A reader recently commented on knee replacements and the length of time they take. Grayhut wrote: “And those that rush recovery have problems for the duration. I had a partial knee replacement on the left, a full knee on the right and rushed that one. It took me only 8 years of suffering before I let them "Fix" it. And it still aches every day. Don't rush your recovery or overdo therapy! You will regret it. Do what the doctors and therapists tell you to.”
The last cliffhanger proved so popular, I will have to find a few more! Also, for those who seemed to doubt it, my parents were married at the time of my birth, and even to each other, no less.
As for why Marilyn was jailed, the top reason suggested was that she punched out the reporter who wanted to see the dead body. A distant second was she punched out a reporter who was rude to Megan. Actually, I completely discounted the idea that she would punch out a reporter. By now she has a lot of experience ignoring them, and the Secret Service keeps them at a distance. What I needed was a scenario that would surprise even the Secret Service. I think what I proposed would be very surprising!
Several readers commented about having Westboro Baptist declared a ‘hate group’ and using that as some form of legal retribution. A few problems with that, specifically, we don’t have laws against hate groups in this country. In the US, the FBI has their own internal classification and tracks these guys, and both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center formally list groups as hate groups, but they don’t have any force of law behind them. Simply declaring a group a hate group has no legal power; there are no laws against being a hate group. As for what they spout, the First Amendment is an extremely powerful shield, and the laws against threatening federally protected individuals would probably fail in a Supreme Court test.
Several people commented that Marilyn could appear with the Patriot Guard Riders, a national motorcycle group who provide escorts for fallen servicemen to protect them from the Westboro Baptist Church. Whether the Secret Service would ever allow that is questionable, but there is one big difference. In this alternate timeline, Carl never went into Afghanistan or Iraq the way GWB did. He has had less than 10% of GWB’s casualties in his timeline. The PGR probably hasn’t been created. Interesting idea, though.