Some Notes

First the quick and dirty:
I'm in the very beginning of Life Of Pi and loving it. I'm surprised at the religiousness, if you will, of the book. For some reason (lack of research? Probably) I hadn't expected to find religion discussed in it, and so far have not been disappointed in what has been said. Maybe it's because after A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, and its noted lack of anything religious, I had forgotten that some authors actually do speak of faith.

Second:
I was listening to NPR this morning and they were discussing the case involving the Supreme Court's decision in favor of a man who charged that he had not been given a fair tribunal. (In summary: Big business runs small business out of business; small business sues; jury awards small business millions; big business appeals; judge, who received millions for his election campain from big business is assigned case and refuses three times to disqualify himself from hearing the case, and finds in favor of big business and un-does the jury's decision; Small business claims he wasn't granted a fair tribunal).

This raises a couple of really basic questions for me. The first question is, Should we, the People elect our judges? Not electing judges means they'd have to be appointed, which could very easily turn (even more) into a good ol' boy system, where the status quo is maintained through the ages (or until a new official is elected), and the doors for corruption are wide open. But if we elect our judges, that allows for the selling off of seats in courts through campaign funding, which we're already seeing. Campaign fundraising has already reached $168 million since 2000. Frankly, this question is still unanswered in my mind.

How can we insulate our judicial system (assuming we're in one of the 39 states in which judges are elected) from lobbyists? It seems to me - as an over-simplification - that if you have an election, the guy with the most campaign dollars is probably going to win. Who gives to campaign funds? People who support the candidate and have a ton of money. This isn't a problem if the candidate is a politician - he'll work (presumably) to give his constituency what it wants. But judges... I mean, fair is fair, right? Regardless of how much money you contributed. But then there's loyalty. If some one gave me a few million, I'd want to keep them happy, too. If we've decided to elect judges (and I think this applies to politicians, too, though I'm not ready to think about that yet), is it fair to cap campaign spending? Or contribution amounts? I think it would be fairest to cap campaign spending at a relatively low amount across the board... but that still allows for plenty of loopholes (support from private organizations, for example). This may read pretty jumbled. It's jumbled in my head, too.

I guess no system, no matter how great, is completely safe from corruption; ours is no exception.