On the demise of the Post Office:

A series of complex links led me to this Charles Krauthammer (LOL, yeah, there's a name that doesn't find its way here often) editorial about why the Postal Service should be kept going (or perhaps bronzed and placed in the Natural History Museum, I'm a little unsure):

The question is, is it completely obsolete? Look, it has one mandate which other private services don't have. It has to reach every tiny hamlet everywhere in the country no matter what. It's got to be universal. So that's a slight handicap that the private companies don't have.

Its main handicap, of course, is the crushing labor union contracts and the new technology, especially e-mail, which makes most of what it does obsolete. So that's why it runs a huge deficit.

Point one: Um...bullshit. UPS and Fedex not only come to the town near where I live - as good a candidate for "every tiny hamlet" as you'll ever find - but their extremely intrepid drivers go beyond their mandate and deliver into the desert boonies beyond, something you will never ever see a USPS driver do.

Point two: The crushing labor union contracts it imposed on itself as a pandering government department should be permitted to crush it. Next case. The sad thing is that they won't, as long as one drop of blood can be squeezed from the tax stone.

Point three ... is the real issue, isn't it? USPS once delivered personal letters, because people once communicated by letters. Now USPS delivers bills, magazines and junk mail. UPS would do the magazines better; electronic transmission would do better for bills, and the junk mail can go f*ck itself. So ... what was your problem, Charles?

look, anything that is in Article 1 Section 8 of our constitution, anything that Madison had waxed enthusiastic about it in Federalist 42 — the postal roads that have kept us together — as an old-school guy, I don't want to see it die.

Oh. Well, it sucks to be you. Why should I pay for your nostalgic habits?

Look - I agree that western society lost style points with the demise of the personal letter. I spent years in elementary school trying to master cursive, and lost it all by my late teens for lack of use. Considering how old I am, that indicates that the letter has been dying for many, not just several, decades. Will you mandate its return, Charles? Perhaps you'll force the return of the dip quill while you're at it. When I was a little boy, some of the student desks still had that hole where the ink bottle was supposed to go. It was obsolete then. The thing it was there to facilitate is pretty much obsolete now, and maybe that's even a little sad. But then, I think horse buggies are kinda picturesque, too. I just don't want to pay for their fossils to clomp around for your enjoyment, Charles.