Dohiyi Mir

Father Of The Declaration Of War

James Madison, 200 years ago today:

We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.

The House declared war on June 4th (79-49), the Senate on the 17th (19-13)--Madison signed on the 18th.  Starting a centuries-old tradition of pretending we are peaceful whilst engaging in war:

War Made Easy since 1812!

We have met the enemy, and he is us...

ntodd

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Tradition Justified Slavery, Too

First Circuit tosses DOMA:

For 150 years, this desire to maintain tradition would alone have been justification enough for almost any statute. This judicial deference has a distinguished lineage, including suchfigures as Justice Holmes, the second Justice Harlan, and Judges Learned Hand and Henry Friendly. But Supreme Court decisions in the last fifty years call for closer scrutiny of government action touching upon minority group interests and of federal action in areas of traditional state concern. 

To conclude, many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress’ denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest.

Commence bizarre, ignorant, bigoted freak out in 3...2...oh, beat me to it.

ntodd

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Speaking Of Birther Madness

It's funny that the only previous example of birtherism involves a Vermonter in the 1880s: President Chester A Arthur.  His alleged birthplace is spitting distance from our house (and Canada) in the neighboring town of Fairfield.

Interesting article, but I take issue with one "fair and balanced" item:

Obama also has his scandals and accusations of misconduct.

Astonishingly, Obama has been scandal free.  Myriad faux outrages and accusations abound, but nothing real--so there's not anything the birther bullshit is distracting from, save Romney's dreadful record at Bain and as MA Gov.

ntodd

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Well, To Tell The Family Secret...

Via Steve Bates, I see Dutchboy Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) is demonstrating his small goverment cred:

“But I do now believe that I’d like to establish a three-person office in Washington, D.C., OK — knowing it, we’ll go to five (audience laughs). But there’s no reason why we should have this kind of question, you know, for the president of the United States. So that at any future election, all right, that someone would have to walk into that office, and prove that they meet the minimum qualifications to be president of the United States.”

Fortunately, we already have an entity--50 of them, actually--that makes this an easy verification.  Perhaps you've heard of the States, Pete?  They're not only constitutionally responsible for conducting elections, but also are in charge of things like birth certificates.  And Hawaii has certified that Obama is American-born, which is more than your state of Michigan has done for Romney at this point.

“You know, it’s embarrassing that we are at that point where that ever became an issue."

Well, he got that right.  It is certainly shameful that the country with the oldest written constitution in the world freaks out when somebody darker than the transplanted Englishmen who wrote it gets elected.

ntodd

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Wednesday Pearlblogging

What?


Oh!

ntodd

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If Wishes Were Horses, Businessmen Would Be Kings

Oy:

"'I'm not sure I could do it,' he said. 'I'd like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president, and the birth place of the president being set by the Constitution, I'd like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he can get the job of president,'" Romney said the man told him.

I'd like it to also say that the president has to spend at least three years under a vow of poverty, serving others, and can never have owned a business before he can get the job of president.  Also, they should submit a book report on Gene Sharp's Waging Nonviolent Struggle.  And buy the world a Coke.

ntodd

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Makes As Much Sense As A Nine Dollar Bill

Booman:

David Brooks offers us another steaming pile of Stupid. This time, he's concerned that some folks on the left are complaining about income inequality and ultra low taxes on the wealthy, so he attempts to invoke Alexander Hamilton as the kind of guy who would have no truck with class warfare. Yes, it's odd to summon the ghost of the foremost advocate of a strong central government to argue for the virtues of limited government, but this is David Brooks we're talking about here, and nonsense is the name of his game.

He creates something new, which he calls the Hamiltonian Tradition even though the thing he describes has nothing to do with Hamilton. 

Yeah:

But the federal role has historically been sharply limited. The man who initiated that role, Alexander Hamilton, was a nationalist.

I admit to being puzzled as to how the man who argued for an expansive view of the General Welfare and the Necessary and Proper Clause was the man who initiated a sharply limited Federal role.

ntodd

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Speaking Of My Obsession With Trivial Constitutional Issues

I told Ericka yesterday that I wasn't in much of a blogging mood because nobody had said anything annoying about the Constitution for a few days.  So I appreciate this:

During a Republican primary debate last week, Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin told voters that he may support eliminating the direct election of Senators — the right guaranteed by the 17th Amendment:

This is a very interesting question, and I haven’t jumped up and down and taken a firm position on it. I think in general, my, I have a very serious concern about erosion of states rights. Very serious concern of that, and this, reversing this decision might pull that balance back. I am, as I’ve mentioned, a strong conservative, I don’t think the federal government should be doing a whole lot of things that it’s doing and it well may be that a repeal of the 17th Amendment might tend to pull that back but I haven’t written any thesis on it or anything like that.

I haven't written any thesis either:

Ratified during the so-called Progressive Era (which also gave us California's brand of direct democracy and Prohibition), it was consistent with a long arc of increased access to governmental and electoral processes: no office-holder property requirements in the Federal Constitution vis state plans of government, ratification through Conventions rather than Legislatures, gradual increase of popular voting for Electors, the 15th and 19th Amendments, and most recently the 24th and 26th Amendments.

Direct election of Senators preserves our republican structure as states retain equal suffrage in the Senate (which ain't changing unless you start from scratch or somehow convince small states like Vermont to give up their leverage, per Article V), keeps longer terms for Senators than Representatives (still insulating them from the fiery and oft fickle passions of the mob), and staggers the Senatorial classes so the chamber is more consistent and stable in the face of prevailing political winds (giving further lie to claims I've seen that popular election makes the chamber a "clone" of the House).  The Amendment does this whilst making Senators more accountable to the People, the ultimate Sovereign in the Several States as well as at the national level.

If you want to give nod to the Framers' vision in this debate, they generally were concerned about corruption and tried to distribute centers of power that could be influenced by corrupt forces.  So the Electors don't meet together, making it harder (at least in the 18th century context) to bribe them, for example.

One objection to Senators' being chosen by Legislatures was that the body would become an aristocratic tyranny of sorts, which was addressed in Federalist 63:

[T]he general reply ought to be sufficient, that liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power [let's pause and savor that statement for just a moment]...But a more particular reply may be given.

Before such a revolution can be effected, the Senate, it is to be observed, must in the first place corrupt itself; must next corrupt the State legislatures; must then corrupt the House of Representatives; and must finally corrupt the people at large.

So there was concern, but it was thought that the risk was balanced out by the overarching structure of Congress and the need to have state governments tied to the national government.  Yet the Constitution was ultimately ratified by the Several States, and we had a civil war that fundamentally transformed "the United States are" into "the United States is".  Therefore I'm not so sure there's a compelling need for such an explicit bond between state Legislatures and Congress to maintain our Federal balance given that the essential nature of the Senate itself hasn't been altered.  What's more, part of what gave momentum to changing the process was corruption (Publius' quaint notions notwithstanding), any Legislature being a body politic much smaller and more concentrated than the electorate at large, and thus arguably easier to corrupt.

...

We the People have been constantly reinterpreting and modifying our Constitution to continue the work of forming a more perfect Union.  As early as the Lincoln-Douglas Senate race in 1858, states started experimenting with more direct voter participation.  By the time of the 17th Amendment, more than half of them had some variation of direct-primary or the Oregon Plan, so making a democratic change nationwide was pretty much inevitable at that point, driven by the People and the states themselves.

The only Amendment we have ever repealed was the 18th, for good reason because it is also the only Amendment that restricted individual liberty instead of expanding it.  I don't see any compelling argument to undo the 17th (or the 16th or 14th for that matter, but that's for another discussion), which increased the People's voice in Congress.

Espectially in today's political climate, I see repeal of the 17th as just more voter disenfranchisement.

ntodd

PS--I'll note that I still support the anti-democratic characteristics of the Senate itself, for reasons that may or may not be clear in the above excerpt.  However, the more expansively democratic our processes in selecting representative government, the better, which is why I'll vigorously defend against any attacks on direct election of Senators and why my opposition to the NPV movement has softened (though I'd still prefer an amendment to rid us of the Electoral College).

PPS--I wonder how many people who argue for repealing the 17th still want to retain our presidential election system.

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NTodd Ain't Ann Romney: Getting Down To The Wire

Just a little post-Memorial Day fundraiser reset.  As usual, the generous contributions we've received over the past several weeks are most helpful and appreciated.

And now, we make our final push to the arrival of Baby Zeeto Sadie.  Increasing signs of early labor, shifting to weekly wellness checks, a growth scan next week, continued vigilance against abruptions and preeclampsia...if I didn't already bite my nails, I would start now.

We are in a much better situation than at this stage with Big Bruzhoo Samuel, in so many respects.  But of course, because of our personal choices, when Ericka is on family leave we could certainly use a little more coin to keep the household running.

So, if you do find value in obsessive analysis of trivial constitutional issues, the best cat/dog/babyblogging in the universe, and quixotic crusades in activism, governance and partisan politics, all done with great aplomb and creative swearing, please consider throwing something in the tipjar.  This plea issued with the usual humble thanks, awareness of crappy economic times everybody is suffering under, etc.

ntodd

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On The Record For Civil Rights

The highlight of today's VT State Democratic Convention happened just a few minutes into the procededings when Euan Bear of Bakersfield introduced the following:

National Marriage Equality Resolution

WHEREAS: Gender equality is one of the most significant moral and legal issues of the 21st Century; and,

WHEREAS: The Vermont Democratic Party has unequivocally endorsed and supported equality in all aspects of American life;

NOW THEREFORE: Be it resolved by the Vermont Democratic Party, in convention this 26th day of May 2012

FIRST: That the platform of the Vermont Democratic Party and the platform of the National Democratic Party should endorse unqualified support for marriage equality under civil law for same-gender couples; and,

SECOND: That all delegates selected to represent the Vermont Democratic Party within Vermont's borders or beyond, in state or national conventions or meetings, are directed to fully support as a matter of policy the inclusion in the National Democratic Party's Platform a plank committing the Party to the complete and immediate implementation of gender equality and equal treatment for same-gender couples under state and federal law.

There was no tedious worrying about how this might cause us to lose independent Catholics or left-handed blue-collar workers, with a tight vote.  It passed by acclamation.  Would that the rest of our fight for equal civil rights under the law were so easy.

As Congressman Peter Welch and Governor Shumlin observed in the afternoon, our little state has been a leader on this and other crucial issues, and the rest of the nation will ultimately follow.  It was a good day to be a Vermont Democrat.

ntodd

PS--Euan was our county chairperson and last year I was honored to be nominated by her to be vice-chair.  She's a strong progressive voice who helps keep our party honest.

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Friday Foetus Blogging, Week 31: She...Could...Go...All...The...Way!

Let's hope there are no good open field tacklers out there...

ntodd

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It's A Trilogy

1961:


1968:


1977:


One of these isn't quite like the other, but still: this is probably one of the most significant days in human history.

ntodd

[Update: 2012: Enter the Dragon.]

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The Movement Abides

Yeah, well, y'know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man:

[A]s official Washington gears up to confront the issue of campaign finance abuses, which include corporate constitutional rights under the First Amendment, the corporate personhood movement is heading into round one of this long fight with somewhat weak hands. It has an imprecise message and imperfect messenger in the Senate. It has liberal critics who say the focus on stripping corporate rights is a dangerous distraction. And it faces facts from the 2012 campaign that are not buttressing its case—because it has so far been wealthy individuals, not corporations, that have invested the biggest bucks in this cycle.

We've seen similar issues crop up with women's suffrage, child labor reform, and the civil rights movement.  The fight should be at the state level!  No, Federal!  We need better laws!  An amendment!  Your tactics set us back!  Etc!

Perhaps the best approach here and now is an amendment that just explicitly allows Congress and the States to regulate campaign finance, as Sen Udall and Vermont have suggested.  Maybe we should say corporations aren't real people and can have their campaign contributions regulated.  We might want to include unions and non-profits, too.  Dunno.

Are there mixed messages and lousy messengers at the moment?  Sure, but who the fuck cares?  We're still in the early stages, throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, debating and trying to reach consensus.  Takes geologic time to sort complicated social and political stuff out.

Personally, I'm not overly invested in any precise amendment language, let alone an amendment at all, even though I took the lead in our town's resolution effort.  I'm interested in fixing the problem of money's being equated with speech and having more influence on elections than actual ballots cast by non-artificial person units.  If SCOTUS revisits Citizens thanks to the Montana Supreme Court's decision, or we get an amendment, or somebody clever finds a way to write better campaign finance law to get around the ruling, whatever, I'll be happy.

For now, let's keep pushing from many sides and let the process play out.

ntodd

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Thursday Busydayblogging

Busy day for the toddler, then he crashed in Daddy's command chair.

ntodd

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War: What The Matrimonial Bloody Hell Is It Good For?

Via Balloon Juice, I see Paul Fussell died.  Honestly, he's one of those people like Abe Vigoda who I assumed had already done so, but I'm still sad.

I referred to Fussell a couple times on this blog, and read aloud from his book Wartime once on a (now lost) podcast dedicated to the word 'fuck':

The use of fucking as the adjective and fucker as the noun of all work was so common among British troops that it was noticed in an oficial War Office pamphlet of October, 1941, issued not to reprehend the usage but simply to warn against careless identification of strangers. In North Africa a German spy dressed in British uniform had succeeded in deceiving a British unit because he spoke impeccable Other Ranks English. The War Office pamphlet warned: “lt should . . . be impressed on all ranks that the use in conversation of ‘f--—-s’ and ‘b----s’ is not necessarily a guarantee of British nationality.”

Now and then even the troops wearied of fucking and tried substituting equivalents like conjugal or matrimonial, as in “Where's the conjugal NAAFI in this camp?” or “What the matrimonial bloody hell do you think you're doing?” Fucking was so common and boring by the time of the Vietnam War that the Americans merely alluded to it and accommodated it to the more modern abbreviation habit. Thus a new arrival was a FNG or Fucking New Guy, and, as an army nurse remembers, a little rubber boat used for frolics while swimming was a LFRB, short for Little Fucking Rubber Boat.

After several years of fucking, one did not have to be a puritan to find it tedious. On Guadalcanal, Sherwood F. Moran, a Japanese language expert, said wearily to one marine, "Yes, I know, you saw the fucking Jap coming up the fucking hill and raised your fucking rifle and shot himbetween the fucking eyes.”

Ernie Pyle is also reputed to have had enough, even if his remonstrance took ironic form. “I am sick and tired of that word --,” he once said. “If I ever hear the ---- word again I'm going to throw up.”

But the use of the term could never be curbed because it was so essential to military meaning:

Once, on a misty Soottish airfield, an airman was changing the magneto on the engine of a Wellington bomber. Suddenly his wrench slipped and he flung it on the grass and snarled, “Fuck! the fucking ucker’s fucked.” The bystanders were all quite well aware that he had stripped a bolt and skinned his knuckles.”

NTodd's Pa's Wife got me the book the summer before my sophomore year of college.  As it turns out, the following spring I took a WWII class taught by an old friend of the author's.  The prof once assigned an article by Fussell, but I didn't read it since I'd read his book and I referenced that in the associated paper instead.  Wartime made quite an impact on me, and I highly recommend it.

ntodd

PS--I took the class pass/fail, skipped several weeks in a row during a rough patch when I rarely attended any course, got an A- (which only counted as a 'pass').  The prof in question was right out of Central Casting: a tall old man, wore the tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, chain smoked right outside the room (you could still smoke inside back then) until classtime.  Began our section on the Pacific Theater by saying, "the Japanese...are a little people."  He also told me I didn't have to be so conversational in my papers and exams--I now look back at it as practice for blogging.

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EmLOLument

I'm sure about 30 seconds after WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT, there were articles bout how telegram style was going to destroy our ability to communicate.

ntodd

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In Defense Of A Birther

Outside the Beltway on AZ's SecState birther nonsense:

The fundamental issue is this:  constitutionally the citizens of the United States do not vote for the president of the United States.  They vote for the electors who, in turn, vote for the president.   Even though most state ballots only list the candidates the voter is not voting for the candidate, but for the slate of electors (indeed, in AZ the electors are listed on the ballot—see here and statute 16-502 ).  As such, the states as political units in the process do not oversee the actual candidates for president.  This means that the states themselves may have no constitutional standing in requiring any kind of proof of eligibility of candidates (and hence no grounds for indulging, constitutionally at least, in birth fantasies).   

Well...at first blush, you can certainly argue that states have no oversight of presidential candidates per se.  However, let's consider Article II, Section 1:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...

So in fact the states DO have control over the electors themselves and can make pretty much any rules they want regarding their selection.  Today we're used to statewide popular votes, but it wasn't until 1836 that the States--SC being the sole holdout until 1860--uniformly ditched selection by the Legislature.  And we see evidence of State prerogative in ME and NE, who chose in the 20th century to ditch winner-take-all.  Point is that States have a lot of discretion in how presidential elections work.

SecState Bennett referred to AZ statute 16-507 as one justification for his request of Obama's birth certificate:

[T]he entire group of electors of each party shall be enclosed in a scroll or bracket to the right and opposite the center on which shall be printed in bold type the surname of the presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidate.

Thus, there is an explicit link between the electors presented on AZ's ballot and the candidates they are expected to vote for (I'll note AZ has no faithless elector ban on the books, however).  One could make the argument--though SecState Bennett does not--that it is in the State's interest to ensure the candidates that voters presume will be chosen by their electors (who are selected by the candidates' parties) are actually qualified for the office.

It's a stupid gambit, to be sure, but I think the constitutional argument that's been made against it is a little too clever by half.

ntodd

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Nullify-a While You Can, Monkey-Boy!

Via TP, I see the Iowa GOP's platform is brimming with more constitutional word salad than Ron Paul at an Applebee's, including:

A Right to Life

1.4 We disagree with Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton as “settled law.” [What about Casey, which reaffirmed Roe?] Under the Tenth amendment, these Supreme Court decisions have no authority over the states.

...

Government: Judicial Branch

1.1 We demand that U. S. and state courts operate under the guidelines [uh...guidelines?] stated in Article VI of the U. S. Constitution, where it establishes that the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land.

...

Government: State and Local

1.1 We support constitutional state sovereignty including nullification of federal oversteps [Dear Strict Constructionists: where is the state power to nullify spelled out?].

Once again we see wingnuts waving the Tenth around as some sort of "Get Out Of The United States Free" card.  The dissonance is awesome: we want the courts to follow the Constitution, but if we don't like what they or Congress do in their constitutional roles, we'll just say "LALALALALALA, WE CAN'T HEAR YOU AND YOU'RE NOT OUR REAL DAD!"

I almost hesitate to refer to longstanding judicial doctrine, but here are some Supreme Court decisions they might not be aware of that pretty much nullify nullification:

• Prigg v PA (1842): [U]pon just principles of construction...the legislation of Congress, if constitutional, must supersede all state legislation upon the same subject, and, by necessary implication, prohibit it. For, if Congress have a constitutional power to regulate a particular subject, and they do actually regulate it is a given manner, and in a certain form, it cannot be that the state legislatures have a right to interfere. 

• Ableman v Booth (1858): The language of the Constitution by which this power is granted is too plain to admit of doubt or to need comment. It declares that

"this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be passed in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

But the supremacy thus conferred on this Government could not peacefully be maintained unless it was clothed with judicial power equally paramount in authority to carry it into execution...

• Cooper v Aaron (1958): It is necessary only to recall some basic constitutional propositions which are settled doctrine.

Article VI of the Constitution makes the Constitution the "supreme Law of the Land." In 1803, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for a unanimous Court, referring to the Constitution as "the fundamental and paramount law of the nation," declared in the notable case of Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U. S. 177, that "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." This decision declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by this Court and the Country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system....Every state legislator and executive and judicial officer is solemnly committed by oath taken pursuant to Art. VI, cl. 3 "to support this Constitution."

...

"If the legislatures of the several states may at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery. . . ."

As an aside, there's a certain quasi-ironic juxtaposition between the former cases and the latter, of particular interest to me given VT's ante bellum history.

Anyway, the document is chock-full of ignorance and contradictions, not limited to declaring that unborn children have rights whilst rejecting a UN convention that says children have rights, and declaring that healthcare isn't a right but rather a "privilege" whilst ignoring natural rights as understood by William Blackstone, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and even George Washington's nephew, Justice Bushrod Washington.  

And who the fuck is trying to "remove any mention of God" from the Declaration of Independence?  Are there liberal gnomes breaking into the National Archives and people's homes, scratching out "Nature's God" from every copy?  Are they also removing any mention of the general Welfare and the Necessary and Proper clause from the Constitution, or do we not care about that?

Please tell me this is all an elaborate test of the Infinite Number of Monkeys Theorem by a mad scientist from the 8th Dimension...

ntodd

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