I have one question about this article.  Can anyone guess the question and then give me an actual legal answer?

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As I have said before, here, The Bill of Rights is the TRUE foundation of our American Experiment.  It tells the lying assbags in DC what they are simply not allowed to do. Period.

The BoR also says that these are not our ONLY rights, but that we do indeed keep other, unenumerated rights exclusively.

Bill, Happy Birthday.  I hope to be able to wish you that again next year.

Quick question:  Which of these stories is more likely to be Joe Biden’s “manufactured crisis” where we won’t like what the Obama administration does to “fix” it?

The one where Western citizens are killed wholesale abroad by terrorists commiunicating via satelite phone to Pakistan? Or the one where the king of Saudi Arabia decides that he ain’t getting enough cash for his crude?

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“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

“A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.”

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

“This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

“Let it [the Constitution] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”

“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from … the Declaration of Independence … that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence … I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

“Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.”

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

“When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.”

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

All of the above are A. L. quotes.  I think B.O. gave us some things a little less inspiring, yes?

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Really? The One is like Lincoln?

Let’s think about this for a minute.

Abe’s father was a sunofabitch who abandoned him. Obama? Check.

Abe took in a strong political adversary into his cabinet? Obama? Check.

Abe was willing to suspend civil liberties, tell industries what they could and could not produce, and gave fuck all about the rights of individual states. Obama? Check.

Abe took over as president of a country on the verge of civil war.  Obama? Check.

There the similarities stop.

Leaving out the absent father aspect, Lincoln raised himself and his sister after being abandoned.  He educated himself, provided food and shelter for his family during bitter cold winters, and interposed himself against the political machine to defeat it when he finally rejoined civilization. O was raised in relative luxury in Hawaii and/or Indonesia, went to private schools, and when he joined the political scene did so with the full backing of an entrenched Chicago political machine.

Abe took Seward into his cabinet because he wanted the best minds he could get to advise him.  Obama is picking opponents to join him in order to derail any further political aspirations they may have, root out long secreted skeletons, and have figureheads without the political credit to stand up to him.

Before and during the Civil War, Lincoln suspended rights granted by the Constitution, usurped the legal powers of State governments, and illegally held political prisoners.  He did these things with the full consent of the Legislature and the Court in order to preserve the Union. He also forced factories, shippers, farmers, and businesses of all sorts to turn their production to the war effort, regardless of the political slant of the owners.  He did this also to preserve the Union.  Obama has stated that he wants to bankrupt the coal industry, redistribute the wealth and assets of the middle and upper classes, and gives no faith to the rights of individual states to determine their own laws, unless of course that law helps a pregnant woman kill her unborn, third trimester baby. His party has spoken of indicting people for their political actions, nationalizing entire segments of our industry, and using the courts to nullify law duly enacted by and for the citizens.  His reason for these policy decisions is not the preservation of our Union, but rather is the further Balkanization of it.

Did Lincoln know his country was heading for civil war? Yes.  Does Obama? He doesn’t have a clue. I guess they aren’t too much alike after all.

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Government
Definition from Merriam-Webster:

The organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it

Definition from Cambridge:

The group of people who officially control a country:

Definition from Dictionary.com:

The political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration: Government is necessary to the existence of civilized society.

Mortimer J. Adler defines government thus:

“Government, with the authority to make laws, to adjudicate disputes, and to issue administrative decisions, and with a monopoly of authorized force where it fails to persuade, is an indispensable means, proximately, to the peace of communal life.”

So, in the English Language, we cannot quite agree what exactly “Government” means.  We can make moral judgments on what a government is supposed to do, what powers it has, and who controls it. We can have philosophical discussions about the extent of government reach, what limits the government has when applied to the daily lives of the governed, or how the government is allowed to enforce its will.  We could even debate by what moral code the government has actually achieved its place of power in the first place.

And it is all bullshit.

I am a pragmatist and a realist.
Government is simply this, according to Ted Bronson, not a philosopher, not a poly-sci major, and most days not even particularly interested in what the majority of people around the world do to occupy their time:

Government is the instrument that human beings create and use to control other people.

People want so very much to exert external control on the internal workings of the human mind that they create governments.  People have so little faith in their fellow man, that they want somebody, anybody, to keep them safe from the vandals at the gate.  People have so little faith in themselves that they create a mystical uberbody that they then empower to do the things that they themselves cannot do.  In other words, people want stability, safety, and order in an unstable, dangerous, and disorderly world.  For this they invent governments.

The rules that any given government operates under are as varied as there are countries, ya?  From Communist China to Canada, Zaire to Aden, the U.S. of A. to Mexico.  Not one governmental system on this planet is identical to another.  Some work better than others, most just do the best the can and struggle through.  Nazi Germany worked. The Pharaohnic dynasties worked.  Rome and Greece worked. I think it is safe to say that the value of the individual was pretty damn low on the totem pole in their list of priorities, but they all worked.  At least until they stopped working.

Regardless of how these governments came to power, via whatever form of cultural evolution or chicanery, divine right or logical thought, they all failed for one simple reason:

They broke faith with their populations.

They stopped listening to the people who had entrusted them with power. These governments failed to notice that they were no longer giving to their populations protections from predation, stability of commerce, or even an orderly progression of events that allowed them, the people, to raise their families without fear.

And now it is happening again.

When ACORN is actually empowered to count the votes in Minnesota, when Ohio has 200,000 ‘questionable’ registrations and election is decided by 200,000 votes, when racist thugs are standing outside the polling booth in Pennsylvania, I say that the order and safety of the election is probably in question.

When our current administration is hell bent on selling us down the river in order to ‘rescue’ the economy, heedless to the fact that there is no way in the nine hells of the Inferno that we could ever pay it back, I say that stability of commerce is in question.  Especially when one considers that the original “plan” puts a blank check in the hands of ONE man who is then charged with fixing everything but has no controls or oversight placed on him; and he then changes the plan that got rammed through the Legislature.

When our borders are a sieve through which the uneducated dregs or the violent zealots of the world pass through with impunity, and the guards who are charged with securing it are put in solitary confinement, I say that the predators are already amongst us.

The predators are inside the walls. Failure one.

Businesses cannot function without massive governmental interference. Failure two.

The very system that is supposed to create the orderly transfer of power from one officeholder to another has been corrupted. Failure three.

And here we sit, watching it happen.

A couple hundred years ago, some bright boy figured out that the purpose of government was to protect the ability of an individual to pursue Happiness.  The same guy said something about Liberty, rights being so obvious that they were self-evident, and that governments should be laid on a foundation of principles and organized to best effect such pursuit.  He also said a little something about the government deriving its power from those it served.

There might be something to all that.

We live in a Republic.  Meaning we all have a voice, but we hire people to carry out our will.

Is it our will that land and homes can be confiscated in order to make room for a higher taxable mega property?

Is it our will that we are barred from utilizing our own resources?

Is it our will that a moneyed minority can affect the transition of our elected offices?

Is it our will that laws passed by a majority of voters, changes to a state constitution no less, can be abrogated by a room full of lawyers and guys wearing robes? Or even that such laws be allowed to be placed on a ballot in the first place?  Or that a State’s governor won’t touch it but will encourage the courts to rule against it?

Is it our will that our government has reason one to poke its nose into what you and your doctor talk about behind the office door, or how you bargain for payment?

Is it our will that a labor union can bring an entire industry to it’s knees, and our government will only make it easier for unions to continue their stranglehold?

Is it our will that the federal government owns more real estate than any single private citizen, thereby preventing citizens from utilizing it?

Is it our will that our government deny us the ability to protect ourselves in our homes or places of business with the best or most effective tools available?

Is it our will that the fruits of our labor be divided forcibly between us and those who need an apple? How about when they come for the whole tree? The orchard?

Is it our will that the people we hire to represent us and hear our voices refuse to listen when we seek relief from what we see as injustice or even just poor management?

Is it our will to be “volunteered”?

Is it our will to send billions of our soon to be inflated/deflated/stagflated currency overseas in an effort to ‘combat worldwide poverty’?

Or is that above list of questions somewhat similar in tone to that list of grievances that same bright boy made a couple hundred years ago?

The current administration has shown no signs of being responsive to the people who put them office, nor has it fulfilled all of the basic tenets of what a government is supposed to do or not do. The next one that takes office in January has stated that not only will it continue said poor governance, but will heap further abuses upon us, the citizens of this country. 300 million people live here.  Less than half voted in the last election.  About eight million votes (three percent of the population) made the difference between winning and losing.

There are at least 23 million veterans in this country.  Vets who, like myself, took an oath to defend my country and my Constitution from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.  If these continued abuses don’t stop, if my government continues to ignore the basic foundations of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, will we see the day when these vets will stand up and say, with one loud voice, that these scoundrels are no longer representing the citizenry, and we want our government back?

Our government has broken faith with us.

My city on the hill isn’t shining right now.

Is it time to turn the lights back on?

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Right now, there’s a big kerfuffle on the right side of the internet about Obama’s plan to require or strongly encourage volunteerism among the citizenry in exchange for a $4,000 tax break. It goes something like this: you work up to 100 hours a year in some non-salaried capacity, and the federal government gives you $4,000 dollars off your taxes. You get the money even if you didn’t pay $4,000 in taxes in the first place.

I’ve got several problems with that, personally, but there’s one I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else yet, which is this:

People, generally speaking, will expend the least effort to produce the greatest rewards possible under a given set of circumstances.

Call it rules-lawyering. Call it playing the system. Call it exploitation. Whatever you call it, it’s basic human nature. We want the most stuff for the least work. Which, in this case, means that people who otherwise would never set foot in the direction of a charitable organization will instead show up and do a half-assed job of it. Maybe even quarter-assed.

They won’t care about whatever cause they are working for. All they’ll want is the tax refund, so they’ll do as little as humanly possible to qualify for it. The country will be awash in unmotivated clockwatchers, who will probably wind up doing more harm than good, and getting in the way of those who actually want to serve their communities.

I know there are those who think that once people get involved, they will find reason to do their best to aid their fellow man. Those people are wrong. You can barely get some people to do jobs they actually applied and interviewed for in their chosen career fields. People will wander the sides of roads instead of picking up the trash they were sent there after. People will work on their novels instead of answering the suicide hotline. Do you want to live in a house built by people effectively forced to be there? If so, how far behind schedule are you willing to let the project fall?

The government can’t use results-based qualifiers to determine if the volunteerism was sincere, because there will be people who are properly motivated, who want to put in the time, but who, due to circumstances, physical or mental limitations, and/or the glut of their fellow citizens, simply cannot get the job done. They’d be asking for lawsuits.

You cannot make people be nice. All you can do is annoy them, and make them resent your attempt. “Mandatory volunteerism” of any stripe is doomed to failure from the outset.

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With the presidential election one week away, there’s one idea I would like to start circulating, which is this:  vote for the candidate you want in office.

I know, that sounds self-evident.  However, for too many people, all that matters is that they voted for the guy who eventually won, rather than the guy they would have preferred to win.  Or, all their friends, co-workers, and other acquaintances say they’ll be voting for one guy, so they vote the same way to fit in.  Either way, I want to discourage such behavior in the strongest possible terms.

If you don’t vote for the candidate you prefer, there is no way he can possibly win.  If all your friends say they’re voting one way, go ahead and vote the other way if you want to.  Maybe your friends are atypical, and the majority agrees with you.  Or maybe they’re lying because they think that’s what you want to hear.  Or maybe it really is a foregone conclusion that your chosen candidate cannot win your state, in which case your vote for the preordained loser is purely a personal stand against your own hypocrisy and for your own principles.  And maybe you’ll wind up being pleasantly surprised.

You don’t get anything for picking the winner.  It’s not a horse race.  Your taxes won’t be any lower.  You don’t get five minutes alone with the winner to suggest things.  You might get a warm fuzzy for “being on the winning side,” but that pales in comparison to the pain of four years of the nation being driven the wrong direction when you had a chance to prevent it and did nothing.

Remember, it’s a secret ballot.  Vote for the guy you want.  Claim you voted for whomever you feel like.  No one’s going to go back and check.

Also remember that the exercise of your right to vote is intended to be your voice in the Great Experiment of American representative democracy.  People gave their lives, and are still giving their lives, so that you, the average American citizen, could have a say in how the nation is governed.  That simple notion, which most people take for granted or ignore completely these days, is astonishing, ridiculous even.  Ultimately, everything the United States does is the responsibility of each of its citizens, because we vote to choose the people who make the decisions that affect the entire world, or because by not voting we allow others to choose those people for us.

So vote.  Exercise your power as an American.  Select the candidates whose policies and positions you think would be most beneficial to the United States, or your particular state, as applicable, and vote for each one for that reason.  Don’t follow the crowd.  Don’t worry what people will think.  Don’t give away that most precious of rights, self-determination.  You have the right to make up your own mind and do exactly what you want inside the voting booth.  Don’t screw it up.

Think.  Decide.  Vote.

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Florida sucks. This November we have not 1, but 6 Constitutional Amendments to vote on. Lucky us, there was originally 9 to ponder over, but we’ve managed to whittle it down a few. Only one actually removes power from the state government but is worded in such a way that even I had misread it and was planning on ticking off No.

We’ve got deleting provisions that allow the Legislature to regulate private property of illegal aliens, preventing gays from being as miserable as heterosexuals, wind damage, land classification, waterfront assessment, and increasing taxes for community colleges.

It surprises me that there’s not a constitutional amendment to regulate the number of squares of toilet paper one can use when hitting the can. Heck, use the Florida Constitution instead, there’s enough pages to go around and it’s not like people aren’t metaphorically wiping their asses with it anyway.

Why people think that amending the constitution to give the state power into such private matters as what kind of insurance you might think about getting or determining what your land is worth or what it can be used for is beyond me. I want my constitution to recognize my rights, require that my representatives recognize them as well, and that’s all. “Prohibiting consideration of changes or improvements to residential real property which increase resistance to wind damage and installation of renewable energy source devices as factors in assessing the property’s value for ad valorem taxation purposes“, whatever the hell that means, isn’t a function of the Constitution.

The problem is that Floridians are treating their constitution as “living”, and this is what happens to living documents. They’re added onto constantly until the point where they’re unwieldy, impossible to comprehend, and thus useless in protecting your rights.

While I don’t think it will pass, Amendment #2 - preventing the state from having to honor a private contract between consenting parties - is dangerous insofar as it teaches the populace that in order to discriminate against those who’s views you don’t agree with that, all you have to do is get an amendment passed. That’s all fine and dandy when it’s not your ox being gored (and for the record, I’m not into the whole gay thing. Not my bag of tea, but I value rights enough to know that I must stand up for them even when they’re for a group I can’t relate to).

When you move the line that much, the fact that there is a line to being with gets diluted.

But hey! Free money for colleges!

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Why is it so quiet around here?  Because the world is too frigging depressing, thankyewverymuch.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no way to talk to people who can seriously hold an opinion like this:

jeff Joke-oby, you are a racist buffoon. You and your sick rich cohorts run our economy into the ground and make an absolute mega fortune, it all goes bust (as it had to) and then you turn around and blame….Minorities????!!!?? You must be kidding me! The depths of your unreason know no bounds. You should be ashamed of yourself, You Rush Limbaugh clone…perhaps the Mexican laborers who built your McMansion brought a mutated strain of bubonic plague over the border and infected the entire financial system with evil immigrant nefarious virus stuff. Whatever Jeff, face it. YOU LOST. REAGAN LOST. THE FREE MARKET LOST. Your days of sucking the peoples blood to make your points and those of your corporate masters are OVER. Now go get a real job. (IF you can find one). 

That bit of sparkling commentary was in response to Boston Globe writer Jacoby’s column on the actual cause of the current “financial crisis,” namely the subprime mortgage boom as pushed by left-wingers dating back to the Carter administration.

Clearly nothing Jacoby cited in his article is actually true, according to the above commenter, and it’s actually those of us who have been successful over the past few decades that are at fault here.  For being successful, yes. 

Note the key phrases, “sucking the people’s blood” and “corporate masters.”  

I have friends who espouse the ideals of socialism, and the only way we stay friends is if we refrain from talking politics….but how long is that going to work, when our ideologies are diametrically opposed?  I simply Can Not Understand why someone would subject themselves to the State on anything, but then I was always mortally offended by seat belt laws.  The State has no right to tell me if I may die or not, goddammit.

What do you suppose it is about the regimes of Lenin, Mao Zedong, Castro, Hussein and Chavez that inspire emulation?  Could it be the widespread poverty?  Or maybe the decrease in personal freedoms has some appeal?   

“It won’t be the same, here, we’ll be DIFFERENT!” 

Yeah, in centuries of experimentation it has not been different.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  End of story.

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