I think The West Wing (tv show) has finally jumped the shark. I think once Sorkin left the show, the quality of the writing had nowhere to go but down. True, for the most part this season has had interesting moments, but last Wednesday's episode was not a good sign. The show will always flog its liberal issues, in the usual annoying "we really care and want to help people, never mind if these policies will actually do some good, it's only important that we care" liberal kind of way. But, last night was railing against mandatory minimum sentences. I'm not conversant enough on the issue to really have an informed opinion, but the show was making the point that it was unfair for noble, good-doing federal judges to be restricted by mandatory sentences, so that single moms or kids or whatever did one thing wrong and were slapped into prison for years and years, and the judges didn't have the flexibility to take into account the circumstances, etc... So, the President was weighing pardons for some people in that situation. (I'm guessing one reason there are mandatory sentences is so that these noble good-doing judges don't just let criminals go with a tap on the wrist. And never mind the fact that these laws are passed by legislatures. If there's one thing liberals can't stand, it's the people, through their elected representatives, enacting what they want. Again, how telling that here, it was so unfair that judges, unelected and accountable to no one, couldn't do what they want, and instead had to bow to the will of the people.)

That said, it's still been one of the best shows on tv simply because of the good writing, the interesting, well-acted characters, and the in-depth, insider look at how politics gets done in Washington.

So, one of the cases was this college-age kid, he had fed-ex'd LSD through the mail and had some kind of long prison sentence. The parents were big contributors to the President's party, and had come to plead that the son be pardoned. The President didn't grant the pardon, as it would've looked too much like big money bought a pardon. Well, the son then commits suicide.

Now, that kind of blatant emotional manipulation is something the show has pretty much avoided. It's not a good sign if they are going to resort to this kind of thing to make their syrupy points.

Anyway. In other news, I had my annual performance review today, for the past year. It was somewhat incomplete in that I came to this new group in June, and my previous manager is no longer to here to give input on what I did at the beginning of the year. Nonetheless, I got a good review, which I'm happy with. This group has given me the chance to dive into problems and come up with solutions, something I'm good at. I do have things I could improve on, like be more assertive, etc... But hey, that's my personality.

Will be nice to have a weekend with the kiddies. Swimming lessons tomorrow. I'm sure John will enjoy that again! Hopefully he won't fall apart again when it's time to go.