Denny Crane!
It’s quite telling that Rush Limbaugh would compare getting quality health care to the relative size of one’s housing. It’s just another commodity to conservatives, just another business. If you’re rich, then you get health care, if you’re poor, then you just do us all a favor and slink away and die.
But see, Rush, that’s exactly what doesn’t happen. Viruses and bacteria don’t care how big your mansion is. Eventually, sometime, you have to go out among the public, and it benefits you in the short-term and the long-term if that public isn’t sick and dying and spreading their germs and infections to the people you love.
The very first sentence of the document that defines this country, our Founders wrote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I’m educated enough to know that the Founders’ “Welfare” does not equal the modern notion of “welfare”, as in “government assistance payments for food or rent”. But it does mean “health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.” And we willingly accept government regulation and support of myriad organizations that promote the “health, happiness, or prosperity” of the general public, from student loans to public fire departments to meat inspections to small business assistance. If “general Welfare” of a nation doesn’t include its collective health, then the term is meaningless.
Rush is the cheerleader for the “I gots mine, you gets yours” amorality that infects the modern conservative movement he leads. It’s a narcissistic myopia that allows them to believe that “no man is an island” is a falsehood, that somehow a taxpayer-funded program to protect the public health is a case of Marxist distribution of wealth, and that funding basic health care for less-fortunate Americans is tantamount to cutting checks to promote laziness.
Today the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, the constitutional amendment that took away the right of gay people to marry in the state. The majority may now invalidate a minority’s rights at the ballot box.
Remember, this isn’t the same as the other couple of dozen states, like Oregon, that have banned gay marriage in their constitution. In those states, the right for gays to marry did not exist. In California, the court declared the right for gays to marry to be a constitutional right, and then the haters passed the constitutional amendment to take away that existing right.
Strangely enough, the Court left intact the marriages of some 18,000 gay couples who exercised their right before Prop 8 passed. I guess somehow that 18,001st gay couple to get married would’ve been the trigger for gaypocalypse or something. Weird, isn’t it, that 18,000 gay Californians have a right that hundreds of thousands of other gay Californians do not, a right the 18,000 would lose if they ever got divorced.
Conceivably, a majority of Californians could pass constitutional amendments to ban anyone from anything, so long as they didn’t touch the federally-protected classes of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, familial status, disability, or veterans status. No decision on rights from the California Supreme Court can be considered final, because the majority could always overturn it. This is much bigger than a ban on gay marriage, this sets precedent for the majority to take anyone’s rights! A right isn’t a right if it can be taken away; it’s a privilege. The California Supreme Court just decided that all rights in the Republic not granted by the federal constitution are now just privileges, granted unto you by the majority.
The reaction from some of the knuckle-draggers has been predictable. This on from the HuffPo comments is typical:
There is ONE and only ONE fair solution to this problem and it is the same solution that has been proposed by many people including Elton John. Homosexuals should be granted all of the same rights, benefits of married heterosexual couples, the union should be identified by a different term than “marriage”.
Homosexuals don’t seem willing to accept that and I think that it speaks volumes to the underlying intentions.
Great point! Just like little black kids in the 1950s should be granted all the same rights and benefits of education as the white kids, but they should be housed in separate buildings identified by a different term than “schools”.
Strange how gay folks don’t seem willing to accept their lifelong loving partnerships being trivialized by straights as some sort of “sub-marriage” or “alternamarriage”. Homobigots don’t seem willing to see gay folks as equals and their need to cling to a word speaks volumes to the underlying intentions. You’d grant an equal marriage so long as it isn’t called “marriage”? It’s really just an eight letter word you’re hung up on?
Is marriage religious? Fine, keep it in your church, take government out of it completely, and ban anyone from it who makes you uncomfortable. But if marriage is a civil institution with government benefits, all citizens get to participate equally. Restricting one’s choice of lifelong partners to just half the population isn’t just homophobic, it’s sexist!
It will be fun being a cynical old coot, someday telling my grand-nieces and nephews about the days when we used to openly discriminate against gay people… if I can get past their holo-tattoos and cyber-implants.
Because it goes without saying that all the Republicans in the House (except Rep. Tim Johnson of Illinois) and Senate are FISA Traitors (except for the unbelievable situation that Obama voted to support George W. Bush’s Nixonian wet dream and John W. McCain didn’t! OK, so McCain didn’t vote against it either – he didn’t vote at all on FISA – but at least he didn’t contribute to decimating our privacy rights.)
FISA Traitors in the Senate – FISA Traitors in the House ==> Call ‘em, let ‘em know they’re traitors and cowards and they’ve broken their oath to defend the Constitution (Jim Webb, really? How could you?)
The Democratic House and Democratic Senate just said it is perfectly reasonable for the most unpopular president in the history of the United States to tell corporations to violate the Constitution on his order alone. The Democratic House and Democratic Senate just caved in to Mr. 23% Approval Rating to create an ex post facto immunity for lawbreaking on his authority alone.
And the Democratic nominee for president thought that would be a nice power to have once he’s in office. The Democratic nominee for president just told us that should he feel it necessary, he can order the private sector to spy on us illegally without any repercussions or accountability.
All because of political convenience. All because they feared the “Barack Obama voted to enrich trial lawyers and help Osama bin Laden” attack ad. All because they were afraid the Republicans would call them names.
A commenter at HuffPo gives us what should now be used for the oath of office for Congress or President:
Senate Passes FISA Bill, Gives Telecoms Immunity – Politics on The Huffington Post
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Office of President of the United States, and execute the Constitution of the United States.
The ultimate knife in my heart right now is that Barack Obama voted for the bill and Hillary Clinton voted against it. I’ve been a longtime registered independent and since moving to Oregon, a registered Green. But to support “change you can believe in”, I switched my registration to Democrat.
That’s the last time I do that. Tomorrow I’m back to Green. Obama still has my vote, as McCain is reprehensible and the Supreme Court too important, but he gets no more of my money and the yard sign is being returned to Obama HQ (with my scribbled “Capitulation I Can’t Believe In” on it). If I wanted a yard sign for a candidate who supported retroactive immunity, more faith-based initiatives, more handguns, more death penalty, and no public campaign financing, I could’ve just recycled my neighbor’s Bush signs from the past two elections.
I’ve heard the justifications. “We need to win the election.” “It’s just civil immunity, Obama can still go after criminal prosecutions.” Really? After those inevitable January 19, 2009 pardons Bush will give to everyone involved? This was it, our only chance to know who, what, where, when, how, and why we were spied on. Our Senate just voted to give immunity to telecom companies without (most of them) even knowing what they were giving immunity for!
Obama has made a huge mistake. In the parlance of football, he’s not playing to win anymore, he’s playing not to lose. He’s so terrified of giving the Republicans the “Dukakis in a tank / Kerry on a windsurfboard” moment that he’s forgetting to “dance with them what brung ya”.
What energized the Obama movement was so many of us fed up with the “politics as usual” that puts party, corporations, and money before people and the Constitution. We ache for change and long for a leader who wil lay it all on the line to defend our cherish freedoms. Someone who has principles and courage.
But now, fearing the “Obama voted against watching the terrorists!” ad that he sells out the 4th Amendment with retroactive immunity in FISA. So afraid of the “Obama is a secret Muslim who will shut down Christian churches!” ad that he sells out the 1st Amendment with more government hand-outs to “faith-based” groups. So terrified of the “Obama thinks we should coddle child rapists!” ad that he sells out the 8th Amendment by supporting the dissent against declaring death penalty for child rape unconstitutional. (At least he’s strong on the 2nd Amendment, but he probably supported the reversal of the DC handgun ban because he was afraid of the “Obama wants to take your guns” ad.)
I wonder if Obama was paying any attention in 2004 to the “flip-flop” ads that worked so well against Kerry. It will be so easy now for the Republicans to brand Obama as “just another politician” who will do or say whatever it takes to win. He will fall from an angel of change to just another devil of politics, and I fear with two devils running, the people will choose the devil they know instead of the new young one.
This kind of behavior from a Constitutional Law Professor is simply unforgivable in my book. In the primaries, Obama promised me he would filibuster any retroactive immunity for telecoms. In the primaries, I railed against Hillary Clinton for being fooled by a Bush into voting for the authorization to invade Iraq. Now I’ve got a nominee who wasn’t fooled, he was knowingly co-opted into the biggest cover-up conspiracy of my lifetime.
He’s not the only one, of course, as so many other Democrats caved in. One of my callers described the FISA Capitulation (it gets capital letters, as it is now like “Teapot Dome” or “Watergate Break-In”) as the Democratic leadership covering their own ass for having approved these Constitutional breaches back in 2002 and fearing their own prosecution. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if Bush pardons all the Republicans and telco CEOs involved, and leaves Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jay Rockefeller, and the rest of the Dem leadership as the only people who could legally be held accountable for any of this spying on Americans?
Bush has essentially held our troops and our people hostage since 9/11. If we didn’t give him money for war without timetables, he’d let the troops rot in the field and say that Dems don’t support the troops. If we didn’t give him retroactive immunity for telecoms, he’d let there be no FISA surveillance and say that Dems are supporting the terrorists. Hell, why shouldn’t he hold us hostage; Pelosi took impeachment “off the table” and Bush can pardon/commute any of his buddies. If you told me I could completely subvert the Constitution and rob the treasury to benefit myself and my rich friends… well, I still wouldn’t do it because I love the Constitution and don’t have rich friends. But if you told a coke-snorting frat-boy business-failure oilman’s son he could do it… well, we just did.
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/18/2008 | General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.
The number one thing I will be watching for from the Obama Administration is whether they pull a “Gerry Ford” and decide to put this dark national nightmare behind us and in the “spirit of healing” decide to pardon or not prosecute the war crimes of this Administration. The pardon of Nixon for raping the Constitution is what put us in this position in the first place, with many of the same traitorous thugs from that administration leading this one down the same “unitary executive” path.
Let the world see our Constitution in action. Let us all regain the faith that no one, not a former president, not a former vice president, no matter how deeply in the pockets of big oil, is above the law. Let us restore our reverence for the Constitution and mete out strong punishment for those who would violate it willingly and to act as a deterrent for the future administrations who’d usurp our rights given the chance.
Border Agents Can Search Laptops Without Cause, Appeals Court Rules | Threat Level from Wired.com
Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.
The unanimous three-judge decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were “an extension of our own memory” and thus too personal to allow the government to search them without cause. Instead, the earlier ruling said, Customs agents would need some reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime had occurred in order to search a traveler’s laptop.
On appeal, the government argued that was too high a standard, infringing upon its right to keep the country safe and enforce laws. Civil rights groups, joined by business traveler groups, weighed in, defending the lower court ruling.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.
Well, gosh, if you wanted any privacy, you shoulda just stayed in the US, right?
The courts didn’t decide on whether you have to help them look through your laptop, as in giving them logins and passwords and decrypting your data. So go get that 256-bit hard-disk and USB drive encryption software that has no “government backdoor” encoding, and just let ‘em search all the scrambled bits they want.
The House has passed the FISA bill without the retroactive immunity for the telecom companies. You know, the “Protect AT&T Act” that George W. Bush wanted so his lawbreaking by spying on you without warrants couldn’t be investigated. The immunity that the Senate caved on.
The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.
Now the ball’s in Shrub’s court. Pelosi’s daring him to veto this thing and have to explain why it’s so necessary for the telephone company to spy on everything everyone does, says, or reads, but not so necessary that he’d sign a bill that doesn’t protect them from lawsuits.
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