Before Making The Big Decisions, There Are The Little Ones

"I didn't make that up," Rasin responded. "That's from Robert Frost."

Before that hearing got going, Raisin had looked up from the bench and spotted Hermann and Fenton.

"So what brings the Fourth Estate here?" the judge asked.

"We simply enjoy your company," Hermann answered.

Said Rasin: "I don't believe that for a second."

The banter got the judge wondering how the Fourth Estate term came into being. Her Honor Googled, using the computer on her bench. Her clerk got the answer first.

"In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General,'" the judge read aloud. "The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'"

Thanks, Ed. We need it these days.