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constitution 
Sun Dec 18, 2011 at 12:54:37 PM MST
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So Newt Gingrich, in his bottomless pit of anti-democratic and anti-labor ideas came up with this one:
The former House Speaker held a half-hour phone call on Saturday during which he pledged to abolish courts (how Kenyan and anti-colonial of him.) and eliminated activist judges he believed were either outside the mainstream or infringing too deeply on the commander in chief's authority.
On Sunday, he followed that up by saying he would be willing to arrest a judge who he thought was out of line.
"If you had to," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation" when asked if he would send a Capitol Hill police officer to round up a judge, "or you would instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshal." The U.S. Constitution disagrees with the "historian"/lobbyist.
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Tue Jul 26, 2011 at 09:03:01 AM MST
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(FNS - Washington, New Germany, April 17, 1947) America's new Führer, Adolf Hitler, announced today that his official War History would in fact acknowledge that one of the biggest contributing factors to the defeat of the Allies was the insistence of the former United States of America on sticking to its Balanced Budget Amendment, which left them unable to fund the wartime conversion of the US economy for the benefit of the Alliance.
"All those ideas Mr. Roosevelt spoke of", said Hitler, "Lend-Lease, modular shipbuilding, War Bonds, secret weapons...in the end, all of them were just words, since the Americans' Congress was never willing to allow the country to fully fund its war effort."
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Wed Jun 01, 2011 at 06:53:19 AM MST
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To my great chagrin no one in the national media has picked up the Bodineism meme, but they are starting to get the picture that there are some elected officials, particularly Republican elected officials, are about as dumb as sack of hammers.
The particular Jethro that I am talking about today is Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Of all the folks that I have compared to Jethro Bodine, Sen. Paul is probably the closet to the mark. By all accounts he is a pretty genial guy with a good smile and a nice manner. He is also so clueless as to be a text book (given that all books are printed in text, wouldn't that make them all text books?) example of self-satire.
Most recently Sen. Paul (gods greater and lesser that gives me chills just writing it, ugh) has managed to trample the 1st Amendment with his "ideas". Some of us on the Left side of the Blogasphere were more than a little happy that he was holding up the PATRIOT act renewal, by wanting to insert some amendments that would lessen the ability of the government to spy on its own citizens.
That was a good thing, but it does not mean that he was doing it from a deep understanding of the Constitution. You see after his ploy failed he went on Sean "The Manatee" Hannity's radio show and said the following:
I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after - they should be deported or put in prison.
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Thu Mar 31, 2011 at 06:30:40 AM MST
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Bondeism started as a way for me to highlight the nitwittery of the Republicans in the 111th Congress. They say and do really gob smacking things and I post about comparing them to that gormless but loveable hillbilly Jethro Bodine. But I have to wonder if I have actually, through some unintended and accidental sorcery called this disease into reality (I'm probably taking too much on myself with that, still)?
It is one thing to misinterpret the Constitution, it is open for interpretation and people can be honestly wrong, but it is quit another for a Member of Congress in a leadership position to propose action that is completely outside the boundaries of the Constitution. Which is exactly what Eric Cantor is doing.
He is proposing and will force the House to bring to a vote a measure he is calling the "Government Shutdown Prevention Act". What this Act will say is that if the Senate does not pass a budget measure by April 6th, then HR 1, the Republicans draconian and job slaughtering bill (which, by the way the Senate has already voted down) will become the law of the land.
I hear you all going "But, but, but... Doesn't the Senate have to pass a bill and the President sign it for it to be law?" Why, yes, yes it does. It seems that the raven haired, square jawed Virginia Republican who is the House Majority Leader does not understand how the body he has been part of for a decade now works.
If there were an "All Time Jethro Bodineism Award" it is certain that Rep. Cantor would be earning himself a place in the nominees. It is easy to dismiss this as insane and a stunt, but I see a bigger picture emerging among Republicans nation wide.
The lawless behavior of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin has shown that he and his Republicans have a shocking disregard for the laws of their state. They have broken and bent the rules to pass their union busting bill and have even defied a court order in the implementation of the law.
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Tue Mar 22, 2011 at 12:05:04 PM MST
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In our efforts to form a more perfect Union we look to the Constitution for guidance for how we might shape the form and function of Government; many who seek to interpret that document try to do so by following what they believe is The Original Intent Of The Founders.
Some among us have managed to turn their certainty into something that approaches a reverential calling, and you need look no further than the Supreme Court to find such notables as Cardinals Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia providing "liturgical foundation" to the adherents of the point of view that the Constitution is like The Bible: that it's somehow immutable, set in stone, and, if we would only listen to the right experts, easily interpreted.
But what if that absolutist point of view is absolutely wrong?
What if the Original Intent Of The Founders, that summer in Philadelphia...was simply to get something passed out of the Constitutional Convention, and the only way that could happen was to leave a lot of the really tough decisions to the future?
What if The Real Original Intent...was that we work it out for ourselves as we go along?
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Mon Jan 17, 2011 at 14:31:37 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
Good:On the heels of renewed calls for bipartisanship and toned-down political rhetoric, Boehner is saying "thanks, but no thanks" to another offer to appear at an event with the president - Wednesday's White House state dinner honoring the Chinese President Hu Jintao. Speaker Boo-boo Boehner would probably burst into tears if he did attend, which would show the Capitalist-Chinese President that all the talk of how Republicans are going to get tough with our national debt is just that: talk.
So I am glad The Speaker isn't going to be at the dinner. It (should) show all the Bipartisan freaks in DC that the Republicans want none of this New Bipartisanship™.
It definitely shows me that John Boehner is not ready for prime time and is not ready to fulfill his Constitutional Duties, something the Chinese president has probably known for a very long time.
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Fri Jan 07, 2011 at 07:26:25 AM MST
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Is there anyone more disingenuous than Charles Kruathammer? In his column in the Washington Post today he goes on and on about what he perceives as the new "constitutionalism" that is coming to the Republican controlled House of Representatives. He gleefully compares it to constitutional "originalism" which insists that judges look at the Constitution from the point of view of those who wrote the various amendments.
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Thu Jan 06, 2011 at 12:07:40 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
So the big Reading of The United States Constitution was verbally abridged by House Republicans who felt some parts of this great document were not worth the effort, or maybe held some truths that were a little too self-evident.
Are we surprised that this is just one more bullshit show by Republicans who mouth the right stuff but fail when the principle is just a bit too much for them to stomach?
Thomas Jefferson would spit on these highly proficient bullshit artists.
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Mon Dec 06, 2010 at 07:15:15 AM MST
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There is a line in "A Fish Called Wanda" that comes to mind when I think about Tea Party Conservatives and many of what passes for main-line Republicans these days. Wanda if talking to Otto and he says "Apes don't read philosophy" Wanda replies "Yes, they do, Otto, they just don't understand it". That is where I am with Tea Partiers and the Constitution.
Sure they claim to have fealty to it, in that invariant way that some believers claim about the bible, but what good does it do you to be faithful to something you clearly don't understand? Take the soon to be Governor of Maine, Paul LePage. He was quoted recently as saying:
"I am going to be sitting with our attorney general and ask him to join the (health care reform) lawsuit against the federal government," he said, adding he just learned that if 35 states join the suit, the law "dies, automatically." Twenty states so far have joined the suit, filed in federal court in Florida, to repeal the provision in health care reform law that requires individuals to purchase health insurance.
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Tue Nov 16, 2010 at 06:50:31 AM MST
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There is nothing that the conservative bend of mind can not screw up and screw up badly. The quest by the Religious Right to overturn Roe v Wade is central example of this. Even though the nation is equally split (with a general slight edge to allowing women to control their own reproduction) the Religious Right has been pushing to have more and more conservative Justices appointed to the High Court. The goal being to finally get the five votes necessary stick a finger in the eye of more than half the nation and remove a woman's right to choose when and if she would have a child.
This opened the door to other conservative interests and saddled us with Justices that talk about nonsense like "original intent". I've written about how this is really a veiled attempt at case law nullification, as going to the original intent allows Justices who are so inclined to ignore stare decisis (settled law) and take a weed whacker to our understanding of the Constitution based solely on their impression of what the original intent of the Framers was.
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Mon Oct 18, 2010 at 20:28:13 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
cross-posted on Colorado Confluence: http://coloradoconfluence.com/...
The title quote, uttered by President Obama to describe the choice we have in the 2010 elections, captures the essence of the on-going struggle between humanity's inner-angels and inner-demons, a struggle which produces the realization of both our dreams and our nightmares, depending on which prevails in any given moment of history.
What follows is a full exposition of the meaning of the title phrase, including its significance in U.S. and World History, to the U.S. Constitution, and to the Colorado gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races of 2010.
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Fri Oct 08, 2010 at 06:36:51 AM MST
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Yesterday was a bad day for all the States Attorney General and Wing-Nuts who think that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Lawyers from the conservative Thomas Moore Law Center (set up by billionaire Catholic wacko Tom Monahan) got slapped around pretty good by District Court Judge George C. Steeh. He completely demolished the spurious arguments in his 20 page decision.
The Thomas Moore Law Center (TMLC) took a shot at the claim most likely to succeed against the ACA, namely that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce did not extend down to mandating that individuals purchase a product.
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Tue Oct 05, 2010 at 06:05:00 AM MST
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Noted Conservative Hack Jonah Goldberg posted a little article tearing into the idea that the Supreme Court is the place where we define what is and is not constitutional. He is defending the new radical Republican talking point that all legislation should have a constitutional justification attached to it. This is the Tenther's (folks who think that the powers of the Federal Government are completely enumerated in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment gives all other powers to the states individually) favorite meme.
They would use this thinking to end the Federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All the big Tea Party faves have this idea, with Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell really leading the charge.
This idea is nuts on the surface but it is packed full of nutty goodness as you get deeper as well. The whole push for "constitutional fealty" by the Right is a ruse and always has been. The reason that they want to return to so called original intent it so wipe out two centuries of case law that does not suit their radical agenda.
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Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 06:22:14 AM MST
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Okay, call me a dope if you must but I just can't figure out what the hell the "radical homosexual agenda" that so many conservatives talk about actually is. Yeah, yeah, you could insert a lot of sexual identity jokes here, but really that just plays into stereotypes about our gay citizens. The fact is, and most of you will be able to confirm this from your own experience is that gay, lesbian, bisexual citizens span the same range of good, bad, conservative and liberal as those who are heterosexual.
Just take a look at the Log Cabin Republicans (a group who has the best ability to compartmentalize and segregate concepts that I have ever seen), here is a Republican gay rights group. Almost a oxymoron in and of itself. Yet these are conservative gay citizens who support most of the Republican agenda.
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Mon Sep 20, 2010 at 06:12:23 AM MST
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There is a meme out there in the radical Republican Party about Shariah (Islamic law based on the Qur'an and other works) being imposed here in the United States. It has so much acceptance that a supposed 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, could call for a Federal law banning it, at the Value Voters summit in Washington and get a standing ovation. To say that this kind of crazy gets right up my nose is an understatement on the level of saying the razing of Carthage was a minor property dispute.
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Tue Aug 31, 2010 at 06:04:46 AM MST
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In the movie Witness, there is a scene where a little Amish boy, who has witnessed a murder, takes the gun of the detective who is there to protect him from a chest of drawers. He is caught by his grandfather who sits him down for a talk. The grandfather asks if the boy would use this gun to kill. The boy says that he would only kill a bad man. The grandfather asks "How will you know who is the bad man?" This is the central point of our system of justice, we don't just assume that someone is a bad man before punishing them, we have an elaborate process designed to require proof of actions before we punish.
Unfortunately our trauma with terrorism has eroded this system. Today, as you read this, there is a list of people around the world who are targeted for death. They are suspected of being involved with terror plots, and some of them are your fellow citizens. If they are found anywhere in the world by our forces they will be killed. Not captured and brought to trial, not attempted to be captured, but killed out right.
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Tue Aug 17, 2010 at 06:16:34 AM MST
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For 28 weeks in late 2008 and 2009 I wrote a series on the Constitution. It grew out of a realization that while I knew a couple of the Amendments I had never really read the whole thing. Worse I had never taken the time to think about it in part and as a whole. If you're interested you can find the last one here, and there are links to all 27 of the others. The point is not the series but what I learned from doing it.
There seems to be a failure by many of our fellow citizens to understand that the Constitution is not a Chinese Buffet where you can go straight for the sweet and sour chicken but leave off the bean sprouts. Our Constitution is more of a tapestry, where if you pull out one string that offends you the whole thing is weakened.
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Tue May 18, 2010 at 06:21:14 AM MST
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When a person becomes convinced of a conspiracy, it is often impossible, short of total confirmation of the theory, to get them to give up on it. This is due to the nature of conspiracy theories. They are often based on the idea that all the facts are actually facts and are know able. Any trial lawyer will tell you that the facts are not always knowable, that even the most sober of people will edit their memories in the way that is favorable to their point of view. Sadly reality is not as neat and tight as we would like to pretend.
The fact that Hawaii is invoking the Act 100 clause of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) combined with the Republican Governor of that state saying that she has viewed the presidents birth certificate would be enough to kill the beast that is Birtherism. Sadly Birtherism is a hydra, when you cut off one head, two more grow back.
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Thu May 06, 2010 at 06:47:24 AM MST
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It is a central pillar of my philosophy of life that if you live in fear the worst thing that can happen to you already has. While not wanting to get all fan-boy about things Frank Herbert did hit on a small "t" truth when he wrote that fear is the mind killer. This is why there are and have been acts of terror all through the history of our species. Using our ability to be afraid of the next horrible thing to influence the actions of people is something Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would both approve of. Fear makes your opponent do dumb things and ultimately makes them easier to defeat.
Which is why the current spasms of legislation in response to the attempted truck bombing in Time Square is so disappointing. We have a couple of proposals which under any other climate would be laughed out of Congress that are going to be taking up time over the next few weeks.
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