Maybe it’s the frustrated novelist in me, but I’ve been thinking about literature and law.
This article is the start of a series where, once in a while and for no particular reason, I will focus on thought provoking and even profound statements (by others) about the law. Sometimes the quotations will be from literature, and sometimes they will be from legal writings, philosophical works, and from darn near anything else that makes us think about the nature of law and its relationship to society.
Today is the Special United States Senate Primary Election for Senator Byrd’s seat in West Virginia.
With Democracy on my mind: Below is a video segment of the “Democracy in America” episode of Northern Exposure. When you click the play button below, you might get a copyright message so that you have to get redirected to the actual YouTube site (on which this segment is available).
This episode of Northern Exposure was a wonderful (and moving) glimpse of democracy in small town Americana, centering around the mayoral election for the fictional Cicely, Alaska. There are a number of other segments from that episode on YouTube. If you have some free time, get on YouTube and type “Northern Exposure democracy in America” to see some of the other clips. Or buy the DVD of season three of Northern Exposure, which contains the Democracy in America episode. While you’re at it, for another wonderful glimpse of small town Americana, watch the always fantastic Robert Preston in The Music Man.
Update (2015): It looks like the video linked above has been blocked on copyright grounds, so here is the Amazon link to buy season three of Northern Exposure, which included the “Democracy in America” episode.
Today is the 47th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We are now two generations removed from that speech. Worse, we live in the age of MTV, Twitter, and 30-second soundbites on the evening news. So all too often, we see only bite-sized snippets from Dr. King’s speech, so I wanted to post the entire speech on this video from YouTube:
Click here for a site that has the transcript, audio, and video of the speech.
