Like any consumer, taxpayers have a right to demand a refund if a product is defective.  Eric Holder is proving himself to have many mental design defects and as such is a completely inoperable device.  He is the Yugo of the American legal system.

Ignoring his leadership, participation in or apologies for previously demonstrated intellectual incapacity, his recent suit against Arizona ranks among the most feeble of legal constitutional law actions.  In twenty five pages of disorganized discourse, Holder managed to give lawyers a bad worse name.  Those of serious con law scholarship – which apparently excludes Obama and Holder – are struggling to regain respiration after reading Holder’s brief.

For those who fleeting moments of sanity have forced to ignore the evening news, Arizona recently enacted a law which will cause illegal aliens to be incarcerated.  AZ decided to do so because the federal government won’t.  In crafting the law, the Deep Ditch State studiously avoided redefining the definition of immigration or legal entry into the U.S.  In other words, they did not want to violate the federal governments defined role as the body that defines immigration law and policy.

Which Holder claims Arizona did.

Our legal system has the notion of preemption, which in simplified forms means if a higher level of government (and by higher I mean more elevated, not more stoned) is granted authority in one aspect of law, any decision they make overrides decisions made by lower and allegedly more sober governing bodies.  Holder rightly cites that the Constitution grants both this preemptive power and that the feds have the authority to define naturalization and immigration law.  Then again kids riding the short bus could make such a simple observation.

This is where Holder leaves the intellectual highway and tumbles into the ditch of dementia.  In his briefs he continually harps on preemption in an apparent attempt to convince somebody that Arizona law is preempting federal law (which, as noted above, is not the case).  He veers into irrelevancies like Congress allegedly having other objectives in immigration policy aside from making unauthorized immigration a crime.  Not seeing the irony, Holder notes that the “President of the United States [has] the authority to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”  {Note to Eric:  He has the duty, not the authority}  If Holder is pitching this perspective to Supreme Court justices, then he runs the risk of one or all nine of them applying a gavel to his skull.  I doubt Eric is so errant as to file suit simply to convince voters of some righteous element of his bosses administration – filing frivolous law suits is for small time criminals, like John Edwards, a level so low that even Eric cannot sink to it.

This, sadly, leaves imbecility as the remaining explanation for his actions.  Eric is not lucid.  Holder is half-baked.  His faculties are deficient, his dendra defunct.  In short, Eric is unsuited and unsuitable for the job that Barack Obama gave him.  As with any useless appliance, he needs to be taken back, the money invested in him refunded, and his parts salvaged for spares.

Bookmark to:

Today has been a complex and interesting day at the intersection of America and Freedom.  We witnessed another fundamental right incorporated against the states, an enemy of freedom die, and another enemy of freedom approach the same court that confirmed the fundamental right that weaves its way through these varied news items.

Thank Gawd for Jack Daniels, the all purpose tool for celebrations and relieving dull headaches from dumpster diving into constitutional law, politics and other unsavory pursuits.

Foremost is the Supreme’s decision in the case of old man McDonald of Chicago, who lives in a crime infested neighborhood in a crime infested city replete with a crime infested government.  Chicago would not let this kindly codger own a pistol for fear he might shoot a criminal, or even someone who didn’t hold office.  Two years ago (Heller case) the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep and bear arms, oddly enough, protected a right to keep and bear arms.  Only imbeciles (and by this I mean Justice Breyer) failed to grasp English and concluded otherwise.

But that decision did not address if the stated right applied to anything but federal territories – the folks in Guam were elated, and people in Chicago were rightly jealous. Old man McDonald argued that like the rights to speech, religion, assembly, press, due process, self-incrimination, public trial, council, trail by jury, reasonable bail and not being beaten up by cops, the right to own a heater could also not be denied by whatever Al Capone descendents were running the local patronage parlor.  McDonald’s argument presented a bit of a conundrum to liberal political activists (Ginsberg, Stevens, Breyer, Sotomayor and their intellectual equals Larry, Curly and Moe):  The court had previously prevented unlisted rights, such as the right to privacy, from being infringed upon by lower levels of government.  Ruling that a clearly stated, enumerated right was not equally protected meant that most of the social liberal enactments of the last 100 years could evaporate in a puff of illogic.

Which is what they tried anyway, launching a thousand mocks.

Court Jester Stevens went into a rambling discourse of irrelevancy that departed jurisprudence and entered the realm of science fiction.  In a rare instance of judicial bitch slapping, Justice Scalia rhetorically mugged Stevens for the latter’s flagrant display of senile dementia.  In words and tone that were openly derogatory – which is relatively unknown in the decorum of the court – Scalia excoriated Stevens and thus gave the old codger a swift kick in his retiring tokus.  Scalia wrote about Stevens’ dissent “The notion that the absence of a coherent theory of the Due Process Clause will somehow curtail judicial caprice is at war with reason.”

This is one judge’s way of saying to another “Your mama!”

Odder than Stevens (a notion that is nearly incomprehensible) was Breyer (who is always incomprehensible).  Breyer squanders his script rearguing the Heller case of two years before, establishing nothing new and picking a fight with the prevailing majority of the court.  This I find amusing for in all confirmation hearings it is the liberal bank of the Senate who grill potential justices on stare decisis, the doctrine that existing decisions should stand lest the judicial activism of the last century vanish due to constitutional fidelity.  If stare decisis is indeed a desirable mandate, why then is a liberal judge trying to unilaterally invalidate a recent court ruling?  Doing so seems to indicate that stare decisis is about as healthy and robust as Ted Kennedy (oh, too soon?)

Buried in this muddle of con law mastication is the corner case of how to keep states from telling old black men they cannot shoot Crips gang members breaking into their homes.  The 14^th Amendment was written to assure that a federal freedom was also a state freedom, and was done so because after the civil war a lot of disgruntled Democrats were routinely robbing free black men of the freedoms they had just received, typically first by disarming them, and then by stretching their necks.  For reasons too laborious to delineate, the better of two clauses in the 14^th Amendment was invalidated by the courts as the means for keeping disgruntled Democrats from re-enslaving black folk (“privileges and immunities” clause and the Slaughterhouse Cases for people with autodidactic masochistic streaks).  Despite the wrongheaded reasoning in the Slaughterhouse Cases, stare decisis (there’s that dirty word again) required that the court ignore pleas made by McDonald to keep Chicago politicians out of private gun safes.  Justice Thomas, an old black man whose parents were not lynched, took it upon himself to write a concurring opinion to educate the court that their previous ruling about the privileges and immunities clause was as coherent as Justice Stevens, which is not at all.  Since the 14^th Amendment and the privileges and immunities clause were written specifically to keep Justice Thomas’ ancestors from being becoming strange fruit, he may well have had very personal reasons for suggesting that stare decisis be a little less rigid and that Supreme Stupidity be subject to review.  It might just keep the Ku Klux Klan from getting uppity.

Of course, that will be more difficult with its reduced membership.

While freedom was being expanded by the Supremes, a supremacist stopped breathing.  Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia (where the state flower is the satellite dish) was the oldest living and longest serving senator and Klan member.  Through the latter half of his career – when being a racist was out of vogue – he made feeble excuses for having joined the Klan.  Byrd enjoyed expanding the power of the federal government and recklessly spending money, which made him a liberal and got him a seat at the leftist table next to Barbara Lee (there is a dinner conversation I would have enjoyed overhearing). This put the liberal establishment in the odd position of apologizing for and praising Byrd while campaigning in black neighborhoods.

We cannot whittle a fine enough point with which to poke Byrd’s corpse.  It is not like the Ku Klux Klan has an obscure brand – when you join you pretty much know the group’s policy and you agree with it.  Claiming, as Byrd did, that joining the Klan was a youthful mistake is like joining the local cannabis club and later being horrified that the members there actually smoke the stuff.  Byrd was a racist – period – and those who make excuses for him are as well.

Amusingly odd then is that on a day when a free black man in a black robe is vigorously defending a constitutional clause designed to promote the liberties of free blacks, that a man who openly sought to keep minorities in servitude goes to God to argue his own case.  This explains why the temperature got a little warmer this morning.  Hell has one more log on the fire.

The last leg of today’s con law carnival is the opening hearings on Elena Kagan, Barack Obama’s latest insult to America.  Now Kagan may be a nice human, but like Obama, she is a proponent of judges redefining the express written will of the American people (a.k.a. The Constitution).  Like his last nominee – who today voted against the right of blacks to own guns – Kagan has no desire to obey The People.  Along with Sotomayor, she has openly said that she is unsympathetic to the notion that there is an individual right in the Second Amendment (you know, the one that says ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms …’).  She was also an instrumental actor in Bill Clinton’s campaign to increase gun control.

I bet she even believes in stare decisis … when it suits her.

The key to disallowing Kagan onto the court is that The People have the right and privilege of knowing with reasonable certainty how a justice will rule, and this requires some judicial history of which Kagan, an academic, has none.  Without such insights, elevating anyone to the Supremes is a crap shoot and you end-up with people holding the judicial stability of Justice Stevens (and he had the benefit of being a lower court judge).  Such judges, like the four who wanted to keep an old black man in Chicago disarmed, subject people to the same dangers that Dixicrats always inflict.

Hmmmm.  Does Kagan’s robe come with a matching hood?

Bookmark to:

Which brings us to the unacceptable submission of Elena Kagan.  We can dismiss her gravitas for a seat on the highest court given her lack of validatable decisions.  Smart as she is alleged to be (which is nonsense as we will see momentarily), having never served as a judge means she served-up no judicial opinions.  Thus The People have nothing solid on which to evaluate her ability as a lower-caste jurist and thus her ability to protect the Constitution, the freedoms of Americans or even if she looks good in a robe (I retain doubts about her visual desirability disrobed).

Keep in mind that she accepted a job in an administration that will last no longer than Jimmy Carter’s, so her judgment skills are already proven deficient.

But we do have her limited work as Solicitor General to review.  For those unacquainted with the mechanics of the monstrosity called constitutional law, the Solicitor General (not to be confused with generals who solicit) represents the alleged position of the United States government when arguments are hurled at the Supreme Court … which is the United States Government.  The SG is appointed by the President and rarely represents anything but the president’s opinion, though that occasionally agrees with the opinion of congress and even more rarely that of The People.

Yes, the game is rigged.

Kagan filed briefs in U.S. vs. Stevens, a nasty affair involving dog fighting and free speech.  Distasteful as they be, the most vile members of society often test and confirm constitutional rights.  Larry Flint argued that Hustler magazine was a form of protected speech and thus made sure every adolescent male could ogle photos of panty hamsters.  Thus in U.S. vs. Stevens the First Amendment was tested again over something more degenerate than Hustler, though the mind boggles at the very prospect.

In Kagan’s brief to the Supremes, she wrote in part:

“Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs” [emphasis clearly not hers]. In her words court watchers hear echoes of Breyer the Senile from his dissent in the Heller gun control case where he waxed ineloquently about a non-existent judicial power to balance enumerated rights with perceived societal “costs.”

What Kagan argued is that judges have the domain to determine what (if any) balance should be struck between a right of The People and the power of the state.  The Constitution is silent on this subject (i.e., The People who ratified the Constitution never granted courts that power) which means that Kagan has already driven off the road of reason and into the rhetorical weeds. There is also the annoying aspect of regulating any right.  As the old law school song would go (if any J.D. candidate had lyrical skills) “How can a right be regulated and not be wrong?”

Aside from the huge sticking point of the judiciary not being granted the power to make such decisions, the other insurmountable obstruction (and one that I devote an entire chapter to in my next book, Catalog of Canards) is that “cost” is a malleable concept.  Some interpret social costs to be direct financial costs to individuals.  Other folk think it is out-of-pocket government expenses including welfare, indigent medical care and congressional bourbon therapy.  Berkeley residents still riddled with psilocybin from their last Grateful Dead road trip perceive more spiritual expenses before subsequent hallucinogenic experiences overtake them.  The definition of social costs is as precise as that for “assault weapons”, both definitions being as narrow as nuclear weapon target diameters.

Quantifying social costs is impossible.

So put yourself in a judge’s robe and picture being so delirious that you believe you have the authority to identify a balance between rights and “costs.”  Where do you begin?  Costs, a concept as solid as Jell-O, has too many parties, angles and elements to measure.  Thus it becomes a judgment call, and judgment is always biased.  Since Kagan comes from the statist klan, we know which side of the scale she’ll lay her finger.

For those issues that the Constitution permits government intrusion into private affairs (which at the federal level is a short, clearly enumerated list) Congress was given the authority to find balance, not the courts.  Kagan professes that the power given to elected officials (who we can fire more easily, or in joyful moments decorate with tar and feathers) be usurped by unelected judges.  Further, given the broad role judges have assumed, they could attempt balancing acts on items over which the Federal government has zero jurisdiction.  In short, Kagan professes to become the conscious of the people and the arbitrator or everything.

The syntactic similarities between arbitrator and traitor may be pertinent here.

Reading further into Kagan’s brief, we see the disturbing instance where she defends indefensible law because it allegedly stops “the erosion of important public mores.”  I love reading this passage to my gay friends and noting that conservatives made the same claims about California’s Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage.  Thus Kagan is intellectually aligned with those who believe that individual rights are subject to majority morality (which is one semantic step away from her being a member of the Moral Majority).  She is confirming my oft spoken observation that there is not a dimes worth of difference between hard-left liberals, hard-right conservatives, and your garden variety jihadist:  they all seek to control their neighbor’s non-destructive behavior.  The liberals have Kagan, the conservatives had Falwell and the jihadists have bombs.

Come to think of it, liberals used to have bombs too.

Let us not waste time on a Senate confirmation process since Kagan has already confirmed her lack of understanding about the express written will of the American people as well as her proffered role therein.

Bookmark to:

What a bunch of racist homophobes.

I decided to inspect a Tea Party today.  Not being a member of any movement, I have watched this one since it was inspired in the latter days of the Bush Botch-up.  I wanted to see if the Tea Partiers had changed much in the subsequent year.  When they initially erupted, it was obvious from the event I attended that members of the nascent mobilization were from every corner of the American political map minus socialists, communists and other lower life forms.  Reacting to taxpayer bail-outs of failed and possibly criminal corporations, conservatives, independents, libertarians and even some classical liberals came out to protest a government that had zero regard for the express written will of the American people (a.k.a. the constitution).

The movement is even more so today.

I chatted with a candidate named Adnan Shahab, which is about as un-Anglo Saxon as one can get without immigrating from another planet.  I overheard a woman who carried a sign reading “I’m an angry Democrat” speak of betrayal by her representative.  One young lady wore tea bags on her hoop earrings while signing-up at an NRA recruiting table (which, I’ll note was doing a brisk business).  All ages, all races, all income levels, and all sexual orientations.  A more mixed demographic cross-section cannot be found outside of … well, it just can’t be found.

Being color blind, egalitarian and “a friend of the family” according to a gay acquaintance, I found none of this unusual from a human perspective, and in some ways from a political one.  But it did raise to the top of my alleged consciousness a question:  What is the common denominator?  Why have such different people banded together and taken to the streets?

Freedom.

Nobody with honest intent can examine bank bailouts or insane and equally unpopular insurance legislation without concluding that our federal government has jumped the rails.  No misreading of the Constitution can cause one to conscientiously conclude that either is permitted by The People.  Even those originally enamored by the current and temporary president are fearful of what may come next.  When theft and conscripted commerce occur, there is in theory no limit on what the federal government could do to individuals.

Freedom is an individual thing.

It is not surprising that the young black fellow in the wheelchair attended the Tea Party, for the concept of slavery is doubly real for him.  The Hispanic woman who struggled to escape from under a dictator’s thumb and come to America now fears the freedoms she longed for will be taken.  The lesbian couple protested because any government that forces them to buy health insurance could force them into re-education camps (for their own good and the good of society of course).

The teenagers see tens of thousands of dollars in federal debt, for which they already are liable, and prefer the freedom of a future.

The People forgive a fair amount of federal skullduggery and ineptitude.  Even the occasional lapse of constitutional commitment from elected servants is considered tolerable if the courts correct it.  But in under two years the wholesale assassination of constitutional government has caused people of every attitude to recognize that Washington no longer considers liberty an imperative.  The social pact between the state and those who created it has been broken.  The government is declining to heel, and its masters are about to jerk government’s dog collar.

It is a people thing.  It is a freedom imperative.  It is an American movement.

Bookmark to:

I keep Bill as a friend because he forces me to think, often in extremely unpleasant ways.  If you ever meet Bill I encourage you to discuss religion, politics or philosophy, but avoid sex.  You simply don’t want to know what is on his mind regarding the last subject.

He was insistent on the question of the morality of murdering members of congress, framing his inquiry in the mechanics of personal privilege.  Bill’s weak suits are law and history, and thus he was exploring as much as pontificating.  In the end we concluded that capping your congress critter was indeed illegal, but in certain circumstance morally justified if not actually an imperative.

(Disclosure:  I am in no way, shape, form or processes advocating killing your congressman, congresswoman, senator or any other office holder.  However, I would not shed a tear if some specific members of congress were suddenly speechless due to being suddenly breathless, and I might even crack open a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels upon the demise of some others).

I must begin this disquieting disquisition by reviewing the subject of slaying.  Homicide, in its strictest definition, is the killing of a hominid, i.e. homo sapiens.  Denuded of the concept of human, a moral creature infused with humane beneficence, hominids are then just a species of animal.  Killing a hominid is mechanically no different than killing a cow except that cows make better hamburger.

Where law and morality untie is that most hominids are also humans.  They imbibe in benign or benevolent behavior, causing harm to nobody in particular.  Thus it is deemed immoral to kill them because they are spiritual kin.  Most species don’t idly kill their own kind because of the obvious Darwinian downside.  Homo sapiens do violate this rule, but on small scales and often with good reason (see below).  Only once in a while, typically under the direction of politicians (see above) is when wholesale homicide is committed.  If it were not for governments, bloodshed would be relatively minimal and we would spend our excess time and wealth killing cattle instead.

(To my vegetarian friends, please note that one must spend a fair amount of time, as I have, around cows to dislike them enough to enjoy continuously eating them)

We recognize three distinct forms of homicide: felonious, justified and meritorious.  Felony homicide is the unwarranted killing of another hominid, and is the stock and trade of street gangs everywhere.  Most governments, police departments, courts and jails are initially constructed to deal with perpetrators of these and equally vile acts.  Executing a prisoner convicted in court of a heinous crime is merely society’s way of outsourcing the work.  After all, lynch mobs and ad hoc burials are sloppy and take away from prime television viewing time (of course, if lynching thugs were televised, you might have the ultimate reality show).

Stipulated then is a moral justification and occasional imperative to homicide, with instigators of incivility being dispatched.  Then killing bad actors by individuals (as opposed to outsourcing the effort to government) falls into the realm of justifiable homicide.  You and your neighbors approve of such killings under well defined circumstances, and have codified these shared beliefs into law.  If someone tries to kill you, you can kill them back.  If they try to kill someone else, as a good neighbor, you can intervene with fatal force (.45 ACP being the preferred means to vacate violent criminals).  There are many other justifiable homicide circumstances, including in most states the prevention of rape.  Thus, it is legal to commit homicide if it is justified, and in a well ordered society, it may be essential – left unchecked, criminals might get elected.

Meritorious homicide is the most interesting mode because it is the most perplexing.  Meritorious homicide is an extension of justifiable homicide – a recognition and appreciation for maintaining civility and public safety by eliminating those who don’t.  But justifiable homicides are in defense against acts by hominids who commit documented crimes.  In cases where individuals lawfully cause civil disorder and endangerment, homicide may be both felonious and meritorious.  By killing such individuals, one can save a vast swath of people from harm, but will by order of law be processed by The People’s crime control outsourcing organization (i.e., jailed, tried and executed).  These are rare instances where someone has a medal pinned on them right before the executioner throws the switch.

Stipulated that the concept of justifiable homicide exists so that any person can maintain their safety and freedom, and protect the safety and freedom of people unable to defend themselves.  Stipulate also that when congress enacts unconstitutional laws that endanger the safety and freedom of The People, the people have the right and possibly the moral imperative to defend themselves.  When we meld in Bill’s observation that it is technically illegal to kill your congress critter, we land squarely at the intersection of felonious and meritorious homicide – that it may be a service to your country and your community to cap a congressman, but it will most likely land you in jail.  You may have a medal pinned to your chest at a most inopportune moment.

This all assumes that the law remains the law.

John Locke, the original libertarian and a man whose influence over the construction of the American Constitution was pervasive, concluded that times arise when the covenant is broken and that rubbing out rubes in the rotunda is perfectly appropriate.  While opining upon the nature of government, Locke lobbed this rhetorical hand grenade at the establishment:

“ … whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.”

The “common refuge” is a rifle and a few rounds of ammo.

Bill’s question – if it was immoral to kill your congressman – fits rather nicely with the established law and Locke.  Violence may rightfully be used in self defense, which includes defense against enslavement, as any underground railroad worker would attest.  Should legislators endeavor to stray from the Constitution, and by such straying, take property or liberty from anyone, then removing the congressperson from the gene pool is morally justified.  In the mechanics of revolutions (such as the little, obscure one of 1776) such actions will be considered felonious by the government, but justified and meritorious by everyone else.

In other words, The People and the government disagree, and The People win by default.

Which brings us to Obamacare and my earlier prediction that some congressman, somewhere, will eventually leak.  Ideology aside, when the government dictates what non-destructive activities the people can and cannot do, they reduce The People to slavery under arbitrary power.  No sane person (which excludes Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) can argue that Obamacare is not an arbitrary exercise of power, or that it does not deprive people of property and self-determination, and hence reduces some or all of the public to a state of slavery.  No less of a man than Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (and there is no lesser man) clearly stated that the reason for the legislation was to address the comically alleged “mal-distribution of income in America.”  Stated a bit more bluntly, he wants to use force (the IRS, federal prison) to take money from one person and give it to another.  Since the person providing the money (you) has no choice in the matter, no way to opt-out of the process, you have become a slave.  Your labor is not for your own benefit, or for the service to all residents (such as funding a police force) but to the arbitrary and capricious direction of the government.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Baucus have just annihilated 147 years of America being a slave-free nation.

Locke said that given these circumstances The People are “absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.”

Bill, your original assumption is incomplete.  Stipulated that the government deems it to be illegal to kill your congressman, but stipulate also that The People are no longer subject to obey that law.  Also stipulate that our ancestors killed red coats, mainly for the fun of it, but also because Locke was right.  Doing so again may be justified and meritorious.

Bookmark to:

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.

Bookmark to:

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.

Bookmark to:

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.

Bookmark to:

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.

Bookmark to: