, especially since I'd love to have such a person make me a suit one day.

But there's a more universal point there too. Mr Mahon spent seven years learning to sew. He then worked as an "undercutter" to a master tailor for another five years before setting up on his own. He didn't take any shortcuts, or just decide he was talented and set up on his own. And it shows.

When I embarked on my quest to learn La Technique a few weeks ago (I'm still ploughing ahead, but exams are a distraction), a sensible reaction from some people was that I was wasting my time. Why spend time carving potatoes into ovals when I could be making wasabi soy infusions? Well, the answer to that question is the same answer that I imagine Mr. Mahon would give - the only way to become a real craftsman in any art is to work painfully towards mastery. And it isn't just true in cooking or tailoring - though I didn't particularly enjoy reading merger agreement after merger agreement over the summer at my law firm job, my ultimate view is that the nuts and bolts of being a transactional lawyer are hidden somewhere in those documents. Reading those things is like carving potatoes into ovals, to my mind - menial, but worthy.

If I was opening a restaurant, I'd go apprentice for five or six years in a classical french restaurant. A good lawyer ought to cut his or her teeth on the work of better lawyers for at least that amount of time. And I'm glad to see that tailors who take that slow path still exist too. I just hope they stick around - at least long enough so that some of us can aspire to enjoying the fruits of that effort.

Katie Newmark takes on the Washington Post and New York Times articles that criticize the "escalation" among colleges that offer merit aid to students. She rightly pokes holes at the surmise that merit-aid displaces need-based aid.

But why not attack the article on first-principles, too? The colleges' argument, essentially, boils down to: "We, a group of very powerful economic entities could sell our goods at much higher prices if only we didn't have to engage in price competition." True enough, and it's true of airlines and orange juice just as much as colleges, and most people don't find that a plausible reason to grant them relief from antitrust laws. (I'm willing to hear the arguments that antitrust laws are unwise or unjust, but leave that for another day).

The only plausible reason to give colleges a unique exemption from anti-price-fixing rules would be the notion that colleges are going to use their monopoly rents for "good" purposes (financial aid and new science centers). As Katie points out, there's no evidence that they will. If one thinks that redistributing money to college-bound kids is useful, it seems like there are more efficient ways to accomplish the transfer.