The Golden Years - update

dhgulley said...
Hey! How about Roger Rocket?

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Same rule applies. If he just didn't want to pitch for the Bankees, he shoulda just said so. Under my law, uttering the word "retire" or anything associated with it automatically drops you outta the market.

I mean, we need order here. This running in and out has got to stop.

At least Jerry is honest about wanting to leave the profession feet first, I'll give him that.

Killing Monsters

My friends and I played cops and robbers when we were kids, and cowboys and Indians, and commanded regiments of little green soldiers and read comic books where eighteen of the twenty pages were hero and villain beating the crap out of each other. So far, most of us have lived relatively normal lives. It seems to me that if a kid brings a high powered rifle to school and blows away students, teachers and himself, there's a lot more going on there than one too many video games.

I happy to report that I'm supported in my intuition here by the book Killing Monsters, a review of the real need kids have for violent play and super heroes and all that. Turns out that, as common sense would tell us, we really have nothing to fear.

I can hold my head up now when fretful parents roll their eyes at me letting my six year old Leroy watch all that cartoon violence which is supposed to fold, spindle and mutilate his soul. I mean, if the Teen Titans can beat the bad guy into next week, won't Leroy want to do the same thing too?

"Killing Monsters" says that kids do understand the difference between fantasy and reality. I think it's right.

Leroy loves the big Star Wars media blitz. He loves the lightsabers and the action and says he wants to see the movie. He's interested in who's the Good Guy and who's the Bad Guy. This is important to him. He knows that there's difference between protecting someone and hurting someone, that there are Heroes and Villains. This is what fantasy is all about, even the fighting part. Kids want to be Heroes, and as small, powerless people, they intuitively understand how Villains can work. So they naturally want to imitate and emulate Heroes, larger-than-life characters able to chase the bad things away. Which children understand that they really can't do.

Leroy also likes living things. He loves animals, nature and the outdoors. He's fascinated by how plants and animals work, how they live and how they make more of themselves. This morning he and I came across a snail which was making its way along the sidewalk near school. It was crawling about six inches off the walk.

This worried Leroy. "We have to get him out of the street or a car will hit him," he said. I agreed. Leroy gently picked up the snail, and we found him a nice grassy place to drop him where he'd be safe and moist. A day later, we came across a worm wriggling on a hot sidewalk near another patch of grass by the school. This too demanded immediate response. Leroy worked for a long minute to catch the maniacally tossing slimy thing. Once he did, he dropped him into the grass and watched as the worm eased down into the green and dirt.

"He's back in his house now," Leroy stated quite matter-of-factly before going on into class.

I feel good. Even better, I feel safe. Leroy seems to understand that being bigger than the snail and the worm means that you have a responsibility to protect them when you can, not hurt them. Best of all, he feels good doing it. So tonight, we're curling up in front of several episodes of Cartoon Network's "Clone Wars" series. Leroy and I will both be rooting for the Heroes to win.

The Golden Years

"Jerry Rice talks about playing in Denver."

Rice, probably the best wide receiver ever to play the game, could have gone out as 'Niner several years ago, to screaming fans and the memories of being a part of one of the most exciting and successful scoring machine in all sports. It would have been great. He would have been remembered as great.

Now, he looks more like an over-the-hill boxer fighting palookas for meal money because he can't do anything else.

It's not like he needs the money. He could certainly never get out of bed for the rest of his life and lay well on satin sheets. It's the ego. As a number of athletes have said, it's hard to walk away from the screaming stadium, the huge stage that is pro sports, esp. pro football, where each game is special event.

But we don't need this. We don't need pitiful ego-addicted men trolling the byways for years past their time. We need a law.

With Congress up in arms over steroids, because the war in Iraq, Social Security and the federal deficit will surely take care of themselves, it's time for them to take action.

Federal law should provide for mandatory retirement for any pro football player over the age of 36. Exceptions will be allowed only for those who have passed a skills test where they will be required to perform at at least 80 percent of their level at age 30. Those who pass can only be given one year contracts, and only for the league minimum. Athletes over 40 will be required to pack it in if a confidential poll of players and season ticket holders, who are forced to watch Rice's travesty up close and personal, finds that a majority of those polled disagree. We'll call it the "Jerry Rice Law" and chalk it up to his legacy that we agreed that he'd be the last to have us watch such foolishness.

But let's not stop there.

Additional federal law will ban players and coaches who retire from unretiring. I mean, a guy gives the tear jerker farewell and heads off to presumably a pleasant second life of mindless sports commentary, only to jump back in a few years later. This has to end.

This law will cross all sports. No MJ hopping in and out and making a Jerry Rice-like fool of him-self. No Ryne Sandberg coming back to waste our time trying to reach balls he could have fielded blindfolded two years before he left. No Joe Gibbs deciding that watching 350 lb. men hit each other repeatedly was more engrossing than staring at cars going 'round and 'round and 'round in circles. I call it "One Strike, You're Out." If you're packing it in, pack it in, for God's sake. Don't force us to watch the sad consequences of your inability to find a hobby.

That's it for tonight. I'm off to have my bran muffin. I get cranky when I'm not "regular" you know.

Teevee in the 'Hood

A recent line of Boondocks comic lampooned the ridiculous way African Americans are shown on teevee. It was funny, but not news. Teevee, being what it is, shows most identifiable groups in a stupid way. It's a stupid medium, so it has no choice. But Boondocks had it wrong. The news isn't how African Americans are shown on teevee, it's how many African American are watching this and the other swill which makes up most of popular television.

Black folks watch more teevee per eyeball than any other American group, as reported by the good people at Nielsen who track this stuff. This drives Jesse Jackson nuts. Turn off the teevee and do homework with your kids, he says.

I admit, I've got issues with how much teevee people watch. It's been a hurdle all my life. This is why the Boondocks piece struck a nerve.

I once had a girlfriend whose crew just had to watch 'Laverne and Shirley' after work every day. When I left the room to do something else, or opened up a book, one of the crew snorted, "I hope we're not -boring- you!!" No, you're not, I said. The teevee show is. I'm stilled stunned by how many black parents give their kids full cable access, then complain about how their little tykes want to buy everything they see advertised and can't manage to finish their homework or get to bed on time. Duh. Ask them why they don't vote and "I ain't got the time", followed by an excited monologue on who's pissed at who on World Wrestling. Right.

A big piece of what I hate is the weird shared cultural experience teevee creates that I miss out on. At the office lunch the conversation inevitably moves to the latest episode of 'Lost', 'American Idol' or 'Desperate Housewives', which leaves me to do nothing but gnaw on my chips 'til the meal's over. My co-workers get itchy and start insisting that I'd really like the show(s) if I took the time to watch them over the next few weeks. Reminds me of my former girlfriend's pal years ago. They see the fact that I'm not watching the same crap they're watching as some kind of judgment I'm making on them. Well, it is. Having never watched a full episode of 'Seinfeld' (the stories about nothing are just that, about nothing) does make me a better person.

I don't hate teevee completely. I've got my shows. Heck, I pay Comcast Cable $57 shekels a month to get what I do watch, ESPN Classic, the History channels, my wife's home shows and all the great cartoons Leroy likes and we often watch together. My favorite show was the recently cancelled Star Trek entry Enterprise, (sob!) I just don't want it to run my life or my family's. When it gets to where my nights are completely shaped by what the sellers of my eyeballs to commercial vendors do, it's time to head for the hills.

As for now, it's off to ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" to check on today's action. I mean, no point in being unreasonable about all this.

A Matter of Perspective (Update)

DHGulley said...

Watch it Preston, you're starting to sound a bit religious. Maybe old age is setting in?

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My momma did her best to make me a good Baptist. The problem was, I like asking questions. And Baptists ain't too fond of that.

The story of The Fall made no sense to me, as I told my Sunday School teacher. So it was better to run around nekkid with no sense of morality? That' s what the fruit (not an apple) of the tree provided, the knowledge of good and evil. This is growth. It's what separates adults from toddlers and people from the critters of the field. My pet dog won't hop on the sofa when I'm gone if I've trained him not to, but not because it's "wrong" but because he wants to please the alpha human.

Also, without that knowledge then God as a moral force becomes unknowable. How can you choose between good and evil if you can't recognize it? Doesn't the Christian story of The Fall strongly imply that moral ignorance is paradise? Me, I find knowing good and evil a lotta fun. Why would I be better off without it? Wouldn't that make me little better than the dog I noted above? See, this is where this line of reasoning takes you.

As a parent, I've come to see The Fall in a whole different light. It's all about family. You raise the kids and make sure their needs are met without their worry. That's the Garden. But you know they're going to need to think for themselves once they get out into the great wide world. So you give them knowledge, insight and self-awareness. This is the eating of the fruit and the realization of nekkidness. (And how do you make sure your kids stick their mitts into the cookie jar? Tell them not to. Sound familiar?) The serpent is the instigator because serpents, which shed skin, are considered symbols of catalytic change across the world.

Then you boot 'em out where they fend for themselves. This is the Expulsion. This is Daddy saying, "Enough lying around and eating fruit. Get out there and work!"

The end result is a planet crawling with vibrant people full of all kinds of goodness, badness, weirdness and indifference. Grown-ups.

Now, the story is an analogy for that point where humans developed past hairy-knuckled furballs roaming the ancient plains to moral awareness. It tells the story, as all good cosmological tales do, in a way with synthesizes what happened in a compelling and understandable way.

The second disagreement I had with my Sunday School teacher comes right out of the first. Since we're all given moral choice, it makes no sense for a supernatural deity to constantly interfere in those choices. I don't think God personally intervenes in human affairs. Praying or meditating can connect one to the divine but it's not going to make that rash go away or save your son on patrol in Iraq.

Because we have to make choices, we have to free to live with the consequences of those choices. Otherwise the choice made becomes irrelevant. And if the divine intervenes one day and one place to save someone from their own or another's folly, then logic and fairness would require such intervention everywhere. Otherwise the divine is playing favorites for no apparent reason, and again, completely undermines the nature of a moral universe.

So this is why I've cast my lot with the Unitarians. In Baptist church my momma got mad at me for raising these questions. With UU'ers, it's more food for thought. I like to think and eat, so it suits me well.

Partisan Warfare

I love Bi-partisanship. Since my party holds the minority in the U.S. Senate, I'm all for a "bi-partisan" solution to the judicial filibuster mess. Because it's the best way to mitigate the damage. That's when "bi-partisanship" works best.

I want political leaders I support to do what I want. I want universal health care. I want strong U.S. support of a strong U.N. I want Social Security protected and preserved. That's my "partisan" position.

There's nothing wrong with being partisan. Democracy is premised on it. The point of the republican exercise is to organize like-minded people who share a collective vision and work through a peaceful process to put that vision into power.

I don't understand why being considered "bi-partisan" or "non-partisan" puts someone on a higher moral realm. Say that something's Non-Partisan or Bi-Partisan and it's placed on a higher realm of political morality. Non-Partisan is fine when it presents information or activity in a neutral manner. But there's nothing more moral about the Red Cross because it acts in a non-partisan. It's simply a logical application of its work.

Bi-partisan doesn't necessarily mean better or more virtuous either. No Child Left Behind (kaff!) is considered a Bi-partisan measure because liberal icon Ted Kennedy supported it. Whee! Liberal and conservative working hand in hand for our nation's kids! But it's a crappy piece of legislation designed to pump public money into private businesses' hands with no accountability and little result. Like much of the Bush domestic agenda, it's more corporate welfare. That's "Bi-partisanship" like I understand it. A Partisan initiative couched in supposed middlegrounding to make it sellable.

I don't fault Frist and DeLay and the other numbskulls for their partisan approach to political warfare. I admire them for it. I wish I could get as much gumption from the Democratic Party's poobahs. I figure that soon enough some GOP leaders will realize that they've reached too far and start calling for "Bi-partisanship". Which will be good. Because it gives my partisans a shot at slowing 'em down.

Holding Fire (the Social Security debate)

The Washington Post says that now that George has announced his latest how-to-kill Social Security plan, the Dems are challenged to come up with an alternative. No they aren't.

Now, the Post is a political newspaper and loves a good fight to keep the circulation up. I can respect that. But the Dems would be silly to fret about coming up with their own plan now.

The Social Security "crisis", of course, is of Bush's own making, for obvious political reasons. It's an attempt to shear off senior voters who are tempted to vote Dem as long as they feel they need the Dems to keep the public pension check coming. As the boomer generation ages, this could turn into a demographic landslide against the GOP. So I understand why George is proposing the silliness he's proposing.

The simple response to Social Security is relatively modest adjustments in payroll deductions and benefits to keep it in line. This can be done over time, phased as the years go by. You don't need all this "private/personal account" nonsense. People already have that through 401(k)'s and such. Social Security needs to be the rock-solid guaranteed benefit underpinning the necessary risk of our own private accounts. But if the Dems bring this up now, the GOP will howl "raising taxes!" and divert attention from their own foolhardiness.

So the Dems should lay low, and say nothing. Let Bush and company hang themselves before the mid-term elections. If pressed, enlarge the question and evade. Say, "we need to look at all of the issue in retirement, such as people retiring later because they're in better health, or working part-time instead of full retirement." Then offer to hold hearings or set up a commission. This way the Dems look visionary without having to craft an unnecessary and politically risky response to Bush's pointless proposal.

I like the Washington Post. But sometimes they do get it wrong.

Update:

Following is a link to a 7 page pdf which is the most intelligentpiece on Social Security I have read. The author is very qualified.

The second link is to a short biography on the author, Robert M.Ball. Mr. Ball began working for Social Security in 1939, by 1942 hewas the chief staff expert on expanding coverage, he then rose throughthe Social Security staff to be Commissioner of Social Security underPresidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. In 1981-1982 Ball was a memberof the Greenspan Commission, which resulted in the 1983 Amendments. Over the years he has written many articles and books.

Ball article on fixing Social Security

http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity/ballplan.pdf

Mr. Ball's short biography from the Social Security oral history website

http://www.ssa.gov/history/orals/balloralhistory.html

Lafayette, We Are Here

The war in Iraq is $300 billion and growing.

I don't argue for withdrawing from Iraq. It was an immoral war in that it was unprovoked, and that stands. Still, now that we're there, we must hang on to make sure something stable arises from the mess. Otherwise, we're back in in a couple of years anyway to deal with whatever fruitcake comes out of all.

I do argue, again, for declaring war on Iraq, and the bill is a big reason.

Congress followed the declarations of war upon the Axis with "articles of war", which spelled out everything from censorship to war production. At each step, Congress had to consider the cost in both dollars and constitutional protections, of what was doing. It also had to reaffirm that what it was doing was for the war, and that the people understood the sacrifices.

LBJ was blamed for a "guns and butter" (I like "cosmetics and cannon" better) policy during the Vietnam war. We've got the same thing going on now. Instead of calling for sacrifice, our president cuts taxes. The Patriot Act, dissassociated from a real war, is under attack by both sides. When the ACLU and Bob Barr are lined up against you, you've got real problems. Zillions are spent on an ironically underfunded "No (or Every) Child Left Behind" policy. There's a war and there's domestic business as usual. A declaration of war would change that.

People would realize that if our schools need help and the feds couldn't fix 'em because of the war, maybe it's time to volunteer time or money. If there was a clear and present danger due from internal terrorism, then folks might willingly accept the tradeoffs. And those tax checks could go to getting armor for our troops. Each subsequent article of war could be debated, discussed and the public would see just what it was called to do.

But no, Congress blithely said, "Whatever, it's on you, let me know what's up ... yawn" and here we are. The Founders set up the congressional role in warmaking for several good reasons. One was that in a democracy popular support is critical to prosecuting a successful war. A public declaration of a state of war creates the sense of common commitment a democracy needs, and leads the way to sensible policies to meet it.

So, next time, Congress, when faced with a war, ask yourself, "What would the Founders do?"

The House is Covering All Bets

Today's odds:

1. DeLay is out by the end of May. / 2-1 and on its way to a sure thing.

2. Frist compromises on the "nuclear option." / 4-1 and growing (he "wins" short-term by stretching out the fight).

3. Bolton is confirmed for the U.N. / 3-1 and growing the longer it takes.

4. Bush splits SS benefits/taxes from personal/private accounts in order to get something, anything, through so he can claim victory. / Even money

5. Michael Jackson is convicted of underage freakiness. / The house won't touch that money (yuck!)

Implosion

When bleeding heart liberal Art Agnos became mayor of San Francisco around 1988, one writer predicted a short and unhappy tenure for a guy with crystal clear liberal credentials and a long political record. The problem Art will find, he wrote, is that the people who put him in power are inherent windmill tilters. They won't know how the handle real power. Eventually, they'll turn on themselves and each other, and suicidally overreach because they're too used to being one hill short of where they really want to be. They were right.

For a week now I've been looking at the Christian right's weird war against the mainly Republicans-appointed federal judiciary and wondering why it all seemed so familiar. It's Art Agnos all over again, only this time played out on the theofascist right.

The right should be at the height of its power. It's seen as handing the presidential election to Bush, and rallying enough voters to the polls to give the GOP more seats in Congress. So why are they acting so aggrieved?

They're really not comfortable with sitting in the big house. Their personal vision of themselves is that of an insurgent liberation force in an occupied land. The "enemy" is pervasive, in our schools, libraries and entertainment. Yet, even with their friends and allies in control of the national government, they couldn't get their way on the Schiavo case. Surely, there are still political forces outside their control which is frustrating them. Since the federal courts were designed by the Founding Fathers to expressly be outside political pressure, that must be the problem. Like all purported revolutionaries, the world only makes sense when there's a clear villain.

They also don't get that even in a free society you don't always get your way. That's the point of constitutional limitations on state power. You'd think good conservatives would understand this.
The problem is that the theofascist right just doesn't understand Freedom. Sure, we're free, they say, to Do the Right Thing. One of government's key goals in a free society is to establish frameworks within which people can make decisions. Issues like Schiavo, and whether to give birth, and when to end your own life, and when and where to read dirty books and which whom you want to love and lust with are all key choices free people should be able to make in a free society.

The theofascists won't allow this, because, by God and Jesus, you might choose the wrong thing. And that's not right. What kind of free society allows people to make choices like this? The only real choice is whether you're going to Lutheran, Baptist or Catholic services. As God and the (deist) Founders insisted, didn't they?

Along with their patrons, the GOP, they seem to be running scared. There's an air of weird desperation in what they're doing, as if they fear they're going to be swept away in the next strong wind. Federal judges, Social Security "reform", tear-down-the-U.N. appointments, everything but issues which resonate with real people in the real world. They can't just settle for solving actual stuff. They have to redraw the landscape in what they apparently see is the short time allotted to them.

So they run after silly stuff and make the mid-term elections look a lot better for my side. There's only one explanation. God has shown them the future and they ain't running it, so they've gotta act now.

Maybe it's His/Her special way of pre-torturing them.

A Matter of Perspective

It's odd that so many consider evolution and divine creation to be mutually exclusive. What they need is a sense of perspective.

Certain insects literally live a few months and die. Imagine if we could talk to them and they found out that we lived around 75 years. It would seem an eon to them. Remember how long the year between Christmases was when you were a kid? Makes sense. A year when you're eight is one eighth of your life. As your life rolls on a year becomes "shorter" in that it takes up less and less a percentage of your time here on Earth.

We human beings apply our own lifespan to the age of the universe when science finds it billions of years "old." But that's just old to us. Imagine that you're a consciousness working at what we would consider a divine level. You've existed forever and you've always existed forever. A couple of billion years is a weekend in your life. What we see as a gradual, creeping creation of galaxies, evolution of life and then intelligent life, is just a snap of a an eternal finger. To we short-lived humans, though, it's thousands and thousands of years. The pattern of development only seems potentially happenstance because of the great seeming distance between events. Imagine how a day in our life would seem to creature who only lived a couple of weeks.

As I said, it's just a matter of perspective.

Quote of the Day

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

--George W. Bush

End Times

[Responding to an acquaintance who posits that reports from the Vatican state that the late John Paul II may have wondered if Dubya was the Antichrist.]

That's giving George waaaaaay too much credit ...

Although Karl Rove does nicely as the False Prophet.

The whole end-of-world-Revelations thing is great Cecile Demille theater, but it's a gross misinterpretation of the text. As noted earlier in these pages, John was writing a tract against his political and theological contemporaries, not predicting the future.

But when the Catholic church put the Bible together hundreds of years later, they didn't have the reference to the images, so they assumed that John was predicting that the world pretty much resets itself to the time of Jesus and the drama plays out again. (Satan, of course, being a complete nincompoop, falls completely for this.) It's like someone a thousand years from now trying to figure out what donkeys and elephants meant regarding political leadership to someone looking over cartoons without a frame of reference to view them through. They might come to the conclusion that these were icons of gods representing factions in some kind of religious argument.

I don't understand the nutcases' love of The End. I like the world. It's got bunny rabbits and little babies, beautiful sunsets and professional baseball. Whenever the JW's come 'round to talk, we get stick on the "how rotten the world is" thing. "But you read so many bad things in the paper", they say. Yeah, because that's what sells newspapers, so that's what we get. I mean, it really isn't news when the plane takes off and lands safely. And still, besides all that, we've got bunnies and babies and baseball. I can tell they can't understand why I'm not down on all existence, but that's me. Still looking for the Giants to get back to the World Series.

Now, I would say something like, "No end of the world 'til the Giants win the World Series", but I've learned my lesson there. In August 2002 I swore after my cancer diagnosis that I wasn't dying until the Giants won the World Series. Two months later they won Game One of the Series and had to beg the Powers That Be for a quick re-phrasing.

Section 8

One of the interesting side effects of the crazy housing market is that speculators are actively recruiting Section 8 (low-income, subsidized rent) tenants in some places.

Here in California's Central Valley, speculators buy homes they intend to turn over in a few years for quick profit but can't find any one household willing or able to pay enough rent to cover the mortgage and taxes. So the speculators are renting them out to groups of unrelated people, and/or Section 8 tenants who don't have to pay the high market rent. As a result, Section 8 is moving out into the expanding exurbs, to the chagrin of folks who bought out there to get away from "those" kind of people.

I just love unintended consequences.

Maturity

Winston Churchill reportedly said something like, "if you're not a socialist at twenty you have no heart, but if you're still a socialist at forty you have no brains."

The idea, of course, is that the cheery optimism of youth eventually gives way to a more sobering assessment of human nature and the human condition. I thought about this recently, as a friend asked me if the years and parenthood has caused me to turn toward more conservative views in recent years.

For me, the punditry's views of left/right have always seemed a little odd. I grew up in a world of church-going, petit bourgeois African American aspirer. The political gripe wasn't that the system was wrong. The problem was that we weren't always allowed to be a part of it. My parents thought hippies were nuts. Why would anyone want to be poor on purpose? They'd been poor without choice in the Jim Crow rural South, and it sucked. The war in Vietnam was good to my neighborhood. My father, who worked at a local shipyard, was told he could work as long as he wanted. The military and related industrial complex was good to them. Dear ol' dad was a member of the American Legion and joining "the service" was a fine option for a young man or woman.

When I was my son's age, six plus years, my parents would send me down to the local grocery store two blocks away to pick up a quick loaf read or milk or a pack of cigarettes (this was the '60's, fyi). No problem. There were (at least) three members of the church between home and the store, so I was well-protected and well-watched to and from.

So I was raised among pretty "conservative" values. Which is why it bugs me that these are considered conservative. Liberals have allowed the right to co-opt what everyone pretty much values. But that's a blog for another day.

Back to the present, I find that my values haven't changed, just what part of the morning paper I turn to first. In college, you have no large financial obligations to meet each month. Your room and board can be Spartan, but after that, your biggest concern is having enough pocket money to take out that cute honey in general ed History you've got your eye on. So the news for you is the Really Big Stuff. War! Peace! The governance of the Federal Reserve! And it puzzles the hell out of you why the rest of those schnooks on BART in to work every morning don't obsess over this stuff as well.

Once you get out in the world, however, the details start to matter. You track interest rates because you'd like to buy a house, re-fi the one you have, or start a business. You watch the tax laws to see how much you can put away for your retirement or your kid's college. Education policy is important, as you'd like your kid to be able to read and write by the time he or she is outta high school. Soon, that war in Outer Bumphuq, which would have kept you going for hours over French roast at the coffee house in college, seems mighty remote.

So it's "less growing up" than stretching out. Your life covers more, so your natural intensity gets spread out over a broader range. There is more minutae involved, so you're more interested in the public policy which affects that minutae, and the business decisions involved.

So I'm now looking forward to retirement. I figure once the kid is out of the house and my business life is done I can get back to sipping lattes and arguing about Central American politics. They say it's never too late to have a happy childhood. I assume this covers the college years too.

Earth Day: 2005

Your Quote for the Month:

"What good is a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

- Henry David Thoreau

God Save This Court

stuart sibley said...

You want the Supreme Court to rule on constitutionality of the Iraq war?...Like it rules on the constitutionality of a law? Oh man, let's open a huge can-o-worms. What would we do it they ruled it unconstitutional - turn over the retreat to the judges? I can see it now. "Rehnquist has ordered the 3rd Cavalry division to pull back to the Salifah - Tikrit line until Scalia decides what to do with the airbase north of Baghdad." What silliness you propose.

I say that the Supreme Court has already overstepped its bounds. We have a judiciary that is out of control, with few restraints. It was unconstitutional for the federal courts to take over the school system and prison system in Texas. If the Supreme Court becomes any more activist than it is now, there will be a backlash. The Wall Street Journal on Friday called for a constitutional amendment to limit the appointees to 18 year terms, with a new judge appointed every 2 years. Lifetime appointments are not working, they say.

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Terry responds:

What I'd like is for someone with cajones to march over to a federal court the next time Congress chickens out on its constitutional obligations. You're right that as of now there's no legal relief available short of the court ordering the troops home. That's wh you nip it in the bud.

If any war justified a declaration, it was Iraq. As a war of choice, there was absolutely no immediacy to ordering military action. There were months of debates and discussions, and threats and all that. All Congress had to do was declare that a state of war existed. This doesn't even require troops, planes and ships to take off. Just that a state of war exists. As clearly did after Bush's folly and still does.

The right has been screaming for a "backlash" against the courts ever since they let the colored kids go to school with the white kids. Fortunately, as the Republican shakiness over eliminating the judicial filibuster shows, when all is said and done, cooler heads prevail. Usually.

The federal judiciary is supposed to be removed from political passions. That's the point of the judiciary in general, and the federal judiciary particularly. The right's problem with the courts is that they work too well, and that's scary.

What's an eighteen year term supposed to do? Do they get re-appointed afterwards, so that they have to start producing politically attractive holdings as their term runs out? Do they just go home after eighteen years? If so, then they're still free to rule as they see fit, as it should be.

If this is the sort of remedy the right's arguing for fixing what ain't broken, then heaven help the Republic.

God, the Devil and Secular Justice

Nothing worries me more about the nutball right than their current war against an independent judiciary.

And speaking of gay marriage, up here in Sackamenna, the nutballs are trying to recall the judge who ruled in favor of the state's domestic partner laws on the grounds, since upheld by the state appellate courts, that providing for 'domestic partners' does -not- violate the idiotic Prop 22 (I think it was) regarding marriage. The courts have even stationed an extra bailiff in his court, although the only danger so far is some lug who stands up in his court and bellows a request to God to bless him.

When asked why he isn't also going after the state judge who ruled that the same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional, the nimrod who's organizing this said that he didn't think trying to recall a San Francisco judge over this would get anywhere.

The biggest silliness is the so-called "unaccountability" of judges. State judges are, for the most part, elected. The federal judiciary was -designed- by the Founders to be immune to pressure through the lifetime appointment, so that the various states, Congress or the Executive could pressure them. If the nutballs don't like this, they need to talk to the heathen rabble who wrote the Constitution.

What they don't get is that the very nature of freedom is to allow people to make choices you wouldn't. The nutballs don't like that. From reproductive choice to Schiavo, it's all about telling people what they need to do in the most personal and intimate of situations. They want "limited government" but what government's left gets to crawl all through our business.

Finally, the whole Book of Revelations thing prophesying an end-of-the-world battle in the Mideast is open, like much of the Bible, to interpretation. Another view is that the imagery refers not to a future Rome but the one in power when the author put his pen to paper. The images, when taken in the context of the time, can also refer to contemporary figures and forces (one Greek translation of the Number of the Beast comes up with 'Nero'). John was writing a contemporary tract criticizing various activities of the nascent Christian church and the world around it, not seeing into the future. (And what kind of an idiot would the Devil be if he followed it to the letter after it's all been written down?)

When the Bible was compiled from various documents hundreds of years later during the Dark Ages, the imagery was lost, and it was assumed it referred to future visions. By example, imagine someone hundreds of years from now trying to figure out what donkeys and elephants had to do with American politics. Why, they must have been idols of worship, surely. Unfortunately, this view ain't as much fun as WW3 between Jesus and the Devil, so don't expect to hear it from a nutball pulpit any time soon.

Unconstitutional Wars

We hear a lot about how the war in Iraq is illegal and unconstitutional. What's interesting is that no one's risen to actually make this legal claim. It seems as if they'd have good grounds.

Back in the '30s, the Supremes voided a lot of the early New Deal on the grounds that Congress was improperly, and unconstitutionally, delegating legislative power to the executive in the blank check that early New Deal legislation gave to the White House to write and enforce rules and regulations. Congress is charged with being the lawmaking body, the Court held, whether it likes it or not.

Out of these holdings arose the arcane world of Administrative Law, which generally sez that Congress can ask executive agencies to flesh out laws, such as the galactic-sized body of regs attached to the Internal Revenue Code, but only under clear laws providing specific goals, ends and what not. To this day, the standard and sometimes successful challenge to administrative regulations is that they constitute an unconstitutional delegation of constitutional legislative authority.

Congress clearly has the specific charge to declare war, for the reasons you cited. I see no reason that a court couldn't hold that, as with domestic legislation, Congress has a duty here it can't cravenly pass on to the executive branch. As I said, I'm surprised that no one's tested this. One might argue that the court has traditionally shied away from foreign policy concerns, and might see this as a "political question." But perhaps not.

The companion constitutional question is whether a declaration of war is necessary to wage war. Even Jefferson fight a personal little war without bothering Congress. But there's a difference between mounting a punitive raid and waging a full-fledged, commit-the-resources war. The Founders definitely had the latter in mind when they gave Congress its specific charge. Iraq is definitely the latter. If any of our modern wars cried out for a declaration, Iraq, a war of choice, not immediate or necessary reprisal, qualified.

Maybe one day Ramsey Clark will stop calling for the impeachment of everyone short of Jesus Christ and pull out some of old law books to give this idea a whirl. I'll be the first to send him a check to help cover costs.

Schiavo: Case in Point

What struck me as Congress insisted on pushing jurisdiction in this matter on the federal courts is just what the fed courts could even hold here.

Given the general role of the federal courts, they would have to find that the state law and consequent legal decisions governing Schiavo's guardianship either conflicted with pre-empting state law or the federal Constitution.

Since Congress passed no law regarding end-of-life decisions, it just granted jurisdiction, there was no federal statutory law to apply against state law. That just left the Constitution.

The yahoos screamed for the courts to declare a constitutional "right to life" or some such. Given all the possible applications any such ruling could have on future holdings on everything from banning assisted suicide (which the yahoos would like) to overturning the death penalty (which the yahoos wouldn't like), the possible global affect meant it was pretty unlikely any court would issue such a thing. As the Schiavo case itself demonstrated, these are issues best left resolved through the public forum, the legislative branch.

Justice Scalia often complains that the courts take on too many complex moral issues which the legislatures need to hammer out majority agreement on. The Schiavo case was Example #1A of what he means. Heck, the more controversial it got, the -less- likely the courts were to pre-empt public debate with some kind of holding from the mountaintop. Clearly, any court would see solely as a matter of democratic process, the legislatures need to be where this issue finds some kind of resolution.