LIMBAUGH'S APPOINTMENT TO SUPREME COURT A FINE CHOICE

"Today is a proud day in the Limbaugh household ..."

... As, indeed, it is a proud day for Cape Girardeau County and all of Southeast Missouri. Those of us who grew up with Steve Limbaugh Jr., and who know far too much on him (and he on us) to ever stop being friends, share his family's elation at Friday's appointment to the Supreme Court.

Steve will serve honorably, with the diligence and the good judgment for which his family is rightly renowned. In these qualities, he continues a superb tradition of Cape's two previous contributions, one Democrat and one Republican, to the Missouri Supreme Court.

I refer, of course, to the late Judges S.P. Dalton (Democrat) and Jim Finch (Republican), each of whom served 14 years on the state's highest court, and did so with distinction.

It is the governor's task to make a difficult choice from among the three well-qualified candidates presented to him by the appellate judicial selection panel. I am certain that either of the other candidates on this occasion would have been fine choices, as well. Nevertheless, we are happy today that Gov. Ashcroft chose Steve Limbaugh, and confident that Steve will perform superbly.

Well done!

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New Republic senior editor Mickey Kaus in his new book "The End of Equality":

"I came to Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1977, a freshly minted leftish lawyer eager to work in the federal government. Those early months of the Jimmy Carter administration were something of a high-water mark of liberal activism. ... Three years later, I found myself among the crowd in the ballroom of a Washington hotel, waiting for Carter to arrive and concede his landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan. I'd lasted only nine months in government, having bailed out to work for a small political magazine. From there I had watched as the best minds of the Democratic Party ran the liberal enterprise into the ground. They had put liberalism on the side of welfare rather than work. They funded housing projects that were among the most hellish places on earth. They defended absurd extensions of criminals' rights. They funneled billions to big-city mayors who gave the money to developers who build hideous, bankrupt downtown malls. They let the teachers' unions run the education department and the construction unions run the labor department. I hadn't wanted Reagan to win; I'd voted for Carter without hesitation. But as I waited for him to show up, and looked up at the outgoing Democratic officials gathered on stage, I realized there was not one of these people I wasn't happy to see go."

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Leave of absence

With today's feeble effort, this column will cease for a period of 90 days or so, while this writer pursues other challenges. I look forward to resuming a regular column some time in mid-November, and in the meantime, beg my readers' indulgence.