You’re getting a two-fer today since I had more on my plate yesterday than I thought, at points, I’d be able to handle.

First, the excellent conclusion to a column by economics reporter Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post, on how truly great human beings have it today:

Progress is not a straight line. It’s a permanent zigzag, and there is no utopia at the end of the rainbow. Advances come mixed with new problems and tragedies. Since 1820, there have been plenty of these, chief among them World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression and World War II. But was there ever some golden era of peace and prosperity that most people would gladly exchange for what we have today? It seems doubtful.

Second, some shameless self-promotion: I published a contrarian piece in the Daily Caller about a proposed amendment to the Tennessee Constitution on the ballot next month that would give the governor and legislature more power to appoint judges to the bench, and would permanently institutionalize Tennessee’s rigged judicial retention election system statutes, which are arguably currently unconstitutional:

If a trial court errs in sentencing an African-American to die, based on systematic racial discrimination in either the jury or in a politician’s handpicked judge, the appellate or Supreme Courts can and should provide relief to the defendant. The framers designed the appellate system to provide extra layers of protection to human liberty in the adjudication of disputes. But no Tennessean has been able to vote an appellate or Supreme Court judge onto the bench since the 1970s. This is unfortunate, because the stakes for civil rights are much higher in the appellate system than in the trial courts, because of the finality of the rulings issued there.

In Samuelson’s parlance, Tennessee is zagging right now when it should be zigging. I hope voters recognize the power brokers in the state are trying to permanently take away their right to vote on judges.