Supreme Court v Dallas Aquatic Masters

There are times I truly loathe and despise being in the legal profession.  Usually those times have nothing to do with work and everything to do with what some appellate court has said or done lately.  I think it's possible to be too well-versed in your professional lingo, and that may be the case for me with the Supreme Court and the whole Hobby Lobby thing.  This was one of those times where I pretty much knew what was going to happen before it was announced and then, to my horror, I turned out to be right.  Not only that, but my analytical brain began examining the various heretofores and quid pro quos and making sense out of them, to the point where I start saying, "Okay, I see why they did that."  And, people, I don't wanna see why they did that, because what they did is fucking ludicrous.

Except, of course, that it isn't.  It all makes perfect sense in the context of the cutely named "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" and the Constitution and previous decisions like Citizens United and Griswold v. Connecticut.  And if you have no clue what those two decisions had to do with each other, it's probably because you're not in the legal profession, which, by the way, is just fine.  Lots of people are not in the legal profession and no harm comes to them.

Anyway, I could go on at great length about all that and probably will at some point, but right now it's July in Texas, so grab your hand paddles and kick up your fins!  It is time once again for Swim for Distance Month, that thirty-one day period of aquatic mayhem in which I and my fellow water citizens try to swim as far and fast as humanly possible.  The winner gets a t-shirt (well, actually, everybody gets a t-shirt) and bragging rights. And while I don't think I'll pull a Diana Nyad and swim from Cuba to Florida this year, I am endeavoring to swim 33 kilometers (a little less than 21 miles)  between now and July 31, which is roughly the distance across the English Channel.  Maybe one of these days I'll swim the real English Channel, and--probably disappear halfway across, which would make for a lousy epitaph.  Okay, scratch the real English Channel and we'll stick to the pool, here.

In previous years I've collected money for charity while all this was going on.  I'm sort of going to do that this year, too, but I'm taking myself out of the equation because I can't seem to settle on a good charity for this year.  Or rather, there's lots of charities I'd like to donate to, and I can't seem to narrow it down to one.  So here's how it'll work.  If you want to pledge me by the kilometer, the mile, or even by the day (there are 21 swim days in July), earmark the money for your favorite charity and I'll keep you updated with current mileage (kilometerage?) totals.  This way, I have motivation to swim farther and faster, and you have motivation to put aside a few bucks for something you believe in.  As of right now we're at 1.8 kilometers, or a little over a mile.  Oh, and I'm assuming just for the sake of the argument that your favorite charity is not the Republican National Committee.  If it is, don't tell me.  Thank you.