Category — Constitution

The Middlebury Institute has promoted Vermont secession. Nothing they have provided shows a grasp of the intricacies faced in this process even if it passed.
Today, Vermont is a cassava root ahead of being a Third World Nation; if not for the earmarks dragged in by Sen. Leahy, it would be one.

These numbers below are probably close, given the level of education in this country.

Secession, Ignorance, and Stupidity:

A recent Zogby/Middlebury Institute poll shows that 22% of Americans believe that “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.” Belief in states’ and regions right to secede was especially common among blacks (40%), Hispanics (43%) and people aged 18-24 (40%). Interestingly, Political liberals (32%) were more likely to believe in a right to secession than conservatives (17%). 18% of respondents say they would support a secession movement in their own state, including 24% of southerners.

Constitutional law professor Ann Althouse claims that these poll results show that “all these people [who believe in a right to secession] have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War.” She concludes that the pro-secession survey respondents are “fascinatingly stupid.” [snip]

I certainly agree with Ann that much of the public is shockingly ignorant about American history and constitutional law. This is one aspect of the more general widespread political ignorance that I have often written about on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. here and here). At the same time, I don’t think that ignorance is necessarily a sign of stupidity. [snip]

I agree with Althouse, fascinatingly stupid is a mild term however. I think the largest majority of them are clueless to what will be in order.
Unlike Althouse, I would encourage them to secede while they still know everything. And once out they cannot return. Citizenship is revoked.

First lets look at the demographics and their political suasion (this is important): from above

• Blacks–40%
• Hispanics–43%
• 18 to 24–40%
• Political liberals–32%
• Conservatives–17%

There are two groups, which I suspect fit in the prior numbers but listed separately:

• Own state respondents–18%
• Southerners–24%

The odds are good that each group has their own ideas as to how and where to form their country. This may cause some discombobulation in some areas for an unknown duration. For the sake of this discussion, all is amicable; selection and agreement is with minimal delay. People leave who wish to and others arrive all done equitably.

Government

With your own country, you need to form a government and some form of document of guidance. This will be by ballot or bullet. Given the liberal’s past history and for that matter most of the world, I’ll let you guess which method forms the ruling body.

Monetary system

Every country needs to have a means of settling internal debts, trade on the world markets and negotiate as something other than a third world nation. Or did these secessionists think they would use Sam’s money? It doesn’t work that way; you are a sovereign nation, act as one. All we have to do is change the color of the currency, declare the old valueless and issue the new in our banks. Don’t be stupid and think the Government hasn’t all ready printed the necessary notes. Those from the military remember MPC’s being changed to shut down black markets overnight.

Infrastructure

Roadways, airports, hospitals and rail lines are in place. All the new country needs is to equip and staff the existing structures and maintain them. Who says the professionals doing this work now are going to stay there. How will they be paid, housed, fed?
Forget keeping the National Guard equipment, guardsmen stay if they wish, but they are no longer paid nor receive any federal benefits if they do. Why should they, now they are foreign troops.

Business and Industry

Whether you have any industry and business depends on the tax structure. The tax structure depends on the country’s monetary system. If you cannot pay the employees in something other than rubles, your industry moves. No industry, what do you trade for things you need?

Basic services

Most of the listed above believe they will get the same basic services they get now: socialized medicine, welfare, WIC, food stamps, public schools Section 8 housing, police, fire and emergency response and working telephones. Yeah, think about that, working phones,

I encourage the above groups to opt for nationhood; pure emotion drives it and it drives it right into the Swamp of Stupidity.

If this should happen, we need to know who occupies what areas. All borders with new nations are fortified like the Korean 38^th parallel until and if treaties are negotiated.

(Political liberals)
New England–The Democratic Republic of Gated Communities (Might contain NYC, Long Island and NJ)
Who will mow the lawns and plow the snow, I haven’t an idea. After seeing what happened in South Africa, nobody but the swells will live there. That is all ready graven in liberal stone.

(18 to 24)

Southern CA—High Kingdom of Surf
Dude, like it will be soooo tomorrow and full of tatts.
It will be until we shut off the water for non-payment and shut off the power so they can conserve to their heart’s content.

(Hispanics)
Florida—Sovereign State of Sunny Sombrero
They can mow lawns, pick oranges and smuggle illegals to surfeit.

(Blacks)
Louisiana—Chocklit Empire
With Chief Nagin as the Wonka Man and Jesse “Fillin’ Man” Jackson as Minister of Appointees with Al ‘Mouth’ Sharpton as Minister of Graffiti, a government with portfolio is formed. This former state, having been run by liberals and Donks for years won’t know the difference except there won’t be any money.

(Conservatives)
I haven’t a clue who these individuals are. Guessing says Bible people so
Del Rio, Texas.
If that is wrong, then the panhandle of Idaho. They’ll all fit and you’ll never see them again.

Stepping back in history, Obama clears up some problems and puts his Hussein on the document. A historical painter from ACORN collective put brush to canvas to capture the moment.

This is more tidy than that unwieldy organ we suffer under daily, isn’t it.

I am an ardent supporter of the 2^nd Amendment.

The SCOTUS ruling upholding the lower courts in Heller produced satisfaction, tempered by the narrowness of the decision. All justices did agree the 2^nd Amendment is an individual right. How four voted against is not comprehensible. Nonetheless, they did and that is worrisome, when the Bill of Rights is subject to a whim.

Obama’s position on the 2^nd Amendment has one more side than a polygon. He finally settled on pro right to own a weapon according to the Bill of Rights, but states and localities can legislate all manner of rules as to where, how and who is elite enough to carry.

At first consideration, this is a typical liberal absurdity. Why have a Bill of rights?

The scales fell from my eyes and the beauty of this logic became apparent. I realized the cramped channel of my logic. I thought only inside the box.

Why restrict Obama’s reasoning to the 2^nd Amendment. Well-crafted legislation in the states and localities can produce highly desirous results in many other amendments, to wit:

1^st Amendment
Any journalist convicted of publishing, printing, broadcasting liberal tripe or causing the aforementioned shall be prohibited from being in possession of writing implements, computers microphones telephones, paper or transmitters and banned from all media contact as a prohibited person.

4^th Amendment
This now applies only to American citizens in the selected states and local areas; all others may be seized and searched. Illegal immigrants may be indentured before deported.

5^th and 6^th Amendments
Depends on who and what they did. The more heinous the crime and undesirable the miscreant gives sanction to more basic diversion.

8^th Amendment
The state and locality will determine bail and punishment, to be dependent on the person held. See 5^th and 6^th

13^th Amendment
No slavery unless the state or locality votes such laws for a specific reason.
Section 2 is void if any state or locality so chooses.

14^th Amendment
This new process makes this amendment null.

15^th Amendment
Voter registration in states and localities so choosing may ban liberals from voting under new mental incompetence laws. This avoids race, color and servitude unless changed under the amended 13^th Amendment
Section 2 is void if any state or locality so chooses.

16^th Amendment
Most states will vote to end income tax. Why send any money to support the remnants of the Constitution.

19^th Amendment
Hey, some places might have changed the 13^th, why not change this one.

24^th Amendment
States and localities may bring back poll and any other voting tax as needed. One never knows when the entities need a new revenue source. They will know whom to tax.
Section 2 is void if any state or locality so chooses.

26^th Amendment
Definitely, this is changed. If anyone isn’t smart enough to drink wisely or own a handgun, he or she isn’t smart enough to vote.
Section 2 is void if any state or locality so chooses.

27^th Amendment
Most localities if not states will write new law on this. Why pay any of these clowns in congress, they don’t do anything.

We have Obama to thank for this enlightenment; it takes a liberal, socialist lawyer to see part of an answer. They never see the unintended consequences.

Democratic voters look like a pretty homogeneous lot. The same nebulous themes of “hope” and “change” that elected Deval Patrick are now being bandied about on the national level by Barack Obama. And rather effectively at that given Obama’s comfortable Iowa win.

Obama has yet to impress me as a deep thinker, but his weak kneed themes make me wonder if he has the stones for the job. He voted “present” 130 times as an Illinois state senator. How many state issues can possibly be that vexing? But Obama partisans are quick to defend him:

They said Mr. Obama cast 4,000 votes in the Illinois Senate and used the present vote to protest bills that he believed had been drafted unconstitutionally or as part of a broader legislative strategy.

So the vote should have been “no” after all. He did take an oath to “defend” the constitution, not offer “protest” votes when it gets trampled on. And if merely voting to defend your beliefs is too daunting a challenge, what would a President Obama do if China invades Taiwan? You get the feeling he’d instruct our UN ambassador to vote “present” during the Security Council deliberations to maintain a Swiss like neutrality. Wouldn’t do to offend anyone after all.

This kind of rudderless indecision would be disastrous on the national and international levels. This man simply doesn’t have the experience to be president. His campaign slogan should really read—”Making change for changes sake and hoping for a plan”.

Anatomy of a political hangover

Listening to the promises made by the candidates, most overstep presidential powers and violate the Constitution. Tax law belongs to the House as does all money bills. Susurrations to the contrary, the President isn’t a King which makes the MSM anointments a futility in progress.

On Clinton–
Rush Limbaugh said last night was the worst night for Hillary since Bill’s second term. Not even close, people, for Communist Hillary, the election of Nixon crushed her ideals. Last night, this Alinsky drone’s pyloric valve seized in the open position, showing her true color.

You will never hear her expound upon her vision for the US. With Clinton, as Yoda said to Luke, “With you, it’s change, always change.” Her idea of change, abolishing the Constitution, doesn’t sound good on the hustings. Afterwards, the loud noise heard off screen was a boomer exploding.

On Edwards–
He wants to make your life better, but not quite the way he made his better. An envious man, he wishes to have more money than the collective you. To accomplish this end, everything will be free on his watch. Wait till you see what that costs. You will be verrucose in short order, waiting in line for universal medical relief. Then again, it would be kinder if he merely sued you. Under current tort laws, at least you keep your dignity.

On Obama–
Same droning sounds as from Silky. Different words used. Obama likes the word hope. We have hope. Hope we can make changes. Change is good for it gives us hope. He has no idea how the real world works. That will never prevent him from lurching into the breech. To give us hope for change, hopefully.

On Huckabee–
Having prodded GOP caucus goers with his RINO horn to get what he wanted, let us see how he dolls up the message for low denomination voters. I do not believe many NH voters place hands on the TV. Anyway, Huckabee is calling the NH primary, the Big Camp Meeting, can I get an AMEN.

On Romney–
Many questions need be asked of the Mitt. Does the U.S. deserve the type of government foisted on MA inmates? Do we need a “Big Dig” in every state? Why is the working population of MA shrinking? Why isn’t the illegal immigration population shrinking?
More to the point, which Mitt is running for office?

On McCain–
He is in the wrong party. That speaks to his good points. There isn’t room for the thought on the dark side.

On Paul–
Collaborating with the Donk moonbat Kucinich, both are investigating the appearance of illegal aliens at Groom Lake aka Area 51, instead of along the border and in meat packing plants. Art Bell is chairman of this primary of two.

On Thompson–
Not running hard while running, this makes one wonder, Wassup! If he keeps dissing the lame stream media, he may become the front-runner rather quickly. More of a Washingtonian politician (person, not place) he says it is about duty, not desire. We’ll see if this reaches fruition.

On the usual perennial weeds–
After signing up for campaign matching funds, they cash the check; spend a minimal amount on electioneering and pocket the rest. This is a common trope for most politicians, usually seen as groveling for power and re-election, and by the older politicians, sex in strange places with alien DNA types. Their attendance is for obfuscating purposes only, this heterophony helps shield the front-runners from real questions.

There is no right to privacy. That’s a concept liberals exploit until they take over, then kiss that goodbye. Let me rephrase that. You’re not willing to do what is necessary to attain and maintain your privacy.

Intel Official: Say Goodbye to Privacy

WASHINGTON (AP) - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information. [snip]

I scoured my handy pocket-size unabridged U.S. Constitution for any word, clause, phrase or Amendment stating one has a right to privacy. I didn’t even find the word privacy.

• I was sure Article I sections 7 through 10 might relate to the subject at hand, alas nothing exists there.
• Article II is junk about the President, electors and impeachment and how Congress has screwed up that bit.
• Article III runs on about the Men in Black, that they should behave and shouldn’t make things up. The last sentence in Section 3 is interesting since it might block the idea of slave reparations today.
• Article IV contends with the Full Faith and Credit stuff that the states have to do except when they don’t want to do so. Laws regarding interspecie marriage and return of runaway indentured servants are to be honored. However, we fought a war over this so we probably should erase section I. Ditto section 4 that speaks to governmental form and elections; it doesn’t mention fraud or dead voters. It does say MA shouldn’t invade VT or NH, which it is currently doing.
• Article V determines how to change this Document without guns. This seems like a long drawn out process. Guns are much more influential and immediate.
• Article VI is a waste of space and says nothing about privacy anyway!
• Article VII is a bunch of signatures of guys who could write and liked power.

Well, all those words and nothing said about privacy. Not in writing, not even hinted at in any form.

The 4^th Amendment is the only one worth looking at for a mention of of this subject. As before, there is nothing here about mail, communications, voice, and semaphore, going through the trash, signal fires or whispering. This amendment does forbid the government from unreasonable searches and seizures; but, since the government determines reasonableness, you are SOL in advance, so forget it.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people’s private e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001 and 2007. [snip]

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

So much for privacy in today’s world, anything uttered in any manifest form is in the public domain. You don’t have a hope of privacy if you express yourself to another.

Republicans probably don’t deserve another chance to run Congress after botching it so badly, but it looks like Democrats are determined to open the door for them:

The U.S. House voted along party lines Tuesday to send a resolution calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney to the House Judiciary Committee, where it likely won’t see daylight any time soon. 

The impeachment resolution, sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, accuses Cheney of violating his pledge to protect the U.S. Constitution. It says that Cheney misled the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime, as well as by making threats against Iran “absent any real threat to the United States.”

They’re rejoicing at the Democratic Underground and the Daily Kos, but impeaching the vice president wasn’t a huge priority in most voters’ minds last November.  And they know this issue won’t move their mid 20ish approval ratings, which is why they voted to table it.   However, I do agree with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.:

“I am surprised that Republicans would treat an issue as important as the potential impeachment of a vice president of the United States as a petty political game,” he said. “It is beneath the dignity of this institution.”

Yes, it is a serious charge.  That’s why you should explain to the American people why you brought it and present your evidence.  But tabling it told every intelligent voter all they need to know about the substance behind these charges.

This is from the NY Times, so you can imagine how bad this really is.

Democrats Plan a Shorter Workweek

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — Shortly after winning a majority last year, Democrats triumphantly declared that they would put Congress back to work, promising an “end to the two-day workweek.” And indeed, the House has clocked more time in Washington this year than in any other session since 1995, when Republicans, newly in control, sought to make a similar point. [snip]

The staff pushing broom around the House put in less time and accomplished more.

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told fellow Democrats this week that the House would not be in session next year on Fridays, except in June for work on appropriations bills. [snip]

Taking off for three day weekends will cut down on their weight gain; they’ll have considerably less time to feed on the pork.

The Democrats, by contrast, say that after 10 months of putting in longer days and weeks, they have made significant gains. They cited legislation, including an increase in the minimum wage and new ethics and lobbying rules, as well as in the nitty-gritty work of House committees, which they say has provided much-needed oversight of the Bush administration and will also set the stage for an ambitious agenda next year.

What ever the Dems fired up to produce light, produced only voluminous smoke obscuring everything excluding their mirrors. Those mirrors worked quite well whe they took up the ethics reforms. Replacing a couple of “or’s” with an “and” plus exchanging a semicolon for a period failed to clean up the problem, which is, the persons working on the problem.

And they blame Mr. Bush and Republicans for Congress’s low approval ratings, which they say will only help the Democrats expand their majority in 2008. [snip]

Certainly, they are going to blame Bush. I never expected them to look at themselves for the lack of productivity.

Still, Democrats conceded that the hectic pace had taken a toll, especially on lawmakers who must travel long distances home and who have small children. And members of Congress have not gotten a raise or cost-of-living increase this year.

Ah, here’s the real grumble! Congress didn’t break a sweat, but they want more money. Tax dollars, your money! Many Americans are not getting a raise this year and they worked for them.

On Wednesday, the House cast its one-thousandth roll-call vote of the year, the first time that it reached that mark since the Constitution was ratified. Democrats hailed the occasion, while Republicans sniped that only 106 of the votes were on bills ultimately signed into law, and that 45 of those bestowed names on post offices or other property. [snip] (Emphasis mine)

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, said the Democrats had to put in the hours to make up for Republican failings last year. “There was so much left undone by the 12 years of Republican control of the Congress, it was absolutely essential that we put our nose to the grindstone,” she said.

Whatever the Donks put to the grindstone, it wasn’t their collective nose.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz has three children, 8-year-old twins and a 4-year-old. “It’s tough,” she said in a telephone interview from Orlando, where she had taken the children while she attended the Florida Democratic Convention there this weekend. [snip]

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, what is more important, your kids or being in office?
Shanghaied into running, I doubt that transpired. Hand the tykes off to their father.

Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. [snip]

Has anybody information on where all these “right-wing courts are? Secondly, Just how far bent to the left could the Middlebury Institute want in a court. How about a Star Chamber to clear up non-PC utterances and what, expunge rampant hate crime?

Flag of the Second Vermont Republic

Motto: “Vermont, we have maple syrup and omelets.”

If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders “probably would allow abortion and have gun control,” Hill said, while Southerners “would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now.”

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

Vermont, one of the nation’s most liberal states, has become a hotbed for liberal secessionists, a fringe movement that gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.

After secession, Vermont’s GNP will exceed only North Korea’s manufacturing excesses. As of now they cannot keep college grads here and business expansion will consist of Macramé and candle shoppes festooned with gingerbread gewgaws.

To these characters, running a business consists of running it into the ground. Then the elite will request the UN to send them rice and automatic weapons.

Thomas Naylor, the founder of one of those groups, the Second Vermont Republic, said the friendly relationship with the League of the South doesn’t mean everyone shares all the same beliefs. [snip]

The first North American Separatist Convention was held last fall in Vermont, which, unlike most Southern states, supports civil unions. Voters there elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate. [snip]

Yeah, between that embarrassment and the other bozo in the senate, a new state motto is needed. Perhaps, “Vermont, we’re all dysfunctional here.”

“Violence never solved anything” was my mother’s refrain when sorting out sibling spats. Well, was she ever so wrong. In fact, the opposite is true, so it seems when dealing with Liberals, Commies, Progressives and that assorted vileness. Given history, those tainted personages apply violence at every given chance while rebuking those applying violence against them.

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”–Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Burma, ‘gun control’ and David Hume

Burma is a good example of ‘gun control’, i.e. a state of affairs where firearms are a legal monopoly of the government forces. One side has good intentions and the other side has loaded rifles, and the result (so far) has been the same as it was in 1988 - or even back in 1962 when the late General Ne Win first set up his socialist administration. [snip]

…the philosophy of David Hume. This mid 18th century Scottish philosopher claimed that government was not based on force - but rather that it was based on opinion. Hume did this to mock the claim that there was a great difference between the ‘constitutional’ government of Britain and the ‘tyranny’ of France - under the skin both sides are basically the same, was his point. [snip]

In Burma, as in so many other places, many people seem to have thought that opinion, namely the good intentions of the majority, were more important than firepower - they appear to be mistaken.

“You are showing lack of respect for the dead” - perhaps, but I am warning people not to stand against men with rifles when you are unarmed. Get the firepower, one way or another, and learn how to use it, then you may have a chance at liberty - you can not have it, or keep it, without firepower. And that remains true even if you win some soldiers over to your side with appeals to their reason.

Lest you wonder why the Left in this country are so adamant about disarming the populace, here is the sole reason, not crime prevention, target shooting, hunting or collecting.

Now ask yourself where the so called GOP candidates stand on your liberty.

                       Stay away from me.  Go CARE about someone else.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton said “I feel your pain” to AIDS patient Bob Rafsky during a campaign stop, he seemed to mean it.  And he did, in the same way he felt all the narcissistic sentiments of his various realities to come.  We learned that, as he continued to emote and feel things during his priapic presidency, the facts and values of his emotions varied a great deal.  But, whatever his faults, Clinton was a lone act; he just wore the comedy and tragedy masks and didn’t try to institutionalize his pathos.  For that, we have George W. Bush and Compassionate Conservatism.

“Compassionate Conservatism” as a theoretical approach to social problems is the creation of Marvin Olasky, professor/journalist,  former communist, Jewish atheist turned Born Again Christian, Yale grad and former Bush advisor.  The term derives from Olasky’s study of the relative successes of government and private programs in relieving the effects of poverty throughout American history.  Olasky’s ideas and conclusions were the basis for faith-based initiatives, some of them adopted by GWB as governor to Texas and later as President.  

Compassionate Conservatism passed Olasky’s empirical tests.  It had less to do with religion than it did with communitarian possibilities , and almost nothing to do with the administrative state as a dispenser of compassion.  Bush, however, has infused his administration with a soft compassionate conservatism, and pushed the phrase front stage, and  thence into that deplorable family of catch-phrases inflicted upon historians and the public by political dream merchants.   These phrases define eras, visions, goals, national purposes and the evanescent pursuits of political generations, not of “the people” themselves.  

The last full century was fouled by such blinding banalities - New and Fair Deals, New Frontiers, New Convenants, New This, New That, Straight-Talk Express, WIN, and lots more, plus that apotheosis of mawkish liberal romanticism, stewed with a touch of Albert Speer,  The Great Society.  All of them foundered in some way on the shoals of reality.  As vessels for everyone’s different wishes and interpretations, they could never really function as democratic programs.  

As a digression, what the hell was The Great Society?  Someone tell me.  If the New Haven of today, with its brutalist architecture, bloodstains and cement foliage resembles the progressive vision of 1968,  someone needs to be punished for the artwork and the final rendering.  Liberals reduced the faded,  but restorable illuminated script of American urban life to loopy spray-can graffito, not only in New Haven but in every old city in the country because they cared about the inhabitants!   Listen, Uncle Sam.  Wherever I hurt, please don’t touch me there.

The same is true of Compassionate Conservatism, which to me seems to be the spiritual rationale for the President’s  swelling sympathies for anyone who can make it across an American border, to holders of burdensome mortgages, or to a select few who can lay claim to natural rights somewhere across the seas.  Despite Mexican towns emptying of young men, most who never return, despite the  deepening Latin despotism that make it desirable to leave and abandon hope of change, despite tyrannical stasis in the Middle East among our allies, our indiscriminate goodness survives the contradictions and goes looking for another heart to heal.   And we haven’t even gotten to sub-prime borrowers and their angst.

Now Bush is  waxing sympathetic about injustice in Myanmar, which is not a moral gradient he needs to scale to remain compassionate, and which fades into insignificance anyway in the shadows of monstrous injustices in Africa and the Middle East.  No doubt Rice can make a compassionate case for the Burmese/Myanmaris who must be saved by the ameliorative West.  It’s lunacy. There’s a natural limit to caring; it’s cheap, its reality is unknowable, and conservatism is not about pain, its  simply about liberty and justice for all.   You don’t attain either of these things by sloshing in sentimentality. 

With George Bush we got prescription drug subsidies,  support for affirmative action, a volcano of dollars for the orgy of corruption and graft that followed the genuine suffering of Katrina,  open borders, and Bush’s promotion of his four C’s of “civility, courage, compassion and character” (First Inaugural Address),  but not a word about The Constitution or his governing philosophy.  When you have no governing philosophy to defend as President, just a boundless heart,  then the office is your personal hair shirt.  The last time we went down this road, we got the constipated spirituality and crabbed pieties of Jimmy Carter.  Maybe we’re better off this time.  I’m not sure yet.

    DENNIS KUCINICH IN SYRIA, BLESSES EVERYONE BUT AMERICANS

Eligible bachelor, pacifist hunk and Ohio Representative, Dennis Kucinich was in Syria last week cuddling the region-stabilizing Bashar Assad for his open-door policy to Iraqi refugees.   The population-expanding meddling in the Iraq War of the Syrian and Iranian regimes has encouraged Iraqis friendly to both countries to take refuge across their borders.   

Experts here conclude that these population-expanding and stabilizing policies were met with approval by the impish hair-dye tester and apple-doll head model, Dennis Kucinich (D-Emented).  Syria and Iran both seek to redress the population imbalance by sending terrorists to Iraq to stop the sectarian violence by killing Iraqis,  a “fair” policy almost certain to meet with Kucinich’s endorsement.

Assad’s intimidation, murder and assassination policies in nearby Lebanon have enabled the American left’s much-admired and peace-oriented Hezbollah to threaten the destabilizing Israeli state to the south.   This reporter believes that Kucinich endorses murder, assassination, and Islamic totalitarianism as a means to continue the  “peace-process”  slaughter, and to promote stability in the region as long as it is legal.

Experts here also believe that American forces, claimed by liberals to be already short on the necessities of  war, lacked the disinfectant supplies that would be needed after Kucinich hand-shaking.  Legal scholars and compassionate conservatives here believe that Kucinich’s blessing of American forces would almost certainly violate Constitutional restrictions on religious expression, and that Kucinich wished to avoid offending Islamist Al Qaeda beheaders worldwide.

WorldNet Daily Online  (Sep 6, 2007) had this to say:  

After praising Syria following a meeting in Damascus with President Bashar Assad, Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declared he will not visit troops in Iraq during his Middle East tour because he considers the American military presence in Iraq to be illegal.

“I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation….I don’t want to bless that occupation with my presence“,   Kucinich said in Lebanon according to the Associated Press. “I will not do it”…

It is not known when Representative Kucinich will slither back to Washington, DC.

Vermont’s economy would be a basket case if the State could afford a basket. Liberals and Progs believe social engineering is more important than the state’s economy. Revenues in the state are not as projected; the housing fiasco and the planned healthcare disaster looms like a monster in 1950’s movie. Attack this problem with Social engineering first.

Vt. Marriage Commission Begins Work

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont’s new commission charged with studying whether residents would accept same-sex marriage held its first meeting Thursday at the Statehouse where it was immediately derided by conservative activists as “a farce.” [snip]

“This is a divisive issue,” Little (Former Rep. Tom Little of Shelburne) acknowledged as he opened the session. “But that is no reason to avoid it, because constitutional rights are in play here.”

(Little was the architect of the Civil Union law)

Rep. Tom Little, please show me in the State Constitution where the word marriage is used in relation to any of the four known and one indeterminate sexes wishing to form a union. Failing to so do, kindly remove the term “constitutional rights” from use. Let us use the term “rights because the libs like them.”

So we get gay marriage instead of solutions to a worsening economy. The reason why is simple, liberals cannot solve a failing economy

The following was posted on 8/5/07

Vermont’s financial future tentative

Projected tax revenues are “…a lot more vulnerable than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Tom Kavet, an economist hired by the Legislature…. Over the last year, housing starts are down 44%. The splatter effect from this reaches into many other markets, all which affect sales and income taxes. That drop represented a “$300 million economic downdraft,” he said, noting it could have broad impacts. [snip]

For Vermont’s financial future go here.

My understanding of Treason as a legal and ethical matter is that of a patriot layman.  I know very little about the subject.  Article III of our Constitution employs only nineteen words for Treason…(it) “shall consist only in levying war against them (the United States), or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and  Comfort”.  The Englightenment figure who composed these lines might have been Jefferson.  Another man who had something to say about Treason was Madison, who ruminated on the topic in Federalist #43.  None of it helps.

The minimalist description of Treason in Article III means, to me, that the author of the passage on Treason faced a process problem, and he knew it.  The 18th century was a time when the crime of Treason was kin to the crime of Heresy from a few centuries earlier.  Heresy was a thought and speech crime of disloyalty, and in the European hereditary monarchies, Treason was nearly the same.  America,  the new country aborning when our Constitutional author wrote his portion of Article III, had no room for either of these crimes.  They just didn’t fit.

So he didn’t mention the thought and speech crime of disloyalty, which is what Heresy and Crown Treason is.  He mentioned only an act.  An act of betrayal, and a pretty narrow one at that.  He knew that one can be disloyal without betraying one’s country if one doesn’t act upon it.  The example of disloyalty in action is John Walker Lindh.  He was probably disloyal for the entire segment of his life that he spent with the leftists cranks who raised him.  His spiritual journeys to Pakistan and Afghanistan are what got him into trouble; not thoughts of disloyalty but joining the Taliban.

Lindh wasn’t charged with, or prosecuted for, Treason.  Hardly anyone ever is.  He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans, and with supporting terrorists, although he pleaded to the lesser charge of carrying explosives to the Taliban.    That’s what sent him to jail for twenty years, and sent his ridiculous father into a frenzy of belated support for his son.

Now, there’s a body of law which governs the matters of espionage, sabotage, disclosure of secrets, that kind of stuff.  I don’t know where Lindh’s statutory problems come from, but it clearly isn’t Treason, even though he certainly fits one description of a treasonous slug.  His legal difficulties, then, cloud the matter of Treason even more.  If we can’t decide what Treason is, then what is a traitor?  No American is subject to punishment for disloyal thoughts, moods or attitudes.  Treachery is not necessarily treasonous.

History is of little use in clarifying the matter.  50,000 presumed “traitors” were executed in France after the liberation, either by the sham legality of French courts, or through revenge killing, because they supported the Vichy government.  De Gaulle himself was ruled a traitor by the same government.  Lord Haw Haw was executed after WWII because, as a British subject, he openly supported The Reich.  Hitler’s potential assassins were found guilty of treason because they didn’t support The Reich.

The problem, at the moment, is that Treason no longer matters.  It’s been erased by new targets for our loyalties. The old ways have been shattered by the suspect aims and bogus ambitions of early 21st-century American life.  It’s impossible to sustain loyalties to a welfare state,  to a nation without self-respect, or to the UN, to a mall or product line, or to any of the ideas supported by the idiot persuasions of the political class.  Unrealistic and fantastic, American politics is a silly pantomime of national purpose.  The human response is to find other things worthy of our loyalties.  Organizations of all kinds are our surrogates for the national family we no longer have.

Sometimes in this search for loyalties, things go wrong.  The robed law lords expect loyalty to some codes and not to others, which is why Libby is in jail and Berger is free. It explains a droning dolt like John Conyers and his calls for impeachment, or the free-immigration fanatics whose loyalty has fixed upon abstractions about compassion and not about a mature concept of citizenship.  Politicians are loyal to the frauds of their own propaganda.  The list is very long.  Loyalty is a personal issue, not a national issue.

Treason can only exist where the nation is understood, by its citizens, as a family.  For me, that includes liberals and the crazy left, even if we’re estranged.  I love the flag.  If called upon I would go again, to fight and die for it, anywhere, anytime, at any age, and for everyone who lives under its snap and flutter.   No law requires this of me or anyone else.  The country that offers this dispensation is worthy of our loyalty as nothing else in life can be. 

In a move certain to ratchet up pressure on the White House, Iraq’s parliament adjourned until September. Parliamentary speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani said the following of the break:

“We have already cut the holiday by one month. It is our constitutional right to take it.”

How can President Bush make the case for further investment of American blood and treasure when Iraq’s government can’t delay its vacation? Does Mr. Mashhadani understand that he won’t have any constitutional rights if they don’t stabilize the country? Ordinarily, I’d attribute this to feckless politicians, but even they must see the need for critical pieces of legislation dealing with oil revenues and former Ba’athists.

If Iraq’s government doesn’t see the need for political accommodation, that raises yet another objection to continued US involvement. Ultimately, any US “strategery” requires an engaged and cooperative Iraqi government. Neither of those adjectives describes the US-Iraq relationship right now.

Another possibility is that Iraq’s factions have decided to give the US a shove toward exiting. Iraq’s parliament must know that adjourning without critical pieces of legislation empowers the antiwar crowd. Perhaps their analysis is that jockeying for position and power post US involvement is more advantageous for them.

Whatever the ultimate reason, Iraq’s parliament gets an F-. President Bush is doing everything he can domestically to keep the war effort going. The least they could have done was delay their vacation.