Recently in Political Stuff Category

So I've had some time to read the Heller decision, and my biggest concern with it, as a gun rights supporter, is this verbiage:

... It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service--M-16 rifles and the like--may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

The court's writing here is essentially that "M-16s aren't covered, because they're not the sorts of things people have lawfully got around the house."

But the fundamental problem with this logic is that the reason people don't have M-16s around the house (in any numbers) is because they've been told by the government since 1939 that they can't.

The Court's logic here is circular. They don't want to override the 1939 prohibitions on automatic weapons and such, while still saying it's an individual right. But if it's an individual right to have "militia" weapons, the number of lawfully owned automatic weapons surely would have grown over the years.

In other words, the only reason there aren't a number of those types of weapons in place, is because there have been laws of questionable validity over the years preventing them. But now that they're "not common" (because of the government influence), they're not covered, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Yahoo!!!!! You got some 'splainin' to doooooo!!!!

Via Reason: Hit & Run:

This is what happens when you try to videotape your neighbor's warrantless search and arrest in Portland:

The moral to the story? I'm not sure... but the complete and total abuse of force by the State (see previous post on Blackwater, see the "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" kid a week or two ago) are starting to get more and more common.

It's worth pointing out, at the very least, that these sorts of abuses of authority, attacks on civilians by the ruling powers-that-be, attempts to control foreign lands, etc., were pretty prevalent in the late eighteenth century. And it didn't turn out so well for the bastards, then, either.

I'm not, at all, advocating violent overthrow of the government (that, my friends, would be a crime). However, I'm not ashamed or afraid to predict it. Neither party has a great track record on this front (the Red Team has Iraq, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo Concentration Camp X-Ray... the Blue Team had Waco, Ruby Ridge, and others), so don't look to "the 2008 Election Cycle" to solve all your problems. It's not going to.

It's going to come down to, eventually, the population getting seriously pissed off at its leaders in both parties, and voting the bastards out whenever they try that crap, or it's going to come to an American Revolution style showdown... and the verdict really isn't in, for me, as to which outcome is more likely.

(Title is a reference to the paint job on the Decepticon "police-car" named Barricade from the Transformers movie)

As Jack Bog notes... forget everything you thought you knew about the currency conversion rate between the US and Canada, because the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the U.S. Dollar.

That's right, as of September 21, US$1.00 will only get you CAN$0.997 ... that money we've been making fun of for years is now a better investment than our own presidential flashcards.

But remember, folks, the shrub's doing a great job leading our economy. He's got a plan, and it's workin' great.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a libertarian at heart. I want the government to stay the hell out of my life, and yours too. That includes my wallet.

I grew up in the Reagan years, and was always a fan (as a centrist) of the "pendulum" mindset of modern politics... the Democrats dragged the pendulum to the left, the Republicans to the right, and my how swell it'd be to have an alternating of leadership to try and keep the pendulum close to the center as possible.

I had pretty much resigned myself to voting "blue" for the next several election cycles in an attempt to drag the pendulum back from the crazy place the Republicans dragged it to during King Bush II's reign. I looked at the GOP candidates and didn't see a single one that actually represented their core values of small government, etc., etc.

Which has been sad, because I'm not convinced that any of the Democrat front-runners are electable. Hillary carries all the baggage of being Hillary. Obama (right or wrong) carries the baggage of trying to be the first black President. And the only guy who really stands a snowball's chance in hell, Al Gore, is the guy in the corner who tried to ask the prom-queen to dance, got rejected, and is so hurt he can't stomach up enough courage to ask again.

But then, curiously, people mentioned Ron Paul to me.... I was dismissive at first. "He's a Republican... duh, we need to go the other direction now!" But, the people who were telling me about him kept reminding me of my libertarian leanings, and implored me to check him out.

Wow.... aside from his abysmal stand on abortion, his views on the issues are very libertarian-minded indeed. (And, I remind everyone out there, Reagan had the same stand, and that man was pretty much a god among men, and it didn't signal the end of the world...) Also, the Supreme Court really could use a nice centrist Justice to balance things out a bit more, which is extremely likely to happen... two swing votes instead of one would make the Supreme Court a lot more interesting.

I think I need to change my party affiliation so I can vote in the GOP primaries this year...

If you ever needed proof that the people in Miami have absolutely no class whatsoever, CNN reports that the city of Miami is planning an official celebration for when Cuban president Fidel Castro dies.

Sure, they're trying to be all like, "it's a venue ready for people, if they wish, to speak to the media, to show their emotions," and they're trying to claim it's not to celebrate the death of a world leader, but c'mon, who the hell do they think they're kidding with that line of bull?

Regardless of what you think about Castro, planning a gala party -- big enough that it needs the frickin' Orange Bowl (capacity 74,476 people) -- to celebrate the death of another human being is simply inexcusable.

Without a doubt, this is quite possibly the funniest web-comic I've ever read.

If only it weren't all true.

While talking to a friend tonight about the impending Saddam Hussein execution, they pointed out that the other two guys from his trial were also going to be executed. The interesting quote from the conversation was:

Hmm, three people executed - one considered a martyr by some - where have I heard that one before....

So that makes the local judge Pontius Pilate, trying to keep the peace among the natives by executing the guy who's pissing everyone off, all in the name of the big bad power way far away. That would make Bush into Augustus Caesar.

So if that's the case, our local Caesar should probably remember how that story turns out in the end.... Augustus was the last of the "elected" leaders, with the Roman Empire following shortly thereafter.

So the current hysteria is that women should leave their gel-padded bras at home when they fly because, after all, they might be explosives, blah blah blah.

So now it occurs to me... In most cases, there's not a lot of functional difference between "the gelatinous padding in vanity bras", and "the gelatinous padding in breast implants". Even more curious, from a security standpoint, is that there's really no way to scan the breast implant for explosives the way you could a bra (by taking it off and passing it through the x-ray machine that also shows up explosive materials, etc.)

It seems to me that it would be trivial for a doctor to both "implant a 'pacemaker'" (or some similar electronic device, maybe like an insulin pump), as well as gelatinous explosives conveniently located inside a female traveler's breasts as implants. Next thing you know, we'll be saying that if a woman's breasts have been ... augmented ... she's going to be denied passage.

Diabetes is common enough that I have to believe hundreds of people a day travel with insulin pumps or pacemakers, maybe more, and it would be fairly hard to detect that sort of bomb design with all but the most invasive of airport screening procedures.

Heck, you don't even need an extrernally accessible set of electronics. Bluetooth chipsets are cheap these days. There's a hell of a bluetooth device to try and mate your Treo to.

What's the point of my little thought experiment? The point is that it's trivial to get explosives on board a plane, along with the electronics you need to set them off. Keeping padded bras off of airplanes isn't going to make anyone "safe".

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a TSA rep on the way back from GenCon on Monday. He was setting up his little folding table at the gate for the "random liquid searches", and he made a comment to the effect of "I know a lot of people may disagree, but this is definitely the right move to make."

I had to call "bullshit" on him, and told him that was the biggest crock of shit on the face of the planet. "No, really!" he says.

I told him, "If you really thought there was the slightest chance that anything you were randomly removing was dangerous, you wouldn't be dropping it unceremoniously into a large wastebasket filled with other might-be-explosive liquids, you'd be waving everyone out of the terminal area, and a bomb squad would be here to take care of it. This is just smoke and mirrors level misdirection to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy because 'You're doing something about it', even if that something is just forcing people to buy more shampoo."

He looked at me with a calm, steady eye and said, "I'll be honest, I'm not senior enough to explain it well enough, but if the people above me think this is the right thing to do, then I have faith in them that they're doing it for a legitimate reason."

And thus, I began to have flashbacks to History class, and began to achieve a whole new level of understanding of "the mind of the World War II German Foot-Soldier". Blindly obedient to "whatever crap got shoveled their way", and naïve enough to believe anything, there's a whole lot of similarities to the German grunts and TSA lackeys.

Although, in fairness, he was nice enough to "randomly search my bag" before the Southwest Airlines boarding cattle-call started, so I didn't lose my spot in line. Being the #2 person in the "A" line, and losing that spot for a random search would have been highly annoying, but he had compassion enough to do it in such a manner as not to screw me. Even naïve idiots can be nice, it would seem. :-)

From Larry King's Bush interview last night....

KING: Doesn't it hurt to say more people are -- don't like what I'm doing than like what I'm doing?

G. BUSH: Well...

KING: Does it bother you?

L. BUSH: Not really. I mean, the polls are just...

KING: But it's a sign.

L. BUSH: It's a sign, but it's not necessarily really what we see. I mean, when we travel around the country, when we visit with people, that's not what we hear all the time. When they're good polls -- I think I told you this the last time I interviewed with you, you don't see them on the front page.

I dunno, kids, maybe if you didn't force protestors to be several blocks away from you where you can't see them, and if your public appearances were actually open to the public and not just people who are known to support you, and if you didn't pre-screen in advance "random questions from the public" so as to ensure that they were going to be Bush-friendly... maybe, just maybe, you might see and hear something different from what you presently hear "all the time".

If you're going to surround yourself with yes-men, and only visit echo chambers, and use the Secret Service to keep dissenting opinion miles away from you, then -- go figure -- you're not going to hear much in the way of "dissenting opinion".

OK, so North Korea test-fired some missiles today. They, theoretically, could be outfitted to carry nuclear warheads. The world is in an uproar.

My question is: Why?

I question the whole practice of "non-proliferation" in the first place, I guess. You'll notice that the biggest supporters of non-proliferation are folks who already have well established nuclear programs -- the United States, Britain, Russia, etc., etc.

I believe that countries support non-proliferation not because they believe in a peaceful world -- if they did that, they'd destroy their own weapons as well -- but because the more people who have nuclear weapons available to them, the fewer people there are that they can push around diplomatically. Furthermore, there become more voices for third-world nations to have to pay attention to (e.g., a non-nuclear country pretty much has to do what a nuclear country says, because we can obliterate them if we wanted to... the more nuclear countries, the more people nuclear countries have to share that authority with).

People can mock MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all they want to, but here's the summary you'll keep coming back to with it, are you ready?

It works.

Right now, we are the only superpower left in the world. If the Commander-in-Chief of the US of A was to go off his gourd (and, to be fair, there are many people who would say that this has already happened, but that's a different discussion), we could obliterate the world and there's nobody who could stop us. Heck, with the dismal failure rate of Russian nuclear weapons, there's not even really anyone who could pose a retaliatory threat these days.

That, of course, is a position that we like. We can push people around, and they have to do what we tell them, because -- in the end -- we can raise their ambient temperature to several million degrees Celsius in thirty minutes or less. Given that option, people will cave. The best part is that it's so unspoken that you don't even have to flex those nuts to get the results. If you're a non-nuclear country, why bother going through all the hassle to reach an endgame you know will eventually be summarized as "we can kick your ass, so do what we say"?

I'm all for nuclear proliferation. I believe it puts countries on an equal footing, and requires countries to actually listen to one another. Can you imagine how the "Cold War" might have gone slightly differently if we weren't actually afraid of the Soviet arsenal? The realization that we were on an equal footing in terms of ability to inflict damage on one another forced us to communicate, to attempt to understand one another.

Likewise, a nuclear-capable North Korea, or Iran, brings legitimacy to the bargaining table. Like it or not the ability of a country to rain nuclear death on people commands a certain amount of respect. I wish it wasn't the case, but them's the facts, and until nobody has nuclear weapons (and let's face it, that genie isn't going back into the bottle, good luck with that), I respect the right of any country that wants them to be able to have them, so they can defend themselves equally against other countries that already have them.

I'm so sick of this debate. Why is this even talked about? It seems so patently obvious. Here's the executive summary:

Being anti-illegal-immigration is not being anti-immigrant or racist.

Lots of people all over the world "do the right thing". They go to the US Consular Office in their country. They fill out forms. They wait. They get background checks performed on them. They wait. They pray to whatever deity they prefer to help speed along the process. They wait. And, eventually, their number comes up, and they get a visa and work permit, and life is good.

Any sort of amnesty program is a slap in the face to the many many hundreds of thousands of law-abiding immigrants everywhere. It says, in no uncertain terms, that they were a dumbass for waiting, when they could have just slipped across the border and waited for an amnesty program.

As far as a guest-worker program... I'm uncertain how this is going to help in any way that the Shrub-In-Chief says it will. Sure there's a lot of jobs Americans simply won't take, but they won't take them because we're too conceited about what our salary should be. We simply don't want the "$1.00 per hour" or whatever pittance it is that illegal aliens get paid to pick fruit in Southern California.

Are guest workers going to be immune from minimum wage? My guess is no. Which means -- guess what -- guest worker programs are either going to cost America more money (because employers will have to multiply by a large factor what they pay their immigrant workers) or, much more likely, employers will just stick to the underground workers who get paid squat.

So basically, amnesty - won't work. Guest-worker program - won't work.

What will work? Making it a felony to be an illegal immigrant. (Although, I'm sure one could already find laws that already make it a crime, like the New Hampshire town who decided that trespass laws' verbiage applied to illegal immigrants)

If you're not legally here, I'm not convinced you should actually have a "full set of rights and privileges" the same as people who played by the rules.

I was reading a story on Jurist talking about how Louisiana's law about primary elections was ruled unconstitutional.

It led me to wonder something -- how in the world does a primary election fall under any sort of governmental jurisdiction? A primary election is part of how a political party -- a non-governmental agency -- determines who it will put up in a general election to run for a seat. Some political parties don't even have primary elections, they simply have a convention and choose a candidate, or maybe even the party elite simply decide who the candidate will be.

So, clearly there's no requirement for a primary election. Why is there any government involvement at all? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of, say, the DNC or the RNC to pay for their own primaries, and run them however they see fit?

The state shouldn't have any say in how the parties select their candidates. The federal government shouldn't be telling the state (or anyone else) how to run an election that doesn't actually elect a government official.

What's the legal justification for this? How can it be legal, other than by apathy and nobody fighting it?

So this morning, in case you hadn't heard, the Transit Workers Union has gone on strike in New York City, an act which pretty much paralyzes a city dependent upon its subways and busses.

The overwhelming response from both the city and the MTA, though, is to point out how the Taylor Law makes it illegal for public servants to strike, which means the TWU's strike is illegal.

In essence, the Taylor Law turns public workers into indentured servants. They are forced to -- even when the contract which says they must show up each day has expired -- continue to come to work every day.

City officials have said a transit strike could cost the city as much as $400 million a day.

Ya know what? If the transit workers are directly responsible for 146 billion dollars in annual revenue, maybe that means they deserve a larger slice of the pie than you're giving them? Offering up 3% annual cost-of-living raises is a slap in the face when cost-of-living increases usually at around 4-5% annually.

It is disingenuous to, on one hand, talk about the sheer volume of revenue that the city makes on the backs of these people, and then try to stiff them because you don't make enough money.

It is, frankly, unamerican, for there to be a law that says "you have to go to work, even though the contract that says you will has expired, and if you don't, we're going to actually make you pay double for it, docking you two days pay for each day you stay home." If the strike lasts ten days, then the TWU employees really will be slaves for the following ten days, working for the MTA for free just because they had the gall to stand up and show in no uncertain terms how dependent upon them the city is.

Now, that's not to say that if people stay home that they should be guaranteed a job when they return. Lest something think I'm the pinnacle of union solidarity or shit like that, if the MTA can hire and train a bunch of replacements, I think it should work just like it does in any other job. If you don't show up to work anywhere else in the world, you might find yourself not needing to show up any more. The same should hold true here. Nothing should stop the MTA from hiring a crapload of workers, toot-sweet, and replacing workers who stay home. If there are people who are willing to do it for less, that's economic darwinism showing its place in the world.

TWU members need to know to weigh the "I know my value to the city in terms of revenue that is dependent on me" factor against the "how likely would someone else be to take this job for the same money or possibly even less if they fire my striking ass?" factor and make their decision based on those things.

All I can say, though, is that I'm really really glad I don't work in New York City this morning.

I was reading this article which talked about various states re-examining of how slavery was taught about in public schools.

As I read the article which talked about Cesar Chavez day, and various other curriculum-additions that activists have made in different states' education plans, I realized something, two things actually:

• Most of the things you, the rest of the world, find important to teach your kids, I could give a rats ass if my kids knew about. In fact, half the things you want to teach them are flat-out wrong (see there "Intelligent Design")
• Most of the things I would want my kids to know -- things like personal responsibility... that standing up for yourself against "the system" is not wrong, but something to be admired ... that the entire Bill of Rights is applicable to citizens, and not "every amendment except the Second" ... that forcing someone to swear an oath of allegiance before a non-existent deity to a piece of cloth is absolutely the most stupid thing ever ... are all things you absolutely want to shield your kids from.

The reality is that people simply can't agree on what to teach kids with public funds. It's as clear as can possibly be to anyone who is willing to open their eyes and see it.

So why do we continue to have public schools?

Remove the taxation, and let parents teach kids themselves. Or let them group together and pay someone to teach their kids what they want them to learn. Why don't we just get the government out of this equation entirely? We can't agree on what the public funds should be used to teach, so why not just stop using public funds entirely? You pay to teach your kids what you want them to learn. I'll pay to teach my kids what I want them to learn.

So over a thousand firefighters answered the call from FEMA to come help out in the wake of the New Orleans disaster.

And by "help", I mean be public relations flunkies for FEMA's braindead response.

Some of them, perhaps, didn't read the fine print. The call for people did after all say it was going to be for public relations.

Some of them might be excused since they were told to prepare for austere conditions, and to bring with them military-style MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) rations. So you would excuse them for thinking "hmm, I'm going to be in the field eating out of a plastic bag," and not "I'm going to be living in a shelter with access to the same food and facilities as the refugees have."

Some of them hoped beyond hope that FEMA would see the error of their ways. After all, when 1000+ HazMat, Search-and-Rescue, etc., etc., trained personnel showed up, FEMA would have to realize that the best use of this resource was to put them in the field saving fucking lives and not to (and I'm not making this up, it's in the article) have them spend an entire day in sexual harassment training.

But, regardless of how much blame you can point at the firefighters who misunderstood the call for help, you can point a thousand-fold more blame at FEMA who -- despite hearing the calls of help from the dying people -- chose to squander a precious resource... yet again.

Truer words were never spoken..

So Rehnquist is dead.

Just what Bush needs. Something political that he can use as a distraction from his administration's incompetence in the south.

I call for a sixty day moratorium on even talking about the concept of thinking about who might be capable of being nominated to fill that seat. Let's get through the important crisis before we distract ourselves with political chest-thumping.

Here's what will happen, though, it'll be delayed -- but only until the "immediate" issues of NOLA are dealt with and people start poking into the various points of blame for the situation (some of which is Bush and his administration, some of which is NOLA's own fault). But as soon as that news starts to turn its eye towards DC for finger-pointing, then "Filling Rehnquist's seat" will take center-stage, drowning out the NOLA issues, and anyone who tries to talk about NOLA first will be accused of "getting caught up in the past, we need to move on, etc., etc."

Bets? Any takers? <injoke>Come on, D, I know you've got five bucks. :-)</injoke>

So the ACLU, among others, sued the US Government for allowing the Boy Scouts to use Federally owned military bases, and having the support of government-paid personnel for their activities (such as the Scout Jamboree currently going on right now).

The logic went, and it's quite sound, is that since the Boy Scouts are a religious organization (their rules of membership specifically require that you believe in some sort of deity, explicitly prohibiting atheists) and also a discriminatory organization based on gender-preference (you cannot be gay and be either in scouts, or a scout leader, according to their rules). The ACLU won the case, got a Circuit court to say that "yes, it's unconstitutional for the military to support an organization that promotes religious discrimination."

Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, apparently unaware of how Constitutional Law works, has pushed for (and gotten support for) a Bill that would permit the military to allow the Scouts to use their facilities.

But you see, Billy-Boy, your law is meaningless. All it means is another lawsuit, which the government loses, because -- say it with me, Bill, "The Constitution trumps your petty little bill."

One more time: "The Constitution trumps your petty little bill."

It wasn't just that the Circuit Court said, "Oh there's no law authorizing this," they specifically said "You can't do this under the Constitution of the United States of America."

Thus, if you want the scouts to have access to the military facilities, you have to either change the Scouts, or change the Constitution. One of those two has to happen.

Of course, I shouldn't say things like that, or BillyBoy will probably get a mind to trying to add an amendment that permits religious discrimination.

I feel so ashamed to have contributed to putting Bush in power in 2000. Seriously, I regret that more than anything I've done wrong in my life, and there's a lot of stuff in my life I regret. I thought it would mean that the balance-of-power would swing "a little to the right" after eight years of swinging to the left. Little did I know there was a superconducting-electromagnet on the right ready to drag that pendulum all the way over to the ultra-extreme edge.

Please forgive me.

I'll take reasons I'm glad I no longer take the subway for $600, Alex?

As spotted by Baggage Carousel 4....

Justice O'Connor's resignation is worded extremely oddly. In fact, according to the way it's worded, she isn't actually retired at all. She's still on the bench, and -- more importantly -- she'll not be coming off the bench until someone else retires first.

This is the resignation letter as reported by CNN:

"This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor [emphasis added].

"It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 terms.

"I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our constitutional structure."

Sincerely,

Sandra Day O'Connor

Bush cannot nominate someone to the bench until there's a vacancy. According to this resignation letter, there isn't a vacancy until after someone has been nominated. In programming terms, this would be a deadlock, and no progress is made beyond this point. A cannot proceed unless B happens first. B cannot proceed unless A happens first. Thus, neither A nor B can proceed.

The only way for O'Connor to retire now would be for someone else to retire. This way, Bush (or whomever is president then) could nominate a replacement (legally) and say "this is O'Connor's replacement", at which point she retires, leaving a new vacancy to be filled as well.

You know, seriously, for someone who writes legal documents all day long, and is well versed in the exacting science of legalese (and is, by definition, considered one of the top nine experts in the country on the topic), this is a pretty glaring error.

Right now, as it turns out, if Bush begins the appointment process, he's doing so illegally (admittedly, on a technicality), but if someone in the Senate wanted to make waves without using the filibuster, this would be an interesting way to do so...

I've ranted my share about housing associations, and about zoning in general. I think both of them are basically ways for fascist people to dictate to other people what they can do with their property.

In fact, I only recently got into a really long argument with a friend who's trying to use zoning to prevent a neighbor from doing what they want to with their own property.

But for anyone who thinks that housing associations aren't fascist scumbags intent on telling you what you can do with your own house, I say that you need to visit Franklin, TN, where apparently garage doors are now the latest focus of ire.

Right, because all these years of garage doors that faced the street, dad outside washing the car on a summer day, kids playing basketball or riding their Big Wheel in the driveway... those are all nasty ugly things which absolutely must be stamped out.

But remember kids, us libertarian-minded folks who have been telling you that this is the sort of thing you had to look forward to, we're just paranoid. Nobody would really think to do shit like this. Honest.

In a 6-3 ruling today, The Supreme Fucktards ruled that the Federal Government has the ability to regulate an entirely intrastate transaction, namely medical marijuana.

Here's the facts, laid out very simply:

• The patients are California citizens
• The doctors are California doctors
• The marijuana is grown in California
• The marijuana is distributed in California
• The marijuana may never leave California
• Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government granted the right to regulate intrastate commerce
• Amendment X to the United States Constitution says, and I quote, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
• Thus, the right to regulate intrastate commerce is reserved specifically to the States. In this case, that is California.
• California voters passed, with an overwhelming majority, a law which permitted this intrastate commerce.
• The Supreme Court said, nope, even though none of us have M.D.s, we're going to override lots of smart people who do have medical licenses, and we're going to violate the Constitution to do it, and say that we think marijuana's bad, and you can't use it.

You want to know what makes people want to get up on top of buildings with high powered rifles? This is the sort of thing that does that. And, to be clear, I'm not saying that people should or that I'm going to do that, or any of that crap (so please, let's not send Federal agents to my door, I'm not at all threatening anyone). I'm simply saying that the next time the Secret Service arrests some nutjob for running around on the White House lawn with a gun, or threatening a Justice, or any of those other certifiably whack-job things, and all these people want to know "what could possibly drive that guy to think the system has been perverted and corrupted?" that this is the sort of thing they can very easily point to and ask simply, "If the Supreme Court is going to piss all over the Constitution, then who exactly is going to defend the people against a tyrannical Federal government?

I'll take Why I think we should let the Libertarians run the country for $400, Alex?

... and stupid.

This story is fucking hysterical because:

(a) The bleeding heart liberals that are complaining are the ones that obviously don't even read the bills that they sign into law
(b) It's somehow perceived as a problem that people who come to this country should be asked to assimilate enough to speak the fucking native language
(c) The ACLU doesn't realize that "punishing people who don't speak English" does in fact promote the learning of english. (one would presume that, unless he wants to debate that the entire psychological concept of "negative reinforcement" is bunk)
(d) The change in question was actually proferred by a Democrat
(e) Said Democrat's epic understatement “I just told the members that the amendment clarifies the way in which documents are produced."
(f) All of the Above

If you thought you had a right to present evidence at your trial, that might, say, exonerate you... that might, say, keep you from being fucking executed, well, nope, not in the good old US of A, so sayeth the Supreme Court by refusing to hear an appeal that would have demanded such.

Seriously, if you can't smell the fascism, it's time for decongestant.

Can someone point to me exactly where in the Constitution the United States Congress has jurisdiction over how a private enterprise (like say, Major League Baseball) handles its players doing things which were not (at the time) illegal?

Can someone point me to where in that fine document they find the Federal jurisdiction to get involved in a marital decision of "how long to prolong one's spouse's life via extremely artificial means"? Maybe in my skimming over of the document, I didn't see that, but I can't seem to find anywhere that it's any of Congress' goddamned business.

There are so many problems Congress should be working on - a war in another country, a massive budget deficit, a Social Security program that would be better named "Social Insecurity" - and yet these are the things they choose to ensure get coverage on C-SPAN. THIS is what we sent them there to do?

Well, I didn't, that's for sure.

Who's Alexander Bulay you ask? In this area, if you want to see a movie, you have three basic options....

• The mall mega-cineplex owned by Regal
• The rare arthouse theaters in Woodstock and Rhinebeck
• A small chain of three theaters that are owned by the same guy

Alexander Bulay is the gentleman who owns the latter. There are local townsfolk threatening to boycott his theatres because he ran ads espousing how proud he was he wouldn't show the Michael Moore film.

While I don't necessarily think I agree with Bulay's political leanings in general, I'll be damned if I don't feel proud to know that there are people who are willing to stand by their convictions and not give a rat's ass about who they offend in the process. Frankly, why do I care about the politics of someone who runs a theatre, I go there for entertainment, not to discuss politics with the owner.

I think the best quote from the entire article was:

"I was going to let the thing die down, but these clowns have annoyed me," he said. "Do I care if they never set foot in one of my theaters again? No. Let them stay home and watch the Michael Moore movie another 12 times."

Seriously. This guy is great. Plus, the important part, is that he's a locally owned business who sells the same product - seats in front of a silver screen - for cheaper than the megacorp down the road does.

He'll be getting more of my business in the future. If he's not carrying the movie I want to see, then ok, maybe I'll go see it elsewhere, but hopefully I can offset for him the potential loss of at least one of these boycotters that are threatening him.

Keep up the good work, Alex!

I was watching West Wing tonight and something occurred to me.

Why is it that we'll invade a foreign country, commit a metric assload of troops to fighting, consider reinstituting a draft even, all for a war that essentially boils down to "I'm going to attack you cuz you tried to kill my daddy," but we aren't willing to stand up as a country and say, "Yes, Taiwan deserves the right to self-determination guaranteed to it under the United Nations charter, and we're willing to defend their right to do so."

I mean... Christ, the Taiwanese want us to help them be free. If you did an opinion poll over there right now, it'd be like a bajillion-to-one in favor of freedom. Why are we wasting human lives on people who really don't want us to help them towards anything resembling freedom, when there are people who really do want to be free, begging for us to do so?

I was reading that Cheney was in the hospital today after shortness of breath, etc., etc., and something made me stop to wonder.

Let's assume for the moment that, today, Cheney was to step down, citing his health, etc., etc.

What happens on January 20th? Nobody else was elected to be the VP. He probably has to formally resign again.

Make it even more interesting. Suppose that he resigns, and "John Doe" is nominated, approved, etc., and takes his place, serving out the remainder of Cheney's term. Cheney's current term ends at noon on January 20th. John Doe, then, has to go through the whole nomination and approval process again, doesn't he?

Does the constitution account for that sort of thing somewhere that I'm missing? What difference is there, if any, if Cheney was to say, die, between now and then? Is there some special provision for "you were appointed to replace someone who'd already been re-elected, during the sorta-lame-duck period between their election and their acceptance of the second term, so you serve out the full term of the guy you're replacing" clause?

Via The Register. This is a classic read, and a concept I could really get behind, when it boils down to it's final points.

Click the link to read the whole letter....

A couple questions have been recurring, both in comments and in IM conversations, so I figured that I'll answer them once in public and call it a day.

Didn't you donate to Bush in 2000? Didn't you go to the Inauguration even?

Yes, I did. I'm a centrist. We'd had eight years of leftward swinging politics and needed a swing back to the right. I did not expect W to be a singularity off to the right edge of the spectrum drawing the entire country into fascism.

Do you think the problems would all suddenly go away if Kerry had been elected? Are you that naive?

No, not at all. What's important here is that the majority of my fellow citizens don't think there's a problem. They're happy with Bush's leadership. They're happy with his attacks on minorities. They're happy with the way he's treated the populace like we're all suspected criminals. I'm not.

Moving to another country won't solve the problems America has!

Solving America's problems is America's problem, and the majority don't want to solve them. If you suddenly realized that a club you belonged to was full of racist assholes, or full of bullies who liked to beat up people they didn't like, or whatever, and you realized that you were clearly in the minority, you'd probably simply stop being a member of the club, so as not to associate with people you found distasteful. That's sort of how I view America right now.

You're not going to find Utopia you know. Other countries have problems, too!

Yes, but there are far more countries where the population is more in line with what I think than the present population of the United States. If 50+% of the populace wants a religious nanny-state, who am I to get in their way. I'll go find someplace to live that is a little less offensive to me.

OK, now this is too funny. Gotta believe someone at CNN is going to be unemployed over it, but if you're gonna get run out, this is as funny a way to go as any other...

Spotted on a AIM status message:

You get what you fucking deserve, assholes. This country is going to be annihilated under the sheer force of its own stupid citizens. "Go America!" half of you shout, but you don't know anything. Anything at all. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of England, but I guess you all are. By the time four years is up, we'll have a white christian country with a consistently low IQ, no health care of any kind, and no economy. Congratulations. If you're a Bush supporter, delete me from your list. You're no friend of mine. Frankly, I hope you die, slowly, painfully, and that your family goes with you, for spawning you.

Classic.

I fell asleep on the couch around 11:30 last night, and retired to bed shortly thereafter, with things still up in the air. It looks like, right now anyway, unless a miracle happens in Ohio, that a good 50% of my fellow Americans actually prefer living in a near-fascist state.

Which, I must say, saddens me greatly.

If there is no miracle in Ohio, then I'll be "outta here". I've said it before, and I make no bones about it. The level of freedom Americans enjoy has suffered greatly over the three years since 9/11, and if Bush thinks he's won a popular-vote victory, there's no reason to believe it won't simply get worse over the upcoming four.

I can't guarantee, obviously, that I'll be able to find employment in some other country, but you can bet your sweet bippy that I'll be opening up a number of job-search accounts on foreign web sites. Getting the heck out of the country is going to be my top priority. :-(

OK, I don't really know what $POSITION is going to be yet, but next election cycle, presuming I've been liberated by a much-needed Regime Change on the home front and haven't fled to Canada to escape, I'm going to find an office I want to run for and do it.

Why? Because uncontested elections suck.

The only significantly contested races in my area were for President, US Senator, and US Representative.

Supreme Court Justice (Pick Two):

REP-REPUBLICAN  	Anthony V. Cardona
REP-REPUBLICAN 		William E. McCarthy
DEM-DEMOCRATIC 		Anthony V. Cardona
DEM-DEMOCRATIC 		William E. McCarthy
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	Anthony V. Cardona
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	William E. McCarthy
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	Anthony V. Cardona
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	William E. McCarthy

State Senator:

REP-REPUBLICAN  	William J. Larkin, Jr.  
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	William J. Larkin, Jr.

State Assembly:

DEM-DEMOCRATIC	 	Kevin A. Cahill
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	Kevin A. Cahill
WOR-WORKING FAMILIES 	Kevin A. Cahill

I'd include the similarly worthless county-level positions, but the Ulster County Elections Board is just this side of useless, providing absolutely nothing on their web site about which elections are happening in Ulster County.

No, actually, they're not "just this side of useless", come to think of it, they're way the fuck on the other side of useless.

The County-level ones were similarly obscene, though, with lots more of those "every single party has the same people on the ticket" deals. Reminds me a lot of the former Soviet Union. "Yes, Comrade, you have the right to vote... you can vote for me on line 'A', or you can vote for me on line 'B', or you can vote for me on line 'C', or...."

So next election, there will be a choice. Again, provided I haven't fled the country in terror at the prospect of another four years of political prisoners held in violation of international law, etc., etc.

Tera wouldn't stop complaining that I hadn't said anything yet about the Presidential Debate last week. Now that I've finished what I needed to get done for my paper that is due tomorrow, I have a little bit of downtime to get some of that sort of thing done.

But, in reality, there isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said. While the Republicans claimed "their guy did well", very few people on the right side of the spectrum used the word "win" in their reviews. It's clear as to why the candidates (or, more specifically, one candidate) wanted no views of the candidate who was supposed to be listening. I could almost accept that he repeated the same (albeit inaccurate) rhetoric over and over again ("we invaded because he wouldn't disarm" -- wait, he HAD disarmed!) ... but watching him get mad, flustered, etc., while "off" camera was worth the price of admission.

I don't really think it changed many peoples' minds, but I think the debate at least showed that Kerry isn't necessarily a joke. A lot of the fence-sitters are of a mind that "they don't like Bush, but aren't (or weren't) convinced that Kerry is any better". I think for those people the debate at least showed that Kerry is capable of forming sentences beyond the soundbite, which is something his opponent has trouble doing.

Why is it that sometimes people who are otherwise really smart tend to hold onto, and repeat mercilessly, really dumb ideas?

No, Tom, Gore didn't win. He lost. There wasn't a single official Florida vote-count which he won. Even a couple newspapers who did independent counts afterwards said the same thing, he still would have lost (oh, he'd've won if you only recounted the precincts the DNC wanted recounted, but that's not quite fair, now, is it?)

Personally, I can't believe that people still continue to "insist" that Gore won. They must really have sad and empty lives if, literally, that is the boneheaded mantra they choose to repeat over and over again.

Via The Paper Chase:

House Republicans managed to push through the Pledge Protection Act, which says, essentially, "No, Judicial Branch, you don't get to rule on whether the stuff we wrote as a law is legal or not."

It's not expected to pass the Senate, but even if it did I think it'd be funny to watch even the conservative Scalia piss all over that law's constitutionality.

California used to have a tax-credit for teachers who paid for school supplies and such which the district could not or would not provide for them. It appears now that they've discontinued that tax-credit.

This quote from the article summed it up completely:

"What are we going to do, tell the kids, `Sorry, there's no paper today,' or tell them they can't print because there's no ink?" Seelig asked. "I know I couldn't do it."

Yes, Ms. Seelig, that's exactly what you need to do. As long as there are teachers like you -- who will happily foot the bill for the entire class instead of letting the taxpayers shoulder the burden like they're supposed to -- the school will continue to take advantage of you.

The district itself was able to take advantage of you for years, because they knew the State was going to reimburse you instead of them. Now the State is getting out of the game as well. You need to stop and say "No! This is it! I'm done!"

When little Johnny goes home and says "I need paper, pens, crayons, a copy of this textbook, etc., etc., etc." and rattles off a long list of stuff, many of which should be provided by the school, that's when his parents will get involved, and that's what you want, because unlike little Johnny, they vote (or at least are capable of voting).

If you want to sit there and keep bending over for the government and being its banker, that's your own business, obviously, but don't have the balls to bitch about it.

Why is it illegal for people to sell their vote, but perfectly legal for companies to buy the votes of elected officials already in office?

Doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Via Tom:

There's an excellent editorial that does a remarkably coherent comparison of "George Bush's New York City For The RNC Convention" and "Snake Plissken's New York, The Maximum Security Detention Facility".

Makes for excellent reading.

I've long been a proponent of giving people the right to refuse service to any person for any reason. The government shouldn't be able to tell me that I have to do business with someone I don't want to do business with.

An article that Fark linked to takes this to a whole new level.

A doctor was approached to do some (elective) cosmetic surgery to get rid of some burn-scars. The potential patient was the daughter of a lawmaker. The lawmaker in question had voted to oppose the limits on damage lawsuits against doctors.

The doctor refused to take the patient.

Now, the doctor is taking the firm "conflict of interests" line, and if that's what defense he has to use to stay out of trouble from a legal perspective, I'll happily take his word for it. The reality is obvious, in that he was taking a moral stand.

"If you're going to make my life rough in my profession, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever I should be forced to make your personal life easier."

And, you know what? I have zero problem with that. If you're an asshole, I should have the right to refuse to do business with you, and so should everyone else you're an asshole to. In the end, you'll find that nobody wants to do business with you, because you're an asshole. And if refusing to do business with your friends and family (who are "associates of assholes"), then maybe they can convince you not to be an asshole.

More power to ya, Dr. Kanosky!

(I do believe that this post contains more uses of the word "asshole" than the entire history of this blog combined)

Like any kid growing up in the 80's, Ronald Reagan's in-your-face defiance of the Soviet Bloc during what would become the last years of the Cold War was something that helped define me. I didn't necessarily understand all the political implications at the time, but he seemed to exude a "confidence in our success as a country" that was sorely lacking, especially after the Carter term.

He wasn't afraid to do what really needed to be done to end the Cold War, and while a lot of Democrats will get all pissy about the national debt's defense-budget-driven meteoric rise during his terms in office, it brought about the events necessary to give us the ability to massively cut the defense budget (spend a shitload now, save a bigger shitload later... which is basically a sound investment).

A lot of people will point to his complete mismanagement of the AIDS crisis, but I think it's important to remember that (a) the why's and how's of AIDS weren't nearly as well known then as they were only a few short years later, and (b) gay and lesbian activism in the early 80's wasn't nearly what it is today.

In fact, one could argue that Reagan was the best thing to ever happen to that constituency, since he gave them a cause to rally in opposition against. If Reagan hadn't completely alienated them, and basically said "AIDS kills queers, so what?" they probably would not have had as great an impetus to organize as they did, and would quite possibly still be ten or fifteen years behind where they are today in terms of social equality.

Above all, though, Reagan was the last politician who simply didn't smell like a politician... everyone since then has had that duplicitous smarminess we associate with the professional politician, something which Reagan either didn't possess a lick of, or did a remarkable job in hiding from nearly everyone who surrounded him. He simply wanted to do "a good job", and often put his foot in his mouth precisely because he really wasn't the typical politician ("The missiles launch in ten minutes," anyone?)

May you find in death what the last ten years of your life couldn't provide you ... peace and tranquility. You'll be missed, Dutch.

So... today's the day the number of viable presidential candidates dropped to two.

And thus begins the real question... who is Derek more likely to vote for, seeing as how I've already stated many times I can't stand Kerry...

So let's take a look at the issues...

The allegations from Aristide that the United States made him leave at gunpoint would seem -- at a quick glance -- to be ludicrous.

But, it makes you wonder.

The day before he "decided to leave", Aristide vowed he would not leave.

Powell claims they spent several days "trying to meet Aristide's demands so he would leave".

And McClellan's response was "I've seen some of the reports [and they] do nothing to help the Haitians move forward to a better, more prosperous future."

So put it all together and what do you have? The United States obviously wanted him gone, that's obvious from what Powell said. McClellan's comment implies that the country would be better off without its democratically elected leadership. The spin machine is already in motion, about how much better that country is now that we've stepped in, etc., etc.

Aristide contacted some congressmen directly as it was happening, talking about how "the coup d'etat has been completed", and that he had been basically forced out by Marines.

I find it amusing that Powell would believe -- after lying to us for nearly two years -- that we would take his word that "That's what happened, notwithstanding any cell phone reports to the contrary."

You're right, Colin, why should we accept Primary Sources for news information, when we have you, an infinitely credible Tertiary-at-minimum Source with a history of lying when you think you can get away with it so you can get what will make your master over on Pennsylvania Ave. happy?

I especially liked his quote: "it might have been better for members of Congress who have heard these stories to ask us about the stories before going public with them so we don't make a difficult situation that much more difficult."

You're right again, Colin. They should definitely have checked with you to see if the story they were getting from the victim did or did not match the prepared fiction you were releasing to the press.

Here's how I think it went down, and I'm just speculating based on the testimony. We wanted Aristide gone. It would not surprise me if we .. convinced .. the rebels to lead the charge, but I won't even presume that happened, but just that we took advantage of the situation. We used the situation to try and convince Aristide to leave. He told us to sod off, that he wanted to stay. Powell spends time trying to convince him to "do it our way, buddy". He doesn't. We send some jarheads with M16A2s and MP5s to see if they can change his mind. He does, but he's not happy about it, and pisses and moans to some congressmen friends of his, not giving a damn what fiction the U.S. State Department is going to weave.

Anyone want to take bets?

Lest Brian think I've been spirited away for reprogramming by the liberal side of the political spectrum...

Greenspan's comments today, that Social Security might be a good place for cuts, is spot on.

I don't know anyone who is approximately my age who actually believes they'll receive Social Security benefits when the time comes.

Here's Derek's plan for Social Security:

If you are less than 35 years old, you are officially on your own. Go sort it out, man.

If you are 35 to 50 years old, you will receive 50% of your projected Social Security benefits. Use your remaining time to set aside good chunks of money.

If you are