Cowboy Confessional

Bartenders will surprise you.

That I make this observation indicates that I have, upon occasion, stumbled into a bar. Hell, I’ve stumbled into two today, which is an easy feat to accomplish while loathing Las Vegas.

(I find myself in Vegas this week on business, again confronted by the fact that the Big Sleazy lacks a thinking man’s entertainment. Anyone who has not figured this place out within 30 seconds of deplaning needs to drink more coffee).

Bored and bemused, I found myself bellying up to a bar in the New York, NY hotel, casino and Disneyesque asylum. I swear I saw a family of pale Bronx refugees who seemed authentically pleased with the fake version of their home town. Perhaps it is because this version lacks grime, crime, and a population of loud jabronis.

While waiting for the bartender to stroll by, I cracked open a collection of Fitzgerald short stories. He soon appeared, took my order, and said “Fitzgerald certainly captured the airs of his time, but I never found him as satisfying as Salinger.”

I wasn’t entirely surprised. I have found more intelligent men poring whiskey than I have in the pulpit, running for office, or commanding enterprises. Perhaps spending your days and nights in the company of drunks gives one perspective and a hunger for anything resembling uninbreated gray matter.

Brian, the barkeep de jure, and I exchanged our insights into authors for the better part of an hour, in between his bill paying duties and our mutual bemusement at life as absurdity that is Las Vegas. He had a fondness for Russian writers, sensing that their depressed and dower connection to life caused their characters to be more believable. I demurred, insisting that reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are a hastened path to suicide.

Not more than six month prior I had stumbled into the Fireside lounge (which, incidentally has no fireplace therein). I had with me a weighty tome titled “Constitutional Law and Politics, Volume One” (the fact there two volumes of this work exist is indication enough that the American legal system has devolved into an unworkable quagmire of legalistic instability).

The bartender, after poring me a fresh two fingers of whiskey said “I found it interesting that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have filed the largest number of Supreme Court appeals, that they needed to, and that they have an admirable win/loss record.”

I was stunned. Not only that a booze slinger knew such and arcane piece of legal trivia, but that I didn’t. The only respect I had for the Jehovah’s until then was for their persistence. Perhaps we should encourage all of them to confine their uninvited visitations to the homes of Supreme Court justices.

Barkeeps are as varied as the rest of us. It seems that the trick may be to carry a book with you and ignite their conversation on any topic aside from sports trivia and drunken debate.

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The communist-cum-capitalists heading the violent Chinese government can be expected to kill the Olympic spirit as they are trying to kill anyone who who protests their long, rich history of crushing human rights.

The Chinese oligarchy has banked on the Beijing Olympics being their debut on the world stage. What these fools with Mao’s Myopia failed to understand is that when you open your doors to the world, and seek to be accepted by all, you open every aspect of your society including the parts you should hide in shame.

Protest have erupted in Tibet, India, Nepal, and now amusingly enough, at the Olympic Torch Lighting ceremony.

Pandora is paying the Chinese government a prolonged visit. What we have seen this week are just the opening volleys. The 2008 Summer Olympics are destined to be the most political in history, and sadly some more blood will be shed before it ends.

The Chinese government will suffer endless reproach for their heavy-handed ways will be exposed throughout the games, and in the process kill the Olympic spirit. Every cellphone camera coming into Beijing, Tibet, and elsewhere will capture every violation of human rights and more deeply document a regime dedicated to killing the human spirit.

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Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are a nasty business. Judicial disposition falls along these lines:

1) Some justices made up their minds on the case long before oral arguments commence, and they ask questions designed to hammer on the opposing viewpoint or to lead the witness for the position they favor.

2) Others relish the role of the devil’s advocate and ask hard questions of both sides.

3) The rest just cut to the chase and focus on the core issue, challenging everyone to argue against the express written will of the American people.

Today the Supremes (depending on their disposition) heard or ignored arguments in the Heller Case, the Washington D.C. gun ban. The consensus among all of us who listened to the arguments is “we still don’t know how this is going to pan out.”

Crap.

All the Justices — who said anything at all — dug into the myriad of peripheral issues in a devil’s dance that frustrated folks like me. They asked questions concerning if any right can be “reasonably” regulated. The general demeanour of the Justices appears to be that none of the robbed intelligentsia are against the idea of reasonable regulation, though they may debate what in the Sam Hell “reasonable” means.

The only exception was the new Chief Justice, Roberts. While all about him argued about to apply the long and tangled history and different levels of 1st Amendment scrutiny to the 2nd Amendment, Roberts suggested that was inappropriate. With the 2nd Amendment he is willing to “starting afresh” and let the various courts determine fresh Hells as to the mechanics of scrutiny over guns. This is both good and bad for the people of Washington. It indicates Roberts would be willing to confirm the individual right to arms and cause the lower courts to be creative in reviewing the law yet again.

Roberts did ask the blunt question — “What is ‘reasonable’ about a total ban? … Is a reasonable ban on books permissible?”

Ginsberg, in her growing senile dementia, brought-up state bans on machine guns as a proxy for the ‘reasonable’ ban angle. She’ll vote against the people, as she tends to do, favoring the statist approach to all things mortal. She tried to hammer the 2nd Amendment into the mold of the English Bill of Rights and how it expresses a right of their people to own guns, but only under the complete legislative control of Parliament. Ginsberg handily is ignoring that part of the reason we killed Tory soldiers so long ago was because Parliament tried at various times to disarm us. Her judicial myopia also shields her from the basic understanding that legislating away a right means that the right never actually existed.

The news does not get better as every justice – in some way or another – brought the “reasonable regulation” argument to the table. The fix is in and we will likely get an affirmative ruling upholding the individual right, which from this point on will be micro-managed by the courts. In our federated system that means people in one region will live under a different set of rule than others until the Supreme’s adjudicate each nuance.

Sorry guys. The fight has just begun and will last long after they have shoveled dirt on our faces.

Interesting was to see how ineptly both the City of D.C. and Heller’s lawyers buggered their case, and how Justice Kennedy showed that he intends to be the swing vote. Kennedy interrupted the D.C. shyster early on, challenging the basic premise of the city’s argument. Yet later Kennedy forced Heller’s lawyer to base his defense from an adverse set of assumptions.

Kennedy did note that the 1939 Miller case resulted in “an abbreviated decision” that does not address the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, and that he will not likely use it as guidance in this case. I heard no support for Miller from the bench, so it looks like we will have a fairly clean ruling.

Justice Scalia came out as an individual rights defender, and perhaps the best prepared of the judges. While the city’s attorney was arguing that the entirety of the 2nd Amendment dealt only with the militia, Scalia exposed that false duality noting “The two clauses go together beautifully” and later suggesting that “the second clause goes beyond the first.” He referred to Blackstone’s commentaries that concluded there was a “personal guarantee to self protection” involved. Roberts immediately chimed in that Blackstone’s observations work against the D.C. “militia only” focus.

At one point the Solicitor General claimed that “the RTKABA always coexisted with reasonable regulation” as with regulation of speech. Scalia pushed back, noting that it is reasonable to regulate liable (i.e., intentional damage) but that the regulation of speech pretty much stops there. This has always been the contention of individual rights theorists – that you can regulate endangering behavior, but not peaceable behavior. Breyer tried to parlay around this principle. He brought-up colonial-period Boston fire ordinances (that limited where one could keep gunpowder in a residential building to keep from immolating everyone therein) as a local reasonable regulation, contrasting it with crime control today. Heller’s attorney screwed-up by not noting the endangering/peaceable boundary that demarks appropriate government interference. He recovered his bearing later, but Breyer let him swallow the bait and then yanked the line hard.

After Scalia, Alito might have been the best prepared. He brought-up a self-contradiction in the arguments of the city – that federal control over the militia obliterates the individual rights guarantee if the government can redefine who is or isn’t a member of the militia. Hence the 2nd Amendment cannot logically be considered a device to ensure state militia functions as they define who is the militia (hence no rational reason to include the 2nd Amendment at all if all it does is redundantly create a government power).

Two points Sammy! This is the fatal trap of the collectivist theory of the 2nd Amendment.

To the ongoing “reasonable regulation” aspect of the orals, Scalia noted that owning a handgun is common activity among people throughout the country. Thus banning handguns might be an unreasonable definition of ‘reasonable’.

Souter sloppily tried to amplify DC’s argument (indicating he’ll support the collectivist view). We can expect no less given how he eliminated our property rights in the Kelo case. Expect Souter to continue being the American Judas.

Later on, Souter observes that the arguments by the Solicitor General’s (another man of suspect character) on how ‘keep’ confirms an individual right, but ponders about the “further reference to ‘bear’.” The Solicitor General claimed that “bearing” is widely accepted as applying to hunting as well as military context, and argues against DC’s position that “bear” is strictly about militia. Scalia backs the notion that all private uses of firearms fall under ‘bearing’, noting that the language England used to disarm the Scotts and Catholics was to forbid them to “bear” arms.

The Solicitor General slyly noted that “no words in the Constitution are surplusage.”

Souter observed that the Solicitor General arguments on “keep” as an independent right, but pondered about the “further reference to bear”. The Solicitor General said “bearing” is accepted as applying to hunting as well as military context and argued against D.C.’s position that “bear” is strictly about military carrying or weapons.

Breyer surprised me. He clearly took the position that there is a dual purpose within the 2nd Amendment and bluntly asked D.C.’s lawyer to defend how a ban could be defensible in that light. The city’s attorney blinked, and could not lucidly defend his own position. Later, Justice Stevens asks the Solicitor General if the 2nd Amendment codifies one or two rights, to which he basically replied ‘both’.

The Solicitor General is not our friend. Throughout he argues in favor of the reasonable regulation aspects, and completely misrepresents existing laws on the control of machine guns, and brings to the foreground the ever fake “plastic gun” as another case in point. This man needs to be fired … or fired upon.

The Solicitor General did mention his belief Madison, in composing the 2nd Amendment, was applying it to the enumerated limits of government powers within the constitution, and not the militia organization power clause. This makes sense given that there is no need for a separate amendment to support an enumerated legislative power. Hence the 2nd Amendment had to be not in support of the power of the government to organize the militia, but as a defense for the people.

There is more, but it delves into areas of con law and irrelevancy not worth rehashing here. The big question is “how will they vote.”

From the oral arguments and some insights into the general dispositions of the varied judges, here is what I’m willing to wager.

So you see kids, we have a couple of agonizing months ahead of us. Our rights hang by a single vote on both the core rights question, and the ability to defend that right from judicial and legislative tinkering. Get out your prayer beads.

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Illegal drug dealing is responsible for most street homicides in the U.S.A.

Prescription drugs may be responsible for most mass homicides.

The latest piece of evidence on this theory comes from the recent post-mortem of the Northern Illinois University shooter, the former Mr. Steven Kazmierczak. Already well known is that Kaz had a number of psychiatric problems, though none of the overtly violent variety and thus he was never loony enough to be involuntarily committed to the Rubber Room Academy.

The Delinquent Kaz (not to be confused with the equally insane Daily Koz) appears to have been in a rapid withdraw cycle from Xanax, as evidenced by the residual quantities in his bloodstream.

Xanax is one of many psychotropics that clinical trails have shown to produce violent withdrawal symptoms. These side effects include:

Anxiety … decreased mental clarity, depression … insomnia … loss of reality … rapid breathing, seizures … tremor, twitching … suicidal thoughts

We are seeing this repeat … often.

Eric Harris - one of the Columbine killers — was a Zoloft (withdrawal systems include irritability, agitation, nervousness, emotional liability, bad dreaming and anger) and Luvox (agitation, anxiety, insomnia) user. His cohort in killing, Dylan Klebold was allegedly a psychotropic junkie as well, but his medical record were sealed and we may never know.

T.J. Solomon (six wounded) was on/off of Ritalin.

Kip Kinkel (four dead, 23 wounded) was on/off of Prozac.

Jeffrey Weise (10 dead, 15 wounded) was on/off Prozac.

There are a lot more.

Though I lost the link long ago, one clinical psychiatrist who had gathered all the publicly accessible medical records of mass public shooters over the previous decade had concluded that 100% of them were either on or withdrawing from psychotropics.

It could be argued that crazy people might well perform mass shooting without the aid of psychotropics. The problem is that violent and suicidal rages are a reported, clinically observed side effect of withdrawal and occasionally the medications themselves. Eric Harris in his video taped suicide note said he was purposefully dropping his medication to build his rage (a known side effect) and prepare him for massacre.

These pills may make life for livable for the seriously depressed, but indiscriminate prescribing of these meds to marginally messed-up children is causing more problems than they solve.

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Do you have kids?

If you do or ever did, you have evaluated, monitored, and perhaps even banished some of their acquaintances. As parents we know that the company one keeps not only molds the person, but they reflect the type of person one is.

Which brings us to Barack Obama.

With accelerating frequency this presidential wannabe is in the company of the seemingly disreputable and foul minded. If these were casual acquaintances I could dismiss them as the jetsom of normal social interaction. We all meet dishonorable types in our lives, and Gawd knows I may have tossed back a whiskey or two with some myself. When such associations are peripheral, the stench of their presence quickly dissipates and we are not dragged into their soulless and intellectually corrupt realms.

Obama’s unsavory associations are not incidental. They are deep — the types of associations that guide his daily direction and shape his every action. Obama carries their stench.

Freshly exposed are the maniacal rantings of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama’s association with Wright is neither recent, peripheral, or easily dismissed. Obama and his clan have been attending Wright’s Trinity United Church for over 20 years — so long that he had his marriage performed there, his children baptised there, and like any good parishioner, donated money to the now blasphamized house.

The title of Obama’s book came from a Wright sermon for Christ’s sake.
A man cannot attend church for any period of time and not hear the words of the house preacher. Unless Obama is lying (hmmm, a lying politician … there is a novel concept) he obviously sat in on several of Wright’s incendiary sermons. Wright has proclaimed from his pulpit:

* The U.S. government invented the HIV virus in order to conduct genocide

* The same government is wholly responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11

* “‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America!”

There are more, but that last one — and Wright’s general American bashing mentality (if I may misuse the word ‘mentality’) seems to have rubbed off on Obama’s wife if not Obama himself. Overnight denouncements by Obama have him claiming that Wright’s preachings “are not ones that reflect my values or my ideals or [my wife] Michelle’s.”

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” was Michelle’s recent commentary, which eerily echoes Wright’s sentiments.

This is more than guilt by association — it is guilt by affinity. Given that Wright was a member of Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, any claim of ignorance of Wright’s beliefs are unbelievable.

Then there is the Rezko mater. Antoin “Tony” Rezko is a Chicago businessman and bag-man for the local Democrat machine. His job was moving money from pocket to pocket in order to get select politicians elected, and in the process put down payments on future favors.

Including Obama’s.

Obama was an active participant with Rezko, from writing letters on state government stationary to arm-twist local governments in giving Rezko what he wanted, to entering into suspect real estate deals with Rezko.

Let us say that Rezko was not a casual acquaintance.

Now Rezko is facing charges of extortion, arranging kickbacks, and generally raiding the coffers of government and political donors alike.

We could ascribe Obama’s association with Rezko as part of the normal (and hence corrupt) Chicago Democrat machine, but Obama himself has made disassociation impossible. Obama created his own brand for his presidential bid. Obama held himself above the pack, pretending to be the mulatto messiah — possessing saintly cleanliness.

But his artificial vestments have been soiled by a maniac preacher, an America loathing spouse, and a criminal cohort.

Each of these relationships are long standing. Obama would have to be blind and stupid to have not seen or heard the echoes of the beliefs and actions of each of these people. Obama knew all of this and simply hoped the toxic associations would not be revealed.

That was a lousy bet, son. You are judged by the company you keep, and you run with a seriously shady set. You will not be able to explain it away, and it will be your doom.

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