This week the afore-mentioned Real Murkin Justices quashed a move by the whippersnapper justices to allow the television machines into a court-room to chronicle the proceedings of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. That’s the case about “Proposition 8″ in that new state, California, way out past St. Louis, where some loony folk are arguing about Marriage. Some of them dabble in The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. You know.

All the same, it’s not like the Court is averse to the new labour-saving devices. Many of their stenographers use the new deluxe typewriters called “computers.” And they do allow correspondents from the journalistic broadsheets to attend; some may even indulge in drawing pictures they can later convert to engravings for publication in their journalistic journals, with printing! So the Court embraces this new thing by that Gutenberg fellow. Correspondents are even free to telegraph their scribblings, so long as they do so respectfully, outside The Hallowed Precincts.

But the line must be drawn somewhere, and the Patriots on the Bench realize that the new “teevee” machines show Actual People. Mercy me. This is not what the Framers wanted when they required Public Trials, for people to be actually seen! Trials should be secret, with only dignified engravings depicting the August Proceedings.

So God bless this Supreme Court, or at least the Justices who stand up to these modern doohickeys the kids think are the cat’s pajamas. The new-fangled “teevee” thingamajig is your enemy, unless it is tuned to the “Fox News” vaudeville show. Then it is indeed a blessing.