Cowboy Confessional

To my friends and followers in Nebraska: Do not — I repeat do not firebomb Senator Ben Nelson’s home. Other people live there.

Frankly, Nelson’s heist of everybody’s taxes is trivial when compared to the massive and anti-constitutional nature of the Senate health care assault. I use the word “anti-constitutional” instead of “unconstitutional” with good reason. One can commit an offense against the constitution believing that their actions are allowed. Anti-constitutional actions are committed by demons who openly despise the express, written will of the American people and blindly ignore those words and intents. Ben Nelson’s greed is only a tiny anti-constitutional action inside of grand, open warfare on the people.

Perhaps most interesting is the way in which the Democrats continue to cater to large insurance companies and their K Street bagmen. Anybody with business acumen (and given my degree in Management Sciences, I’ll Include myself on that unsavory list) knows the best way to compete is to have no competition, and the most effective way to eliminate competition is to have the government do it for you. In our federalist framework, this presents certain problems and requires stuffing the pockets of many politicians.

Like Ben Nelson. Check his pockets but wash your hands immediately thereafter.

At the behest of large insurance companies, the American people have been hog tied for decades, resulting in an uncontrolled rise in premiums. By prohibiting interstate commerce in health insurance (a clearly anti-constitutional act), Congress created barriers to market entry for small and agile insurance companies, and those have slowly disappeared. This allowed the large insurance companies — the same ones whose lobbyist wrote these laws — to grow.

These same companies then created in each state various levels of mandatory coverage called ‘mandates’. For example in California, single males who have had vasectomies must pay for in vitro fertilization coverage. This creates free income for the large insurance companies whose lobbyists (wait for it) wrote the laws. The combined effect is that you are cut off from 98% of the potential insurance market and must buy whatever coverage your state legislature deems necessary, regardless of your actual needs, from near monopolies.

Good thing Senate health plans cover Ben Nelson’s cranial enemas.

One might wonder where antitrust legislation comes into view. After all, it has long been national policy that any organization (aside from Major League Baseball) which grows so large as to effectively control its market will be disbanded. Congress saw the potential for their anti-constitutional plans being disrupted by antitrust, so they exempted insurance companies from antitrust suits. Yes, insurance industry lobbyist wrote those laws too.

Combined these laws create a rather formidable machinery of theft. It was so effective in raising health insurance costs that many people opted to exist without insurance. This was unacceptable to the industry because it meant they were being denied free money, which is the main objective of that low form of theft known as democracy (which shares the same root as ‘democrat’). Hence their lobbyist contributed not only to Ben Nelson’s reelection fund, but also to the Senate health insurance assault bill, and forces people — by penalty of fines and possibly imprisonment — to buy insurance.

Create a monopoly, protect it from antitrust, then force everybody to buy from monopolies coverage beyond their actual needs.

To my friends and followers in Nebraska: Do not — I repeat do not firebomb Senator Ben Nelson. Nobody with a soul resides in his body.

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To the victor go the spoils, until such time as spoiled children set fire to the booty.

Like dysfunction siblings, San Francisco cannot be fully understood without occasionally examining near-by Berkeley, or as we locals commonly refer to the joint, Bizerkley. A volcanic center of free speech and psychedelic dissension in the 1960s, Berkeley has never since been normal. Like San Francisco, its abnormality is part of its charm.

Berkeley is also home to a branch of the University of California. Ever left leaning (despite College Republicans being the largest campus organization aside from Fabulous Frank’s Friday Beer Bash), students there will protest everything from war to the color of split pea soup served at the cafeteria (they wanted purple). In recent years a small horde of them perched like featherless fowl in some trees which they preferred the University not topple.

Being of the socialists metal caste (or is the proper spelling in this instance cast?), when anyone dares insist that Berkeley students pay for their education, another protest is certain. This week has seen any number of 1960’s style takeovers of public property, triggered by having tuition and fees hiked. Semi-violent altercations occurred between students too busy protesting to study, and other undergrads trying to get to class. Cops handcuffed a few to end their adverse occupation of campus buildings. Health Services sophomores, too stoned from experimenting with pharmaceuticals, left on their own and haven’t been seen since.

Others firebombed the chancellor’s house.

Near midnight about 75 suspects students surrounded the chancellor’s chambers, which is quite appropriately referred to as a mansion. Recycling, being mandatory in Berkeley, caused these obstreperous offspring to regurgitate decades old slogans such as “No justice, no peace” as their broke windows, smashed planters and attempted to torch the joint. Evidentially nobody from the campus ROTC or engineering department participated, otherwise the building would have fallen. See kids, stay in class and learn the proper way to destroy structures.

Berkeley kiddies went kooky due to perceived inequities. Because California is enduring a financial meltdown (primarily from overly generous and routinely gamed public employee compensation), the University system budget was cut and the number of new enrollees was reduced. To compensate, the regents (a word whose root is the same as regency) decided not only to increase student tuition and fees, but also their salaries along with as those of upper echelon managers and faculty.

The lords grew fat and the peasants decided to eat them.

In California and Washington D.C., the same play is performed with nausea-inducing regularity and perpetually bad reviews. People in power explain-away why their salaries should inflate after bankrupting their respective governments and agencies. Doing so in times of prosperity goes largely unnoticed because voters are too busy conspicuously consuming. In tough times, when paychecks have vanished, unemployment insurance is depleted, and homes foreclose, such action incites mobs. Berkley students are a little misguided, angry at having to pay a fuller portion of the full cost of their education. But as they exit their experimental drug haze, they realize that the true problem is that the game is rigged – that those making the rules do so in their own interest. Indeed Berkeley students may be leading a trend in aggressive management of the managers of public (mis)trust.

Welcome to libertarianism kids. It is quite enjoyable once the throbbing in your head dissipates.

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A military tribunal asserts jurisdiction over persons held in military custody and stand accused of being enemies who have violated a law of war.

Incompetency can be a collective trait as well as an individual affliction.

Take the case of Eric Holder, the temporary attorney general in the temporary Obama administration. In the world of constitutional law, central principles and obvious conclusions are common. The nation’s lead lawyer needs to be competent, which means understanding The Law. Yet before taking the Justice Department helm, Holder signed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court Heller handgun ban case, arguing that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” was not a right, nor of the people.

All nine of the Supremes concluded the opposite (though four robed bandits argued that the right could be modified by legislation).

Little is plainer in American law than our list of enumerated prerogatives, quaintly called the Bill of Rights. So solid was the assumption that the Second Amendment, like the others nine, conferred an individual right, that this interpretation was called the standard model. Yet Holder’s incompetency led him to humiliation by publicly arguing the inane opposite.

Which in turn led him to be nominated by Obama to take the top job at the Justice Department.

Like birds with similar plumage, incompetents tend to cluster but congregate around the most maladroit member. And as another failed politician noted “The fish rots from the head down.” In recent weeks we have seen serial incompetency from the Obama Bunch, including but certainly not limited to:

• Scaring women from coast to coast with new and mixed messages about breast cancer
• Ram-rodding a health insurance bill that the 85% of people with coverage oppose
• Bowing to an Emperor though it is not part of American presidential protocol
• A “stimulus” job creation tracking web site that listed non-existent jobs in non-existent congressional districts

But the best of the worst, the cream of the crap if you will, was Holder’s decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to New York for trial. Ignore if you can that Khalid confessed to the war crime that was 9/11, that the military tribunal is the normal venue for trying such case, that Khalid was already “in process” under a military tribunal and that he asked for a conviction and execution. Ignore too – if possible – the inevitable terrorist activities that will be planned and probably executed once Khalid and his co-conspirators are in the Big Apple. Ignore again that the procedures in civil trials allow Khalid’s lawyer to obtain sensitive intelligence information. Ignore that never before has an enemy combatant caught on the battlefield has been tried in civilian court, but Holder was unaware of this and responded to questioning saying that he would “have to look at that.” The combined loss of opportunity (discontinuing a military tribunal which would have most likely resulted in a conviction) and the increased danger to civilians (very few of those at Guantanamo) makes Holder’s decision incompetent beyond even Obama’s standards.

Naiveté creates one brand of incompetence.

When grilled by Senators about his demented decision, Holder made a series of statements that displayed his denseness (as if it were in doubt). Most instructive of his inanities was his assumption that in getting a conviction “failure is not an option”, like the failure he encountered convincing the Supreme Court to ignore a standard model and the right of the people. In simple civil trials, there is always the possibility of procedural errors that let criminals escape on a technicality. Hung juries can lead to acquittals. Terrorists blowing up a court house can nullify a conviction.

Failure may not be an ‘option’ but it can be an outcome, the probability of which is increased if an incompetent is in charge of prosecution and if another is his boss.

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Senator Grassley has dropped the property rights bomb on Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor and she has dodged the issue completely. Sotomayor shows complete comfort with the Kelo revision of the Fifth Amendment and thus lacks respect for the Constitution. Confirmation should be denied on this basis alone.

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You can almost feel Internet cables connected to constitutional law clusters buzzing.

Justice Souter has barely announced his retirement and already the pundits, politicos and prognosticators have leapt to the keyboards, predicting how the judicial bull chips will fall. Activist on the right predict Obama will nominate a hard leftist who views the Constitution as a minor impediment to centralized power. Left-of-center court watchers believe the same thing and actively pray for it.

Some say it won’t make a difference because such a candidate would merely replace one steaming bowl of fetid judicial excrement with another.

I’ll admit I don’t have a complete accounting of Justice Souter’s misdeeds, but two rulings acknowledge that his respect for the express written will of the American people lies somewhere below his feet. America’s list of enumerated rights includes those that The People held holy and denied government the authority to restrict. Yet in two glaring instances Souter sought to redefine the clear and well documented intent of The People, wresting away from individuals the means of self determination and giving unto the government the power to control the masses.

Souter joined the bare majority opinion in Kelo v. City of New London. This case granted government the power to take away a person’s property and give it to another entity, in this case a corporation. The People in their Fifth Amendment said unto the government “nor shall private property be taken for public use.” Souter and his sidekicks went on at length about the disjointed and immaterial concept of “public purpose” and how an allegedly benign and benevolent government should have the power to redistribute real estate for the calculated social improvement of a region.

In other words take away your home and give it to a corporation that promises to pay more taxes than you do.

Last year Souter was on the losing side of a decision, arguing in the Heller case that the phrase “the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” meant that the right should be infringed. As with the Kelo case, arguments against clearly stated and individually reserved rights were suffocated in the type of language only lawyers can utter with straight faces.

Though Souter silently dissented in these cases, his vote counted and showed a predilection for power and not for the privileges and immunities of individuals (i.e., you). Obama could nominate Mussolini’s ghost to replace Souter and the vote tally on individual rights cases would unlikely be altered. The only open question is if outvoted Senate Republican’s will bother uttering the phrase “strict constitutionalist” during confirmation hearings or perceive it to be an utter waste of breath.

Perhaps they simply will avoid inhaling the aroma from the new steaming bowl of fetid judicial excrement.

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