Thugs 1 People 0

By now, we know that the Supreme Court by a 5 to 4 margin has ruled that a Washington, D.C. city law banning handguns is unconstitutional. The ruling will have a nationwide impact, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) has already announced its intent to file lawsuits to overturn similar laws elsewhere.

One of NRA’s targets will be San Francisco. Maybe the Mayornoter and the Supes can mount a pre-emptive strike and work together to craft a constitutionally acceptable ordinance. But that’s a tall order given the current composition of the Supreme Court.

The court’s rationale in this case was quite simple.

Justice Scalia, mouthpiece of the Back to 1791 Movement, summed it up neatly when he said the Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791 (not passed as come Tallking Pinheads continue to phrase it) is still effective today and it isn’t the duty of the courts to change it.

Translation: Jeez, any idiot ought to be able to read plain English.

Scalia believes that judges should not legislate from the bench. If society wants to change the Constitution, then society ought to amend the Constitution.

The problem is that today’s ruling changed not only the Constitution but several centuries of accepted English language usage, which is after all, the language of the Constitution.

Scalia and his cohorts effectively eliminated modifying clauses from the language and the law. Here’s how they managed to do it. The original language in the Second Amendment reads:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Now, we might rightly and fairly ask, were the Founders so dumb they inserted a boatload of extra words in our sacred text? Scalia apparently thinks so. His ruling erased everything preceding “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Almost every sane individual of my acquaintance, which includes a lawyer or two, understands that the words before the money sentence are modifying words and clauses. They are there for a clarifying purpose. They set the conditions for gun ownership and relate such ownership to a well-regulated militia.

We can better understand the Amendment if we wrote it in modern English, like this:

Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Or this way:

A well-regulated militia is necessary to a free state. Therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Most of us aren’t attorneys or grammarians, but we have enough moxie to understand the purpose behind Scalia’s specious reasoning. This quintessential 18th Century neocon, wants to lock pet neocon programs in concrete before GB becomes a footnote to a footnote.

And it’s possible he has succeeded. At the very least, he’s made it possible for any garden-variety thug to walk in a store and buy a gun. Of course, thugs get guns anyway, but now, they’ll become easier to buy. Wanna shoot a few more innocent people along Bay Area freeways? No sweat, pal. Tell ‘em Scalia sent you.

This ruling has also given a boost to the fortunes of gun manufacturers and a host of economic activities that profit from the sale of guns and ammunition. A thousand years from now, aliens from another universe will land and unearth millions of petrified guns and little oblong pellets that look oddly like goose droppings. “This is a dead civilization,” they will conclude and fly away to another spot.

In support of his decision, Scalia called handguns the prefect weapon for home defense. Light in weight and easy to use, handguns permit a person to use one hand to dial 911 while pointing a gun at a burglar with the other hand. What’s a homeowner to do if the burglar is pointing a Dirty Harry special at the him or her?

As an ex-member of the gun culture and an expert marksman in the military service, I can support the contention that facility with a handgun is one thing. The presence of mind and a willingness to use one under pressure are something else again. Few people possess the latter abilities.

Congratulations, Scalia! You’ve done your job for the thugs.

Technorati Tags: Supreme Court,Gun Control,Antonin Scalia,Second Amendment

Let’s Arm the Monkeys, Too

Once, I was quite proficient with firearms, so proficient, in fact, that I accidentally shot a friend in his right calf with a single-shot .22 caliber rifle.

Now, shooting someone standing right in front of you takes a sharp eye and a steady hand. I had the sharp eye but the Earp steadiness of hand was absent then.

Friends of mine were equally proficient. One fired a .12 gauge shotgun so near my head that the sound deafened me and I felt the heat and rush of air as the shot passed, ruffling my hair.

And as a group, we engaged in a highly intelligent form of enjoyment we called “shotgun wars.” This quaint frontiersman game required us to choose sides and repair to opposite ends of a wood and fire toward the other group through the tress. If we were lucky the Number 9 buckshot would whistle through the trees over our heads. If luck was on vacation, a shot or two would deflect from a limb and whap the ground around us or maybe one of us.

But all of this was good clean fun and handy training for the day we would venture forth to defend our country.

That was when I learned to master an M-1 Carbine and was invited to join the rifle team because I took advantage of Kentucky Windage and hit the bull’s eye on a target 100 yards downrange.

That’s when I began to think, too, that hitting a target was one thing, purposely hitting a real live human being was something else entirely.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a combat soldier. I pulled a Cheney and opted out of the heroism associated with a combat infantryman. I choose the honorable road and enlisted in the Air Force before my draft notice arrived. Assign a degree of cowardice to my action, but at least it wasn’t Cheney Craven.

Anyway, fooling around with large rifles and such with the power to blow the head off of a human from a long distance sort of made me wonder if I actually had the stomach for it. I realized quite well that my adolescent shotgun games were foolish and I was one of the biggest fools of all.

Now eight fools on the United States Supreme Court are poised to permit 290,000,000 individual American fools and God knows how many immigrant fools to individually own a gun in the name of self-defense against the other fools with guns.

All men and a lot of women as well assert forcefully that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone to save their own lives or the lives of their loved ones. But will they, can they, when push comes to shove? The U.S. Supreme Court of Fools didn’t address that issue.

If they had, they may have learned about a widespread reluctance among humans to actually zero in on other humans and kill them dead. I am reminded of at least one study, maybe two, about the reactions of men in combat in World War II and Vietnam.

In Vietnam, fewer than three out of ten men in combat fired at their opponents.

In World War II, about 15 to 20 percent of combat soldiers fired at the enemy.

These data have been questioned, but even if the results are somewhat less than totally accurate, they nonetheless speak of a widespread hesitance to fire a weapon under pressure that belies a sense of preparatory youthful bravado.

Transfer the reluctance of trained combat soldiers to a civilian population and combine it with a simple lack of knowledge about firearms, and we can easily recognize the implausibility and dangerousness inherent in an armed population of fools.

Stop and think for a moment about the necessary combination of skillfulness and dextirity needed pull a gun and shoot someone who is preparing to do the same to you in time to save your own life. These are merely a few required items of equipment, coordination, and steadiness necessary to execute a successful moment of self-defense.

1. The right kind of weapon for the task. It isn’t practical to carry a rifle around and shoot someone before they are near enough to harm you.
2. Skill in the use of the chosen weapon. Surprisingly, pulling out a gun, getting it ready to fire, aiming it, and pulling the trigger require speed, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and a steady hand.
3. Grace under pressure. The ability to face danger without panic and act with accuracy and deliberation.
4. The ability to concentrate on your target when other actions around you may distract you.
5. An instinct for pointing your weapon, probably a pistol, in the right direction without having to aim.

There are more complexities involved in firing a gun at a live human. Very few of us possess the necessary traits of body and mind.

I wonder if the individuals who steer our United States’ Ship of Fools possess the wisdom to render other fools ineffective by retaining a ban on weapons in Washington, D.C. I kind of doubt it.

A Short Story about a Fool: A young man in Texas, a friend, bragged that if a suicide bomber walked into a mall “around here” and set off a bomb strapped to his chest, “We’d get our guns and shoot him.”

Sadly, a true story. Fools endure forever.

Technorati Tags: Supreme Court,Gun Control,Foolishness

Come on down. Let’s play gotcha.

Politics is one of our interests, and I suppose by some stretch of the imagination that we could characterize tonight’s debate between Hillary and Barack as politics.

Our tendency is to place it in the category of game shows. The show in this case lends itself to several titles. We could call it “Gotcha,” which would certainly be apt in light of our tendency to believe that if one contestant scores a “gotcha,” then the other contestant loses the game and is therefore unqualified to be President.

Or we could call it “Water Boarding.” Watching the twisted countenance of Tim Russert as he tortuously attempted to drown out the candidates’ responses in a flood of interruptions was certainly a form of torture for anyone interested in a complete answer.

The problem with debates these days, as always I am sure, is that debates measure nothing substantive. A President doesn’t spend his or her time scoring points and posting them on a tally sheet. All executives, including presidents, must make decisions and execute actions. The best debater in the world would probably make a lousy President.

Well, some say, debates give the voters an idea of how the candidates stand on the issues. That would be a fine argument except for a minor matter. An undecided voter in the 21^st Century is a species on the verge of extinction. This century has been a divisive political era for its first few years, and a surplus of Americans have been locked in to one side or another from the beginning. Besides, getting a straight answer from a politician can’t be achieved in the time allotted.

Others may say, well, we can gain an idea of how well the candidates function under pressure without sweating. That’s a fair enough argument. Hemingway once wrote “Courage is grace under pressure.” But courage when it counts isn’t measurable by one’s excellence in language or by the ability to score debate points. The pressures of the world are not the pressures of a debate.

When we get right down to it, debates do not measure anyone’s ability to perform as a president. If debates serve a purpose, it’s as a means of reinforcing our belief that we really participate, that we really count. A debate is a ceremonial rite of American democracy.

Winston Churchill once wrote something along these lines, “Democracy is the worst form of government ever conceived by men. Except for all of the others.”

Maybe that’s true of debates as well. Debates are the worst possible means of measuring the qualities of a president. Except for all of the others.

Shoot from the hip analysis

Another draw. On the whole, a very equable debate. Both performed well. Barack seemed more assured than he did in past debates. But Hillary was at the top of her game, too. So far, no substantive differences between the candidates have become apparent. To Hillary’s credit, she called Tim Russert on his constant interruptions. He was the worst part of this show. The real question for the Democrats now is who can beat John McCain.

Okay, talking heads, let the parsing begin.

Berkeley and the Marines—what’s the big deal?

I’m swimming against the tide here, but I see no problem with a Marine recruiting station in Berkeley. Here’s why:

East Bay youth have right to enlist

Many young people want to become a Marine for different reasons. Who are we to question their motivations? Who are we to single out East Bay youth for special treatment and tell them, in essence, “Wanna be a Marine? Hit the road to Kansas City, Jack.”? All Americans have a perfect right to pursue the careers of their choice. As freedom-loving Americans, we have no right, legal or moral, to prevent them from following a legitimate path.

Hate this war but need strong military

Sure, we all oppose the war and we want our troops out of Iraq. But whether we like this specific war or not, the Marine Corp is an integral and necessary component of our national defense posture. This particular conflict, by the way, wasn’t initiated by ordinary service people but by our civilian political “hard-power” proponents of foreign policy. Regardles of who started it, however, we nevertheless need a strong military force just in case. The international system is unstable at the moment and we must be prepared. There will be legitimate wars, and unless the United States government actively maintains a prepared military force, it would fail in its fiduciary responsibilities to “provide for the common defense” as the Constitution explicitly requires of Congress, not the President and not the Commander in chief who are the executors of policy established by Congress. The present expansion of presidential power is unprecedented, attributable in large measure to the gutlessness of the Democratic Congress. As citizens of the United States, we are also culpable in permitting the current state of affairs to have come about. We ought to possess but apparently lack the common sense to understand that we also play an essential supporting role in our own defense of the freedoms we enjoy despite the little glitches that come out of The Beltway from time to time. So far we haven’t done a very good job of watching the henhouse, irrespective of the widespread vote against the Republican war policies in the last congressional election. The present dilemma has been a long time coming and the American public failed to recognize the signs. As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Misguided 2008 election strategy

By issuing a proclamation that many have interpreted as a legal order requiring the Marines to leave Berkeley, the Berkeley City Council has handed the Republicans a ready-made and very powerful issue against the Democrats in the 2008 elections. There is no question that the Republicans are going to use the fear factor in their campaigns as never before. And as much as I don’t like to point this out, the intelligence level of the vaunted “American voter” doesn’t quite measure up to that of the professionally trained political strategists and tacticians. If Americans actually were as intelligent as the politicians like to remind them, the damned polls wouldn’t go up and down like a yo-yo with every slanted, incomplete, and inaccurate advertisement in favor of and against this or that candidate. When we get right down to it, politicians make better fear mongers than the medical-industrial complex with its pill for every ailment known to man and if we don’t swallow “their” pill, we have a 99 and 44/100^th percent chance of expiring before we leave the building. The Berkeley City Council has just certified the Republican mother of all miracle pills, guaranteed to cure our abject and debilitating fear, or else. That we continue to buy into the fear factor is just another element of proof for the validity of Pogo’s observation.

Save Energy for bigger battles

Yes, the Council had a perfect right to issue its proclamation. And Code Pink along with its right-wing opponents have their own perfect rights to demonstrate against a Marine Corp recruiting station on Shattuck. And just in case we forget, the Marine Corp has a perfect right to be there. I think those who agitate and demonstrate against whatever they agitate and demonstrate against are missing the point. The Council resolution never had the chance of a snowball in hell of jacking the Marines out of Berkeley. The resolution has no legal force or effect. It is merely a paper document expressing the sense of the council, much as Congress often issues equally worthless “sense of the Congress” resolutions. If the Berkeley City Council ever took its case all the way to the Supreme Court, it would lose in a heartbeat. A good strategist picks the time and place of his/her battles. The time to re-address this issue is after a Democratic administration assumes power in January 2009. Energy saved is energy available for bigger battles.

Wrap up: pragmatic moderation a lonely life

Okay, condemn me to hell for being a right-wing Fascist pig. That’s one of the hazards of moderation. We live in a lonely world.

Acts of Omission

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

These words are from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Do you notice anything striking about them?

Read again the first five words: Congress shall make no law…

Given these plain words—Congress shall make no law– how do we explain the many limits on personal freedoms we find in the history of our country? For example, if Congress shall make no law against whites and blacks assembling together, how do we explain a 165-plus year history of enforced segregation in the U.S.?

If Congress shall make no law against the marriage of whites and other races, or of the marriage of members of the same sex, how do we explain a history of governments forcibly preventing those marriages?

One potential answer may lie in this question. Do those words say, “the state of Nebraska shall make no law” or “a corporation shall make no rule” or “a religious organization shall make no canon” or “the president shall make no signing statement?”

The answer of course is no, and therein lies the source of almost all socially and culturally restrictive laws in the United States. The restrictions mentioned and others were and still are a product of state laws.

How can this be? How can states make laws that violate the Constitution? That’s a leading question. These laws do not violate the plain words of the Constitution. The rationale is simple when you think about it: the Constitution doesn’t specifically say we can’t; therefore, we can. We’ve all used this logic in our daily lives. I have. So do those who legislate and interpret laws.

Or to put it in constitutionally-relevant terms, the Bill of Rights did not originally apply to the states, and even now, a few of those pesky First Ten Amendments to the Constitution still do not restrict state action. Consider:

• 1833. The Marshall Supreme Court concluded there was no expression in the Bill of Rights “indicating an intention to apply [guarantees of the Bill of Rights] to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them.” From David M. Obrien’s Constitutional Law and Politics: Volume II, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
  
• 1845. The Marshall ruling reaffirmed.
  
• 1922. Supreme Court rules “the Constitution of the United States imposes upon the states no obligation to confer upon those within its jurisdiction…the right to free speech.” From O’Brien.
  
• Present. Marshall’s original ruling of 1833 has never been reversed by the Supreme Court or otherwise expressly overruled. O’Brien.
  

Why would the all-seeing, all-knowing Founders have omitted a restriction on state power? To begin with, the Founders were the products of their time and place and an existing social and cultural order with all of the attendant norms. The “people of the United States” were previously British colonists whipped around at the whim of King George. When they gained independence, they decided that any central government they created would have no such power over their lives.

The Founders did not, could not, have foreseen the evolution of American society from an agrarian, loosely connected conglomeration of isolated communities into an industrial and military world power. Hence, they created a federal system in which almost all power was retained by the states, including the power to restrict the civil liberties of all resident’s within their respective borders if they so chose.

The question now is how or by what mechanism have we reached a point in our constitutional history when most of the restrictive state laws and constitutions no longer have effect? Did we suddenly become enlightened and eliminate them? No. The laws and discriminatory portions of state constitutions were invalidated one by one by the U.S. Supreme Court under a concept called the Nationalization of the Bill of Rights or sometimes the Selective Nationalization of the Bill of Rights.

Some examples will serve to illustrate the snail’s pace at which fundamental rights became available to citizens by Supreme Court rulings rather than through state legislative action.

• 1927 Freedom of speech
• 1931 Freedom of the press
• 1934 Freedom of religion
• 1958 Freedom of Association
• 1965 Right to privacy

Some have characterized the Supreme Court’s actions as interference in state’s rights. Others have used terms such as “activist judges” who “legislate from the bench.” The legal terminology is Judicial Review, a practice originating with the Marshall Court in which federal courts may under some circumstances review state actions for constitutionality. Almost all cases involving civil rights were taken to the U.S. Supreme Court because state legislatures and state courts failed to provide relief through the political process.

In one well-known case, Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court invalidated the 50-year old practice of separate but equal facilities under which many states prevented the integration of the races in schools. Subsequent to this ruling, President Eisenhower used federal troops to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

There followed a number of school integration clashes in the South, notably one in which the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, vowed “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

This archaic attitude exemplifies the philosophy of those who wish to roll back the Constitutional clock.

Notes:

1. The rationale for the Nationalization of the Bill of Rights is frequently said to be based on the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads in part, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
   
2. I wrote this essay several years ago. Some progress has been made in the arenas of civil and political rights, but social progress remains problematic. Archaic attitudes are alive and well.
   

Men, Women, Money

Who makes more money, men or women? We all know the answer, but bizjournals offers photographic proof.

Check its January 14, 2008, issue for an article on “Highest-paying occupations in the private sector.” You don’t have to believe in hidden meanings or symbolism to note that more men than women are portrayed in the illustrations accompanying the article. Men usually appear in the foreground as bosses with women primarily as background. In fact, a male does not appear as a background player in a single photo.

Think about this:

• Men predominate in traditionally male occupations like Chief Executive Officers, physicians and surgeons, dentists, lawyers, pilots and flight engineers, securities and commodities sales, computer information systems managers, optometrists, financial managers, computer software engineers, announcers, and industrial production managers.
• Women hold the top spot in occupations like marketing sales managers, pharmacists, office/operations manager, computer information science, and public relations managers.

If we accept the composition and arrangement of bizjournals’ pictures as truly representative of today’s workforce, we may conclude that the division of labor in America still runs roughly along the customary male/female fault lines.

True, women in the 21^st Century enjoy more personal freedoms than ever before. And I can cite many examples of successful women. But these are exceptions. The vast majority of women in the U.S. workforce hold low and middle paying jobs with little or no opportunity for advancement into the upper ranks. Men may argue that they encounter similar barriers, but they enjoy a simple advantage. They can slide easily into the good old boy club.

We all know that real freedom is a code word for money. Money counts whether we like it or not. Money may not buy happiness, but it can certainly buy the things that contribute to happiness.

Topping the list of things money can buy is a sense of security, a feeling that the future is safe and sound; a knowledge that we can afford a house without a monthly mortgage payment that exceeds all reasonable expectations. The feeling of security is important to us all but more so to a single working woman. Perhaps even more to single women in San Francisco.

The Bay Area in its entirety and San Francisco in particular have become overly expensive. The middle-class is shrinking, as long-time residents find themselves in a crunch. An annual salary of $45,000 doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. And in this monetary squeeze, women seem to take a disproportionately tough hit.

One viable opportunity is a daily or weekly commute. But houses and condos as distant as the Gold Country are sky high. In the past, I have often suggested tongue-in-cheek that an abandoned mine shaft in Cyclopic, Arizona, would suffice. In Cyclopic, you may encounter a wild burrow or two, and if you’re lucky, some ghosts from the Beat Generation. Now, Cyclopic sounds well within the bounds of practicality.

Slavery was good for the slaves—Holy Scheise!

I did not know that. But Michael Medved says so. In his article on TownHall.com, he gives us Six Inconvenient Truths about Slavery in America. We won’t go into all of them, but one deserves special attention: There is no Reason to Believe that Today’s African-Americans Would be Better Off if Their Ancestors Had Remained Behind in Africa.

Wow. He said a mouthful, didn’t he? How could any thinking human disagree with such impeccable logic? Well, I am not a thinking human, so let me take a stab at a minor flaw in his usual illogical persona.

“…if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa.” Did I read that correctly? The ancestors of modern-day African-Americans had a choice? They could have remained in Africa? But somehow in the far-seeing wisdom often found in the worlds of common folk, they looked up at the stars and envisioned a future for their progeny, a future of social integration, educational parity, economic superiority, and white servants?

With the acumen of ages, they drew on their infinite well of mysterious vision and recognized the challenges ahead. They understood fully the rigors of an extended apprenticeship, learning life skills like cotton picking and singing paeans to Ole Man Ribber on the Mississippi levees and docks followed by years of shining shoes in cosmopolitan places like New York, St. Louis, and Oakland.

They discussed all of this in privy councils throughout Africa, and only then did they voluntarily permit themselves to be torn from their families, chained, beaten, thrown on tiny bobbing boats slippery with regurgitated gruel, just so two hundred years hence, their offspring and their offspring’s offspring could eventually give birth to the blues, thus permitting Elvis Presley to make a fortune.

Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Today’s Walking
FUBAR: Michael Medved