I'm back from a meeting of the city's Civil Service Commission, the kind of night when we all regret not being paid by the hour. But it had its rewards. An intern who bore the long evening well happens to be the brother of an old grade school classmate. And I've earned the nickname "Mister Rules," a reference that, when approved by my lawyer colleagues, could be understood as both a compliment and a statement of fact.
If my mayor intended each of the three commissioners to play off one another ideologically, he's brilliant: I am the strict absolutist, treating rules as rules; on one side of me a interpretationalist and on the other, a deliberator. We're more fun than the Supreme Court, and just one-third layman.