Who Asks?

Years ago - decades ago - I worked as a contractor for a major health care insurance company. While there, I learned an interesting piece of information. If the company denied a claim, you could complain to a member of Congress, or similar functionary. The company hated that kind of attention, and would immediately send you a check ''while the matter was under review". Months later, they would let you know if they thought they overpaid. Quietly. It matters who asks.

I was therefore mildly pleased, when reading Phillip Kennicott's strong article in today's Washington Post on the barring of entry via the front doors of the Supreme Court - security concerns, doncha know - to find that not all of the Court agreed (Breyer and Ginsberg were against the idea). And now there's a single Representative who's going to try to have a bill passed urging them to rethink that decision, on the reasonable grounds that you can't have all security decisions made by security people (who never met a lock they thought should be open). You've got to consider the society, too.

Will it have an effect? Almost certainly not. It's just one voice in the House, one article in the paper, a couple of dissenters on the Court.

Still.

It matters, who asks. And it matters, who speaks out.

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From the article:

The loss to the citizens of the United States is enormous. We are becoming a nation of moles, timorous creatures who scurry through side and subterranean entrances. Soon, we will lose our basic architectural literacy. The emotional experience of entering a grand space has been reduced to a single feeling: impatience in the august presence of the magnetometer.