22 March—An apology is in order to Sen. Christopher Murphy. We wrote yesterday that it was up to Connecticut’s dynamic junior grandstanding solon to sponsor legislation mandating happiness so that America can be numero uno, as the people he cares most about would say. After all, we concluded the disquisition, it’s the Democratic thing to do.

Well, El Liberalissimo took us to task. He actually took me to task, as you’ll see in his clever rhetorical use of direct address (i.e., our Christian name), but the editorial plural first person pronoun is more august than the editorial singular first person pronoun. So we it is. Or we it are. (We won’t get into the abuse of the third person pronoun in single-person gender identity, so you can relax.)

Here’s what El wrote: “Honesty in journalism, Really Paul??? ‘Grandstanding’? You make it sound as if Murphy was upset about the nation’s ranking in a silly happiness poll. Murphy was interviewed for a magazine publisher who chose the topic of ‘happiness’ for its magazines and its interview. However, the discussion with Murphy began with him being asked about the large number of gun deaths in the US, and what the causes were. Murphy was making his case for stricter gun laws. But you knew that. . . .”

We assured El that we hadn’t known about the interview he referred to (to which he was kind enough to send a link, which we won’t burden you with), but that the princes of Serendip must have been at work that morning. Look it up. We didn’t bother to address Murphy’s perennial misguided anti-gun crusade.

So why the apology to Sen. Small Ball? Here’s why: Truth be told, even though Democrats are notorious (they’d prefer celebrated, respected, even admired, of course) for their predisposition to legislate whenever they get the urge to interfere with anything that should be none of government’s business, even they—including Sen. Murphy—know full well that happiness simply cannot be mandated or legislated.

And we shouldn’t have even suggested anything to the contrary. Ergo, peccavimus. Dimitte nobis. In the interest of fairness, moreover, Republicans stick their unwelcome fat meddlesome noses in other things that should be none of government’s business. Like what women do with their own bodies.

On the other hand, Sen. Murphy and his busybody Democrat colleagues are more likely to sponsor legislation that declares unhappiness to be a health crisis. Yeah, right. Like loneliness, which Chris aimed to cure with feel-good legislation he grandstanded in December; and gun violence, which Chris and his pals seem to think they can eliminate by passing laws that only law-abiding people obey . . .