#240 Okay Antonin "Tony Guns" Scalia and You Too Frankie "Dutch" Lautenberg--Let's Talk ... About THE Gun Law of 1791 [UPDATED]

Here is Justice "Tony Guns"  in his youthful gangbanger days sporting a  longer coif, and wearing a single, distinctive and quite becoming earring in the LEFT ear, which I'm told is the secret double-reverse signum of underworld connections (see last post), perhaps even unto the depths of Hell. Or not.

But he sure does love himself them fararms ... and that good ol'-timey Second Amendment of the US Constitution, by which he "justifies" his love. Sweet. Known only to intimates: the mobster-benchman has it tattooed where his tramp-stamp would go. A rite of passage in the organization. And which, lucky for us Patriots, he believes gives us the right to "bear arms" in a delightfully unfettered way.

Now as a "Strict Constructionist" (aka "entomologist") in interpreting the Constitution, he had to eliminate from his decision-making the possibility that the "Framers," or whoever, were NOT thinking of "bear arms" as a noun-noun double morpheme compound substantive as in "bear arms"--that is, weapons to kill bruin-kind (family Ursidae), such ursidicide being a common pastime in Colonial America, especially in Philadelphia, where these quaint gunslingers were meeting. But bears of several species (not including the Koala, which hadn't been discovered yet) can be dangerous for colonial campsites, and pose a threat to New-Nationhood. Proper weaponry guaranteeing Ursine lethality.would have been required of all.  Big long guns. Most antebellum colonists had them anyway. Did the 2ndA restrict firearms to bear-musketry only?

Here's the Original (spelling and all), consisting of one syntactically awkward sentence that "originalist" Justice Mafiabagman had to deal with--tattooed, as I said, slightly north of his hindquarters and tail, making it prima facie difficult for ready reference:

A well regulated Militia, being neceffary to the fecurity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear armf, shall not be infringed.

Even the fpelling is difficult, as you can see, the Framers being inodinately fond of the alternate orthographic form of "s" (technically, the fistula) at the time. It's an effete rightward slanting "f"-like grapheme (as in parfum, not to be confused with parsum, which is not a word anyway), whose type key the Blogman had installed in the keyboard device for just such an occasion. A curious but meaningless  fact: an unusually high number of Founding Fathers had a lisp, or developed one soon after the Convention ... as would we all.

These minutiae are important to an "originalist" interpreter of our Founding Document and its first ten amendments, because there may be even more. The "textualists" represent the other related approach in the (coinage alert) "Constrictcunnalinctionist" family of two. This branch also sanctifies the words-as-written epistome, but unlike the "originalists" these seditious folk allow for some semantic evolution to be taken into account. Patriotic "originalists" (aka Tea-Baggers) will have none of that. They want to "figure out" what the "Framers" were "actually" THINKING at the "time" they were "actually" WRITING the "words."

Thus the Devil was appropriately in the details for Mr. Justice Uuderworld because he had to come up with the RIGHT (haha) Opinion as he consulted the oft-disputed 2ndA, as nobody affectionately calls it yet. He was deciding a case involving a law prohibiting home hand-gun possession in Wash DC, Difficult. But Antonin came through. This Associated Press headline and lead say it all:
Gun-Crazy*** Justice Scalia Writes Demented Majority Opinion That Strikes Down DC Anti-Hand-Gun Law Based On Delusional Constitutional Right To Bear Armf  Joining Scalia in the 5-4 Decision Banning the Banning of the Ownership of Handguns in the Home Were the Other Barely Humanoid Members of SCOTUS [?]: Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and What's-His-Name (AP 6/22/12)

It would be hard to make these things up. Anyway, Justice Scalia's "originalist" interpretation began by eliminating something SO elementary that it was beyond even my ken, and barbie's too. Bear armf? thought Scalia, trying to think the thoughts of the great Thinkers-up of the thing. Could the Framers have been thinking of the severed fore-limbs of the Ursine-kind? As weapons? To CLUB a Redcoat into submission perhaps, after a soldier's ammunition ran out or gun jammed? Broken bayonet? Might work, till spoilage set in. Heavy enough. Lots of bears around then. The claws would surely be effective. But noooo, too messy for fussbudget aristocrats like Adams, Hamilton, and esp Dolly Madison, who I've heard wrote most of the Constitution. Problem is: never happened. And the OED cites no instance of  "armf" used for bear parts. 

Then the revelation. He had been painstakingly parsing the ideation of each word separately, but now he remembered the "and" preceding "bear armf" and ...  Epiphany. "Tony Guns" knew right then that he was on to something.

[NEXT: How "Tony Guns" justifies thousands upon thousands of needless homicides.]

 *** Saw Gun Crazy, the movie, at the old Avalon theater (q.v. in several archival posts) in 1950 on a "double-bill" (yes, Virginia, TWO movies for a quarter) and tried unsuccessfully to reach and relate it to Annie Oakley and Hoot Gibson . Re-saw it recently on TCM. Wonderfully trashy/campy noir with moral that gunf make good people into killers. Tsk, tsk, a truth for the ages.
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#239 Hey Justice Scalia, "Ba Fungule"--Are You Talkin' To ME? About Gun Laws?

Three things about this picture of  6-yr-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, resident of Aurora, Colorado:

1) She's missing a front tooth (I sympathize);

2) She loves ice cream;

3) She's dead;

4) She was killed by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Now, three questions directed to this so-called A.Scalia, by all accounts with a full set of teeth and breathing in and out. 

1) You are quite fond of the 2nd Amendment, as are we all, because it was after all a pretty good law for its time, and you like the "for-its-time" thing don't you, being what they call a Constitutional "originalist" or something. True?

2) Qualifying as an audible life-form, you were appointed to the SCOTUS Corporation, owned by Ronald Reagan at the time, based on your fondness also for the Tridentine Latin Mass (sponsored by a famous chewing-gum company) and GUNS. Right?

3) As one of the known mobsters on the Court, you are sympathetic to the proliferous gun-lobbies and to organized crime, who reject any kind of Federal regulation of guns and ammunition of any kind. Including assault rifles. Yes?

4) Your ties to the Mafia are not only indicated by #3, but also by your last name, your religion--clandestine rites in a dead language--and the Soprano-perfect sign you are wont to use when annoyed by reporters asking about these biased decisions:

This photo captures the secret gesture midway between first cupping your hand under the chin and full-out FLICK of hand and fingers, does it not? The visual mummery represents the underlying code in Italian "Ba(va) Fungule(fan culo)"--meaning literally in English "Go find an ass (your own, to fuck, implied). Abstracted meaning, of course:  "Fuck you." And Mr. Scalia, you would be up on your Latin/Italian roots, based on your old-timey Roman church experience, would you not? ***   

 5) You are responsible for the murder of this young lady, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who while doubtless finishing her dental-friendly ice cream and waiting for The Dark Knight Rises to appear on the screen of  her local Cinema ... he did. Movie cancelled for Veronica. New front tooth mooted.

This innocent was slaughtered by an angry white man in a black suit carrying an AK-47 assault rifle--a Weapon of War. Unless this was a SOLDIER run amuck, suffering from PTSD, i. e. Particularly Terrible Something or other, thinking in a crazed state he was firing at terrorists in Saskatchewan--you might be off the hook. Right? But no ... he WAS a civilian! Because of your gaseous gun decisions, and in particular your fatal deconstuction of the 2nd Amendment, the shooter possessed a weapon of war, "legally." You put it in his hands. The AK-47 was the ONLY way that the shall-be-nameless boy could have killed and wounded the incredible amount of people he did. Is this not all true Justice Scalia?

[more]

***Look for my Mafia connections soon in Mosteller Musings.
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#238 The Two Or Three Faces of Mitt, Or "Lies My Father Told Me" ...

... about TELLING THE TRUTH,.

How's this for a headline:

Honesty All But Destroys Governor Romney's Presidential Campaign  Presumptive nominee's admission of being WRONG costs him GOP major support. Primary battle now shifts in favor of ...

Richard Nixon ... Gotcha. Now you must adMIIT to being totally and completely fooled by my fake/true/fake headline, Or not. But boy-golly it's a tangled web, as Somebody once said, or said was said. The WRONGITY for Romney pere, as it turns out, was about the VIETNAM WAR--he discovered he was against it, In 1965. A Republican fercryinoutloud.. What. A. Guy. Cost him the Presidency in 1968 and his (incumbent) Michigan Governorship later that year, if he'd been running for it. .

Headlines like the one above reflected the Gov's changed attitude about THE war of our time as early as mid-year 1965, when  by now the former auto executive and Michigan CEO appeared already to be the man to run against LBJ in '68. But he had zero foreign policy experience. He decided, alone among presidential hopefuls, to take a look, 'Nam-wise. Result? "I was FOR, but NOT ANYMORE or some such dramatic stuff. Before TET, Cronkite. An epiphany.

He saw the shambles--the literally and etymologically abattoir of bloody failure of US intervention--and declared the so-called "progress" bullshit. Or something like that in Mormonese When he got face-to-face with the Generals directly in charge of the Vietnamese killing fields ... he knew. Their so-ridiculous-sounding-now protestations of "light at the end of the tunnel"--standard issue phraseology memorized from the Officer's Code, or something, as it is today--cut no shit with the Michigan/Mormon Elder. And he said as much, on record, in late-'67:

When I came back from Vietnam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get. I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in SE Asia. [No kidding; this is how a lot of grownups really talked back then]

Ah, soooo ... the Brainwashing. Sinatra's Manchurian Candidate was still fresh in every brainwashed American mind, as it should have been. But Frank got George W. (hmmn) in big trouble when all of this soundbite baggage concatenated up into the newslines of 1968. And the Primaries.

The Chicken-Hawks of the GOP got fugacious ("fug-" to fly; flee; ult. fr. Latin fugere "fuck you"). Yes, they abandoned him in flocks, and prez hopes fluttered away for one of the first unlikely doves, lo unto Zolub, of the anti-Vietnam-war cause.

Naive; i.e. HONEST ... George W. (hmmn) Romney was NOT a dumb guy. He SAVED American Motors Corp,(irony alert) a struggling Detroit auto company on the verge of bankruptcy after buying out the venerable Nash and Hudson brands. He innovated. My first legal motorcaraage, in fact, was via our family's  AMC/Hudson Rambler "Cross Country" model which was CEO Romney's precursor to the modern mini-SUV! No kidding. Great car. It came with--guess what-- a built-in dog-carrier rack on the rear top of the little wagon,

No, not a dumb guy--later, Mitt's father had done a good enough job as Gov of a difficult state to be elected for three 2-year terms. Guess whose  first legal ballot was for George  to serve the second of those terms? Here's the headline:

Noted Future Blogperson Casts His Vote for Romney in 1964 Gubernatorial Election Gov Wins by Single Vote

[more]
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#235 The Libertarian-Socialist Party [in progress]

Speaking of the Fifth Dimension, TMZ reports that a new political party is being formed by exasperated Dems and GOPers, and joined by disaffected defectors from both the Green Party and the old Greenback Party (here).

Its proud Mascot is none other than Froggy the Gremlin, for obvious reasons. He has a green back. And even better, he's green just about all over, as the Green Party hopes to be These latter folk are environmentalists too, and he would represent not only the order Anura.that is most notoriously disappearing rapidly in the wild, but stand for all endangered species.

As a quasi-life form, Froggy;s soft-plastic head and mouth can be manipulated to utter in a gravelly voice the Party's official rallying cry "Hiya, kids, Hiya!" and the Party's slogan "I will, I will, I will!"-- ventriloquisticly. (Just as it was done in low-tech close-up on the Smilin' Ed's Gang TV show.) As a bonus, the word frog descends from the Proto-Indo-European root *Vro-, meaning to "jump" or "hop"--just as these ideologue defectors to a new party are doing.. Moreover, the Anurae are amphibious--able to live (-bious) in two (amphi-) worlds at once. Like maybe Libertarianism and Socialism.

The ensign or banner for the party is, no surprise, the good ol' Greenback ... blown up to appropriate size. But here the founding fathers of the new party, in their contrarian and alethristic wisdom, chose a legal-tender THREE DOLLAR BILL in black on brown ... a Brownback, if you will (despite it's cringe-worthy association with a certain deranged state Governor) ... dating from, apropos of the movement, Revolutionary times--

A pretty thing. It's a 1776 "Continental" from back in the day and following when paper currency was au courant, so to speak, printed by whatever Government and any old bank or corporate entity that wanted to--you had to trust 'em it was good. Monetary policy, paper-wise,  was not monopolistic, nor boullion-based (my frenchy-frog favorite), though silver and gold WERE minted and always of course face-value trustworthy. No stinkin' gold or silver STANDARD yet (or Federal Reserve) behind what was later called "specie." This suited the original Greenback Party just fine through its beginnings during the Civil War and after ... up to its official founding in and around the economic recessional periods of the 1870s and 1880s. Keep the money flowing, the Greenbackers said ... keep it "current"--as "currency" logically entails. They were proleptic Keynesians without knowing it ... and as I see it.

Their party platform ******

{to be revisited}

#203 Two Presidents ... SOTU IV

Now there should be no question but in the smallest of minds that the current Congress has NOT been looking after, in our First President's phraseology, "the welfare of the country" in "a free, efficient, and equal" manner." They've done next to nothing on their own, really--TARP was a leftover--while everything needed to be done about Health Care and Afghanistan. (Obama can't, of course, blame Congress for the latter, because he had his way with them on that. But I can. Congressional Grafters pimp their wares wherever the money is. Big-Med, Big-MilitaryIndustrialComplex ... matters little.)

One of the jokes on SNL's "Weekend Update" segment the other night was at the expense of Congress--apropos of Fred Armiston's rendition of Obama's SOTU, which opened the show. It was set up ironically: "Anchor" Seth Meyers introduced a graphic of the House chamber, over which was to scroll a list of legislative accomplishments over the last year. Cut to clip ... two seconds of scroll, with 3 items on it ... cut back to Seth caught fiddling off-camera ... startled look to camera ... "unprepared" that the list was so short. Ha-ha ensues. The three were bailout renewal, Cash for Clunkers, and a cap on credit-card interest rates. Pretty much on-target satire. And I'm sure it got laughs across the country, because THE PEOPLE know. Typical big-laugh on the late-night circuit: "Severe cold, ice and snow have brought Washington to a virtual stand-still ... but how can you tell?" The people know.

So why didn't President Obama drag them out to the woodshed Wednesday-week, and give them all a good thrashing? Let George do it. (Our super-star General and first President was responsible for that popular expression, as a matter of fact.) Well, he certainly would have, you can have no doubt. But Obama just can't seem to get himself angry, not-to-mention communicate the THREAT of anger (and a hint of danger), which is by far the better.

There's little to complain about in the word-to-word content of Obama's State of the Union; it was reasoned, factual, as usual. But rhetorically and "histrionically" it was not good enough. Remember, unlike Washington's audience, strictly Congress, Obama's included the whole country. I dare say his approval ratings would have returned to their honeymoon levels had he given these bad boys the whippin' they deserved. The people have no love affair with Congress, to grossly understate. Now, couldn't he have done better than the following, in addressing the self-aggrandizing do-nothingness of Congress as a (w)hole?--

So we face big and difficult challenges. And what the AMERICAN PEOPLE hope--what they DESERVE--is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics. For while THE PEOPLE who sent us here ...

You hear some of the old General's words, but without any righteous ANGER that they have pretty much FAILED at the job the people sent them there to do. It's time for much stronger words. Obama needed to bring the blame-game right down on top of their collective heads. Furthermore, Is this enough verbal drubbing for the pestiferous Republican vermin from Dante's 8th circle of Hell?--

If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town--a supermajority--then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to solve problems, not serve our ambitions.

Answer: he comes closer to tanning their hides, here. But wouldn't have been nice if he had ended the last sentence thus: "... not serve our ambitions, or line our pockets." Alas. And the President was waaay too easy on on the despicably wimpish Democrats, home to those venal Blue Dogs, greedy as Republicans. This is a mere slap on the wrist:

Democrats, I remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and THE PEOPLE expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.

As disappointing was Obama's failure to dump an appropriate load of sh-- er, opprobrium, on the proper culprits behind most of those "difficult challenges" he mentions: the Bush/Cheney administration. His vast audience beyond the walls of the House chamber has not forgotten, but Obama didn't do enough to pound it home, and, in so doing, let himself a lot off the hook. I think he wanted to do some justifiable Bush-bashing, but it didn't make it to the make-nice script, finally. Here's how I know. The following is a quote from the speech-text--all but his un-telepromtered ad lib (in brackets) interjected the night of the actual address:

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. [AND ALL THIS BEFORE I GOT IN THE DOOR!] Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face ...

If you heard it, you would have noticed how very plaintive it was: "... beFORE I got IN the DOOooor ..." He's just too much of a nice guy, I guess, to wake the sleeping dogs ... to flog the dead horses. Or too cool.
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#202 Two Presidents ... First SOTU III

Unfortunately for President Obama, he could invoke Washington's "peace and plenty" phrase NOT at one single point in his State of the Union speech last week. He put a good face on it, though; he is nothing if not cool--too much so!. Love cool, but you gotta have a kind of Stonewall-Jackson-like "skeer" to go along with it. Not to be confused with the vague and overused "charisma"--this is the don't-mess-with-me look and bearing that says, "I can be dangerous." And that was George Washington all over, with sword and bulging biceps by his side--matched with a bulging intellect, and a hot temper when necessary. Obama's got all of that, surely, but lacks the sinister flash of fire from around the eye-sockets that tells you so. Well, sort of exactly like this cartoonist's rendition of what-might-have-been that I happened upon in the New Yorker this week.

Congressionally effective past Presidents like Washington had it, and you know what?--the best of them in the modern era always seem to get popularly initialized: TR, FDR, JFK, LBJ. But could these guys make Congress jump through the hoops, no matter its partisan make-up? Or else? You bet your Nellie Duff. Even the popular but non-initialized Ronald Reagan had it, despite his deceptively laid-back persona--he could flash that imperious "I'm-a-bad-ass-movie-star-and-you're-not" look when he had to. Not that I'm plumping for an Imperial President, but, my goodness, there's just no question that Obama coulda/shoulda done one hell of a lot more with last year's Congress than he did. Especially considering the Democrat's super-majority.

But Congress is a co-equal branch of our Constitutional government, and there's only so much a President can do, given the inherent and strict separation of powers. But Congress has proved powerless, and Obama's virtually "live" audience of the American people across the country already knew that before he even gave his speech. Ratings for Congress are about as low as serial rapists. WWGWD? Well, the very last words of Washington's first State of the Union gives the final nod to the PEOPLE, absent though they were from the President's immediate audience:

The WELFARE OF OUR COUNTRY is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed, and I shall derive great satisfaction from a COOPERATION with you in the pleasing but arduous work of insuring TO OUR FELLOW CITIZENS the blessings which they have a RIGHT to expect from a free, EFFICIENT, and equal government.

Each and every Congressman of that assembled company would have sighed in relief at those closing phrases, because they knew that if they had NOT been "efficient"--NOT taken "measures of the last session,"cited earlier in the his speech, that "have been satisfactory to [their] constituents"--they might have expected the flat of the General's sabre. The famously non-partisan Washington would have given a good verbal-or-worse thrashing to both sides of the aisle (had they been in existence) if the welfare of the people had not been looked after, efficiently. But he didn't have to. The threat would have been enough. (more)

#201 Two Presidents ... First SOTU II

When Barack Obama stepped to the lectern last week and addressed his "State of the Union" to the "... Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and FELLOW AMERICANS"--the President could be confident that he was speaking directly to the latter audience. Though not in the House Chamber, THE PEOPLE were actually PRESENT, moment to moment, via the electronic media, to hear the speech--no intermediary required. Not so for George Washington's "fellow Americans" on Jan. 8, 1790. Understandably, they were left out of his opening greetings, but in a quaint and curious way: "Fellow Citizens OF the Senate and House of Representatives," he began. He was , after all, under no Constitutional obligation to "from time to time give ... information" to anybody else. It was enough that the other citizens' REPRESENTATIVES were in attendance, even so be it that for everyone else the speech became immediately and necessarily second-hand news. To get the Word out to the people was left willy-nilly to the PRESS.

Pictured above is an example, "hot off the presses," two weeks after the fact. At least city-dwelling citizens, like those of Worcester, were able to get "late" news-reports in the early days of the Republick. But notice the masthead: Maffachufsetts SPY (love it)--as if undercover reporters, tabloid-wise, had to ferret out government goings-on, like any other juicy bit of news. It's no wonder that Freedom of the Press is in the very first Article of the Bill of Rights. For the people it was the only information game in town. This is ferociously understood and defiantly reflected in the SPY's epigraph: "The Liberty of the Prefs is effential to the Security of Freedom." (Enlarged view here.) To pound the point home, the motto is successively redacted in (count 'em) THREE "republican" languages: FRENCH, because the Revolution had happened only last July for these guys; GREEK (untransliterated--betraying the educational level, real or pretended, of the rag's readership), in deference to those pioneering Athenians; and LATIN, in remembrance of the glory-days of the Roman Republic, to whose historical example the American experiment was most indebted.

Not that our First President wasn't a man of the people. On the contrary--and speaking of the LIBERTIES afforded the people under this grand experiment, validated by the Constitution and the soon-to-be-passed Bill of Rights--Washington was concerned in his SOTU that the people be well-informed about the workings of their government. This leads me to the content of his speech--which proportionally, believe it or not, is most devoted to EDUCATION. What a precedent-setter, indeed, was this man! He was truly our first "Education President"--which almost without exception every one of his successors have tried or claimed to be. More fully about this below. (Full text w/o the funny 18C spelling here.)

Not surprisingly, the speech verily runneth over with optimism about the "peace and plenty" with which the new nation is blessed. No Afghanistan or Great Recession to get around. One small problem though, by implication only--here the President takes his Constitutional charge literally, first-off in the second sentence--that the State of the Union wasn't. Not quite yet, anyway, but soon to get there. My adopted state, North Carolina, had finally "acceded" to the new Constitution, Washington notes with satisfaction, it being the 12th and next-to-last state to do so. Why so late? Well, I'm proud of 'em--the NC delegates had held out for a sacred promise that a Bill of Rights was an absolute shoo-in to be amended to the Constitution. And it was, the next year. (Interesting sidebar: Rhode Island, the 13th and yet to come, was SO "independent"--it was the first to "declare" in 1776--that it took the threat of exorbitant taxation on its profitable exports--get this: as a "foreign" country--for it to become the very last to officially join the Union in 1792!)

Otherwise, things are going well, says the President, thanks in no small part to the good works that Congress accomplished in its last session. (Washington could wield a butter-knife as well as he could a sword.) But as long as Congress is kind of here, anyway, "among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention," he would like a little more money for the what's left of the standing army--some "tribes" could be threatening the frontiers, if pacification efforts fail. Additionally, our foreign ambassadors could be better paid, and some funds should be invested in agricultural technology--a subject close to George's Mt. Vernon heart. Oh, and weights and measures might well be standardized.

It's a relatively short speech so far, almost perfunctory--in a "from time to time" sort of way--but he saves the best and most for last: EDUCATION--

Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of SCIENCE and LITERATURE. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

My hero. In the next long passage, which I'll quote, he explains--in the unfortunately dense, Ciceronion rhetoric of his time--WHY grass-roots learning is so important for this new experiment in Democracy to work:

To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways--by convincing those intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the ENLIGHTENED confidence of the PEOPLE, and by TEACHING THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES to KNOW and to VALUE their own RIGHTS; to discern and provide against INVASION of them; to distinguish between OPPRESSION and the necessary exercise of LAWFUL AUTHORITY; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of LIBERTY from that of LICENTIOUSNESS--cherishing the first, avoiding the last--and uniting a speedy but temperate VIGILANCE against ENCROACHMENTS, with an inviolable RESPECT to the LAWS.

Science and Literature can do this, by George. Put over-simply, only a knowledgeable and enlightened public will understand the inviolable ends, as well as the lawful limits, of Liberty. And so will fare well the Fate of the Union. Therefore, he concludes,

Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording AIDS to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, or by any other expedients will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the legislature.

Way back in Washington's first State of the Union was thus the kernel-idea behind government-sponsored higher education--coming to fruition later in tax-free institutions, land-grant universities, G.I. Bills, Pell Grants, etc. What a guy. (more)
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#200 Two Presidents and Their First "State of the Union"

Nobody messed with George W. (no, not that one). A giant of a man for his day at 6' 2" and around 200 pounds , our first President stood more than half-a-foot above the average everybody else. Add to that Washington's legendary strength and agility, whether on horseback or the ballroom floor, and you've got the 18C equivalent of our Hunky Celeb, worthy of a Cosmo centerfold.

And on the field of battle? Fugedaboudit. He was well-nigh superhuman ... and absolutely front-line, horses-shot-from-under-him fearless. It helped that he could actually dodge bullets. But here's my favorite anecdote in regard to his instinctive courage, matched with amazing physical strength: It so happened on one occasion during the difficult days at Valley Forge that the General lost his (usually controlled but always to-be-wary-of) temper with two disgruntled and scuffling soldiers of about his size. He reportedly rushed into the fray, grabbed them separately in each of his reputedly oversize hands, levitated them both, and crashed their bodies together. Peace restored. Later, to make his point, he'd just have would-be mutineers shot.

Nobody messed with the Man from Mt. Vernon. You can imagine the figure he "cut" before Congress, especially if he chose to wear--and I like to think he did--his ceremonial sabre, pictured above at the ready. Do you think that one of the assembled Congressional company would have had the temerity to interject a "You lie!" into the proceedings?

Now, the official portrait guy, Gilbert Stuart, didn't capture his patron in paint while he was actually making THE very first "Presidential Address to Congress," as the "State of the Union" thing was called then--probably because it was so inconvenient for everybody. The "District of Columbia" just wasn't ready yet. The two houses of Congress were meeting temporarily in New York City, and the new President was anywhere and everywhere he needed to be. (His druthers: Mt. Vernon, of course.) But he must have felt it was important to fulfill in person THIS particular Constitutional mandate vis a' vis the Legislative branch and the new country's first CEO:

He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the state of the union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. (Article II, Section 3)

And he did, on Jan. 8, 1790. For the very first time. Washington the great Precedent-Setter (e.g. two-terms and out with the exception of FDR) set for all time the WHEN--near the first of the year--and the HOW OFTEN--"from time to time" will mean annually--but NOT precisely the MANNER in which this "information" should be "given" to Congress. He and Adams presented it orally, but Jefferson was the Spoiler. He thought such a practice smacked of King-like ostentation--too much like those other Georges in full regalia addressing the opening of the British Parliament. So during our 3rd President's tenure the annual SOTU was delivered to Congress in written form only, and read into the record by a clerk. In so doing, he set a precedent of his own. Succeeding Presidents for over a century followed Jefferson's example, right up to Wilson and Harding, who revived oral presentation fitfully during their reigns.

But no surprise: the Great Populist FDR would be the one to re-set forever the Washingtonian example of getting in front of CONGRESS, and virtually the PEOPLE too, via radio, at least once-a-year. Now, since Truman and Television, the President is literally "live and in color" for the whole of America. Taken for granted.

However, it's all a rather radical departure from the old Constitutional imperative, which, when you look at it again, doesn't seem so imperative at all. The "from time to time" business. I think that's a notional by-product of the Framers' bed-rock bias of near-absolute Separation of Powers. For example, there's no mandate whatsoever for the Supreme Court justices to be in attendance, which is now seemingly de rigeur. Unlike Obama, President Washington wouldn't have had to put up with a snarky little Sam Alito shaking his head and lip-syncing, "Not true," during his speech. Good thing, too. There would have been an "appointment" involving Mr. Alito and the General in the Capitol cloak-room, afterwards. With or without his sabre. (more)
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#199 Bring On the Filibuster II

During the Bush/Cheney hey-days, the freebooters menaced from the other side of the Senate aisle. Whenever the minority Democrats would threaten to hi-jack a bill or a Presidential appointment with the scarifying filibuster, the Republicans would threaten right back with what they dubbed the "nuclear option." It's surely a well-known secret across both aisles that the Cloture Rule can be changed or chucked-out altogether--not by 67 votes, nor, for that matter, 60, but by 51 ... a simple majority of the U.S. Senate. Constitutionally.

Now, the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, were no great fans of Athenian democracy, or of the popular vote per se, for that matter. It couldn't elect President Gore ten years ago, for instance, thanks to the Electoral College and those wily Framers of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia long ago. Moreover, no vote in Congress is cast directly by the People. Of course not, say you: we're a representative democracy. However ... Yes, today both houses are popularly elected, and presumably represent the Will of their constituents, but for most of it's history, the Senate was immune to the popular vote. The Framers really did, bless their 18C hearts, have the British House of Lords in mind--and way back in their minds the life-tenured Roman Senatus of literally "old men" (senex)--when they "constituted" our bicameral legislature's "upper" chamber. As, frankly, another check-within-a-check-and-balance to the not-even-quite-direct voice of the people in the House of Representatives. Senators would be APPOINTED ... by higher powers-that-be in the several states. Most often this was accomplished by state legislatures, up until as late as 1913, when the 17th Amendment mandated popular election for all Senators.

But ... once the vox populi made its sometimes tortuously indirect way to the floors of Congress, the Framers expected it to be acted upon expeditiously, in a timely, and that means majoritarian, manner, as for any other deliberative body. Getting the people's franchise there was tough enough. According to Article I, Section 5, Clause 2: all that's required to to do business is a quorum, 50%+1. Then, a voting majority rules. The only exception in Clause 2--thus "proving" the rule--is the business of expelling a member of either house, which requires two-thirds of those present. QED: the Senate was Constitutionally OKAY in passing by a simple majority its Cloture Rule requiring 60 votes to stop a filibuster, but NOT OKAY in making a rule requiring 67 votes to change the rules. And, speaking of checks and balances, this point of Constitutional law was brought to a test many years ago and affirmed by the Supreme Court:

The constitution provides that "a MAJORITY of each house shall constitute a quorum to do business." In other words, when a MAJORITY are present the house is in a position to do business. Its capacity to transact business is then established, created by the mere presence of a MAJORITY, and does not depend upon the disposition or assent or action of any SINGLE member or FRACTION of the MAJORITY present. (U.S. v. Ballin 1892)

So there it is. The majority Democrats in the Senate can exercise their own "nuclear option" at any time, and throw out the Cloture Rule. Pass whatever @#$ *&%@ Health-Care Reform bill they want, without fear of Captain Filibuster. Will they do it? Doubtful. News reports have it that they're already wimping-out. No, not about the constitutional tactic above--they're way too gutless for that--but rather now they are scheming to somehow get around the filibuster procedurally ... or give up altogether and start over. Bruxism time.

Okay. I say just bring on the filibuster and be done with it. Let the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts gloat on his vote. That would be the magical Vote #41 against closing off debate. Here's how it could play out. Act one: Obama summons the fortitude to stop the House-Senate negotiations on their separate health-care bills. Act two: House submits intact its less-than-perfect-but-with-Public-Option bill to the Senate. Act three: Majority Leader Harry Reid introduces House bill for floor-debate, and then does what he seems to do best: nothing. Act four: hilarity ensues. Good fun is had by all as Republicans and and one or two Blue Dog henchmen extend debate indefinitely, fighting off Cloture votes one-after-the-other, flogging their long-dead hobby-horses unmercifully, exposing themselves as the mottled fools they are in front of the C-Span cameras hour-after-hour. Act five: patience finally exhausted, an angry mob in pirate garb storms the Senate chamber with sword and pistol drawn. Much loss of life ensues.
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#198 Bring On the Filibuster

Tuesday's election of Republican Playgirl-centerfold Scott Something-or-other to the late and sorely lamented Edward Kennedy's Senate seat subtracts by one vote the so-called "super majority" that the Democrats have held in the American House of Lords. So what?! Did it help them at all when they had it for well-nigh a whole %$@ $#@% legislative YEAR? No ... not to mention that they still have the largest majorities in Congress since Jimmy Carter. And along with moderate Republicans, these majorities--reflecting about 75% of the Electorate--want to do the right thing and pass laws insuring that EVERY American has access to adequate health care. Which is the number one Domestic Issue of our time, and one so embarrassingly far behind the times when compared with what other civilized peoples of the Earth have done.

So what has happened? For one thing, Democrats are WIMPS. Or must be, since they can't translate their superior numbers in Congress into laws of the land. That's their JOB, after all. Constitutionally. And they're not doing it. I think this is what the voters in Massachusetts had in mind when they angrily cut-off their normally progressive nose--they have a form of universal health-care--and spited their face with a wing-nut Republican. Who, ironically, promised in his campaign to vote against Reform--thus invoking that ever-menacing monster by the dreaded name of Filibuster.

Second, Obama is a WIMP. Or must be, since the President can't translate the will of the people who elected him and his future-tense Platform of Hope--by a more-than-convincing majority--into some sort of Congressional action. Surely, Obama meant more by "Change You Can Believe In" than the sheets in the Lincoln bedroom. He made a monstrous mistake in effectively handing over primary leadership on health-care reform to the Grafters and Grifters on key Congressional committees. Shouldn't he have known, for instance, that Sen. Max Baucus was a "made" man, by Big-Med?

Third, the U.S. Senate is a WIMPERAGE, to coin a word. Or must be, since it seems powerless to pass laws, or even to advise and consent effectively. I'll leave it in the personified collective singular because as a legislative entity its wimpery is systemic. Built into its current Rules of Order are procedures guaranteed to preserve the the status quo ante, to discourage changing laws and to obstruct making new ones. MAJORITY doesn't quite rule in our Upper House. Funny part is ... it can and should, according to ancient Constitutional principles, backed up by a Supreme Court dictum over a hundred years old.

The elephant in the room is the current Cloture Rule. This allows a Senator to extend deliberation on a bill indefinitely, to presumably "filibuster it to death" unless debate is stopped by a vote of SIXTY of his/her fellows. (A colorful and apt borrowing is "filibuster," first popularized by southern Senators of the the early 19C and meaning essentially "pirate"--descended from Dutch vrijbuiter = "freebooter" and passed through Spanish and French as filibustero and filibustier, respectively, and finally to the folk-etymologized form we have in English today--accidentally appropriate for its "bill-BUSTing" connotations--though I'm sure the original "booty-for-all" implications are not lost on the smarter Grafters in the Senate, who would cut a bill's throat for money. You know the ones, by now). However, just to illustrate just how congenitally LAZY is that Body in every way, the Lords don't even have to bother debating debate. If a poll shows that FORTY-ONE Senators would vote against closing debate, the bill is busted. Hi-jacked, as if by some Somali pirate. Republican Sen. What's-his-name supposedly represents that forty-first vote.

Well, in reality, these aren't magic numbers at all. It's a pernicious meme indeed, bruited even by those politicos who should know better, that the Cloture Rule is somehow sacrosanct. It's not. True, currently it takes SIXTY Senators to close debate, and that's coupled with a seemingly impossible SIXTY-SEVEN to change the rule for closing debate. The latter number is, however, fundamentally unconstitutional, and the minority Republicans in the Senate know it deep down and dirty. For when they were in the majority during the last administration's tenure, and when they were threatened upon occasion with a Democratic filibuster over certain abominations otherwise known as Bush/Cheney appointments, these Republicans in turn threatened to go "nuclear" and revoke the Cloture Rule by simple majority vote--thus making any business before the body subject to simple majority vote, including closing debate. How soon they forget, when the situation is reversed. Oops ... I forgot. They're politicians. (more)
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#188 Obamacare and the House of Lords II

... because the U.S. Senate as it exists today (continuing from last post) is virtually bankrupt as a deliberative/legislative body. And this is why I can't blame the head of our Executive branch overmuch, and that includes the area of health care. He's fighting a formidable dragon--nay, dinosaur--in the shape of that most exclusive club in America.

First of all, like the old House of Lords left over from the monarchical ancien regime, our Senate can effectively veto or amend out of existence the laws made in the House of Representatives (our "Commons"). Further, the Senate itself is hindered from changing the law or making new ones because of its own obstructionist rules of order like filibuster/cloture--rules that are contrary to the majoritarian principles of the Constitution. The vox populi is thus choked with a double garrote.

The Voice of the People just doesn't seem to penetrate the walls of the Senate chamber. For example, only a handful of our popularly-elected President's judicial and other high-level appointees have been approved by the full Senate; the rest are being tortured on the rack by the star-chamber committees. All it needs is one Republican + convoluted parliamentary tricks to delay things forever. Opposition become obstruction. You surely have noticed lately, when you step back a bit from the fray, that the debate seems to be more about numbers than about ideas.

On another front, the majority of the "Lower House"--that is, Congressmen proportionally representing and doing the voting for more than half the population--PASSED a Climate Change bill. Months ago. The Senate has effectively vetoed this bill by ignoring it. While good things proceeded apace on a global scale in Copenhagen, our parochial little Senate embarrassingly mires this important problem in a parliamentary slough.

As to Health-Care Reform, the "Commoners" are for it. By vast numbers. According to the polls, three-quarters of us would rather NOT see millions of Americans suffer and die and lose half their minds and all of their money under the current system. To help correct it, a majority of us favors some sort of government-run program as an alternative to private insurance. Where have these voices of the people been heard?--the House, of course, logically so, and thankfully. On Nov. 7, H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for Americans Act was passed, restoring those missing words from Obama's speech in August (DM #186). An Exchange will be established, a marketplace of insurance plans, it reads, "including a public health option."

Will the Senate hear the voice of the majority of the electorate speaking through the majority of the House of Representatives. Or hear those other representative voices in support of the House bill like AARP, the Natl. Nurses Union, and, surprisingly, the American Medical Association? Well, the Senate dropped Public Option long ago, and just yesterday Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is threatening to call for the REPEAL of the watered-down, Big-Med-friendly bill the Senate just passed! Arrogant and incorrigible is that most powerful and exclusive good-ol'-boys-club in the land.

No, if you want kill a bill, send to the Senate. Or have it originate there, and watch it die. The Senate works very well if nothing comes to a vote. That's because this modern-day House of Lords favors the status quo ante, no matter who's in the majority--ultimately no better than a minority for either party against the tyranny of obstructive parliamentary rules. Nobody's in charge. Takes sixty Senators to stop a filibuster according to the cloture rule; takes a preposterously arbitrary sixty-seven to CHANGE any rule, including the cloture rule! Totally UN-democratic, and, I would argue, against the spirit of the Constitution. Yet it takes but a handful of small-state Senate Republicans, representing about 5% of the American people, to bring the entire Legislative branch of our government to a halt.

Only solution: a populist hero in the House of Commons, umm ... Representatives, must introduce a bill--again I nominate brave little Dennis Kucinich--to abolish the United States Senate.
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#187 Obamacare and the House of Lords

President Obama's vision for an equitable and effective American health care system by reforming the old one--a vision shared by about three-quarters of the electorate--is probably not in the cards this year or next. Goodness gracious, you ask, Why the hell not? This is a #$@ &%$# DEMOCRACY, for crying out loud. Well, not exactly: our system of government has never been a "direct democracy," on the classical Greek model, otherwise we would have all raised our hands, counted them up, and passed health-care reform long ago.

As a matter of fact, we're just about--take a bow--absolutely unique, in the annals of world history. Give us arbitrary labels like constitutional democracy, republic, representative democracy, etc., and their definitions are bound to be self-reflexive, and applying only to us. The closest to the American political system, the U.K., is only a tiny bit constitutional (Magna Carta/common law-wise), with rare recourse to judicial review, and so overwhelmingly representative as to be tantamount to complete parliamentary sovereignty. No separate Executive powers at all. But of course there used to be. They were called a King. However, even after Parliament installed the figure-head royals William and Mary in 1688, giving the precincts of Westminster absolute rule over the land--Constitutional Monarchy hadn't really worked too well since it's inception with Charles II--a kind of "executive-branch" VETO POWER resided until not so long ago in the House of Lords.

When I briefly touristed and balconied the "Upper" of the two Houses of Parliament--the queue for Commons was way too long--it was a cue for a nice nap. Our Framers modeled the U.S. Senate, as a conservative-compromise measure, on that legislative body of hereditary Peers of the Realm, who are now, however, not only non-hereditary and 100% appointed, but entrusted with primarily insignificant matters of ceremony and protocol. The day I was there in 1973, the heated debate was over something about the proper order of the harboring of boats on the Thames. As for making laws of any national consequence (read: involving money), they have been rendered virtually powerless. Moreover, there's always an annual, populist hue and cry to render them--in Britishese--"redundant" (give 'em the sack) altogether. Right now on the Commons table is legislation to abolish the existing House of Lords, unless it become 100% elected, and its name be changed to the "Senate"! For real. But it wasn't always thus.

As recently as the Parliament Act of 1911, the Lords had the power to reject laws enacted by Commons out of hand, or to amend them at will, even if unacceptable to the "Lower House." No longer. Even though they deal mostly with insignifica, all Lords legislation must, through negotiation, receive the imprimatur of Commons--the power of that popularly elected body being understood as always in the ascendant. Not so in the bicameral Congress of the United States. Our "Upper House" is the House of Lords of old ... (more)
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#183 Our Unconstitutional Middle-East Wars III

It's clear that both the letter and spirit of the founding laws of the land relegated the President to a decisively secondary role in matters of War. In that case only, by implication--no provision for a standing army--would Congress raise and regulate the armed forces needed, but would fund them for only two years. Supervenient upon all of this was the war-powers clause of the Constitution: "Congress shall have the power ... To declare war." Then , and only then, could the Commander-in-Chief lead those legislatively funded and regulated troops into battle. If he couldn't get the thing over with in two-years, however, the money would pro forma run out (a modern "sunset law"!). Interestingly, there's no provision for what happens when the money machine stops--because, I believe, the Framers just couldn't imagine any reasonable justification for American troops to be overseas in the first place, and consequently took no thought of an extended stay.

Now, every President swears to uphold the Constitution upon taking the oath of office. Up until mid-last-century that has seemed to work pretty well, at least in matters of war. President Wilson, a true man of peace--with his Nobel to prove it-- never really wanted to send my Granddaddy, Corporal C.A. Edmunds, to the Argonne Forest to get a bullet in his hindquarters, but he had to after the German's reneged on their post-Lusitania promise, and began again their unlimited submarine warfare. Wilson waited, however, for Congress in due course to DECLARE our entrance into the "Great War," before he put any American troops in harm's way "over there." In contrast, President Roosevelt was itching to send my several uncles overseas--not necessarily to lose their legs, as one did--very soon after the Germans were up to it again at the beginning of WWII. (He had been "lend-leasing" war-stuff like crazy to our future allies long before Pearl Harbor.) But FDR waited, nonetheless. Even after the foregone conclusion of the Japanese attack, he needed to make the famous "day-of-infamy" speech before Congress, and ask for its permission to go to war.

So what happened? Well, our Presidents have become Kings--fulfilling the worst fears of our Founding Fathers. Much has been written about the age of the "Imperial Presidency," and whether the imbalance between the separate powers began as early as FDR or as late as Nixon ... so I don't have to. Suffice it that we haven't had a "Silent Cal" in the office of Chief Executive since Coolidge. No, in the last 60 years or more they have led us into one UNDECLARED war after another, with disaster in every one of them. Like European absolute monarchs of old, they have reverted to making unaccountable warfare for illegitimate reasons--"glory, revenge, personal aggrandizement, partisanship," and in sum "to engage in in wars not sanctified by justice, or of the voice and interests of his people"--to reprise John Jay's words of two posts ago.

That's why the Separation of Powers is so important, Constitutionally, especially when it comes to War. That "Commander-in-Chief" moniker is likely to go directly to a President's head, and end up crowning it. John Jay was speaking of the declivities of European kingship; later in the Federalist Papers (#75) Alexander Hamilton (pictured above)--despite being a strong supporter of a strong Chief Executive--identifies the reason why American Presidents, if not held in "check and balance," could morph into Kings:

The history of HUMAN CONDUCT does NOT warrant that exalted opinion of HUMAN VIRTUE which would make it wise in a nation to COMMIT INTERESTS OF SO DELICATE AND MOMENTOUS A KIND, as those which concern its INTERCOURSE WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD TO THE SOLE DISPOSAL OF A MAGISTRATE created and circumstanced as would be a PRESIDENT of the United States.

Or, to translate this grand example of florid and involuted 18th-Century Ciceronian prose into modern idiom: You can't trust 'em. Or, power corrupts, and absolute power ... etc. It's only human nature, in Hamilton's decidedly Hobbesian view. So he tries to reassure his audience that such abuse of power on the part of our "magistrate" concerning "intercourse [love it] with the rest of the world [read: War]" would be impossible under the new Constitution, because such power would simply NOT be there in the first place. In no way would the President's authority be similar to that of an Old World Monarch in matters of War:

... in substance [his would be] much INFERIOR to it. It would amount to NOTHING MORE than the SUPREME COMMAND AND DIRECTION OF THE THE LAND AND NAVAL FORCES ... while that of the British King extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; ALL OF WHICH BY THE CONSTITUTION WOULD APPERTAIN TO THE LEGISLATURE.

"Nothing more ... " Alas. Whither has gone the testicular fortitude of the Legislative branch of our Government? Or of the Judicial branch, for that matter? For what's happening today under the Obama administration ex jure, and what has happened forever under the legislative aegis of the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution " of 1964 (Johnson), or the "War Powers Resolution" of 1973 (Nixon) or the ""Authorization of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution" of 2002 (Bush)--is all of it clearly UNCONSTITUTIONAL. At least as the Founding Fathers would see it.
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#182 Our Unconstitutional Middle-East Wars II

The Founding Fathers, the authors of the Federalist Papers, and the Framers of the Constitution presumed that with its adoption they exempted America from the ever-ongoing warfare that had devastated Europe for centuries. They were pretty much right, for about 150 years (the 1812 thing being an unfortunate Revolutionary leftover). Excellent work, by any standard. It was only in the cause of self-defense that we had to fight the two World Wars, but they violated the letter of the Constitution nary a jot nor tittle. Congress declared; the President warfared--in each case, and in that order.

And the letter of Ur-Constitutional law is strict! More so in matters of war than the chicken-hawks in Congress would want to acknowledge, even as they self-servingly cry out for "original intent" in most matters of Constitutionality. The BlogMan is no Constitutional scholar, but he can point out the words, and it turns out that the wily old Signatories of our founding document (pictured above) had the President pretty much hog-tied when it came to War--by what they said, and didn't say. Whether one calls it "strict construction" or "original intent" or something else, a close reading of the relevant passages makes one wonder how in the world Iraq and Afghanistan could be happening, or that Vietnam ever did.

For there are two other "clauses" touching on War, while never saying it, in that gang of eighteen under Section 8 of Article I--entitled "Congress shall have the power ..."--in addition to #11: "To declare WAR ...." One of the others is this: "To raise and support ARMIES, but no appropriation of MONEY for that use shall be for a longer term than TWO YEARS." For troops and materiel of any kind and anywhere. And for, to repeat, only two years. That's about right. If we count, over the last few decades, only the ludicrous invasion of little Grenada, and the even more risible, "rock-n-roll" occupation of Panama.

And who will be in charge of these two-year wonders? Why, the Commander-in-Chief, of course. Nope. Congress. For further down the list (there's no real logical order to the thing) comes the third clause: "To MAKE RULES for the GOVERNMENT of the LAND AND NAVAL FORCES." In other words, the Legislative branch would seem to be in complete charge of who and what and where they are. The whole megilla. Moreover, when you put all three clauses together, it appears that those venerable Constitutional Conventioneers (my heroes more than ever), meeting in Philadelphia long ago, intended for the Congress, in times of both War and Peace--insofar as any federal Armed Forces were concerned--to be in charge, while not necessarily leading one.

That would fall to the President and Commander-in-Chief, as per the next Article of the Constitution, "Executive Power." Right? Well, so it may be inferred. For this Executive role is far from clearly defined, and far down the list of relative importance--nay, if anything it seems to be little more than a ceremonial appointment. Again, it's not awarded a whole Section, and this time not even a whole Clause. Here's Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, "Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons"--

The President shall be COMMANDER IN CHIEF of the ARMY and NAVY of the United States, and of the MILITIA of the several States, when called into the actual SERVICE of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principle Officer in each of the executive Departments ... [etc.]; and he shall have power to grant Reprieves and Pardons ... [etc.].

Notice that the post of warrior-chieftain has about equal status with committee chairman and pardoner ... to overstate. But notice too: nothing about the Army and Navy at war, as if the Framers were somehow reserving that term for Congress, for its powers back in Article I. And they didn't envision a standing army, anyway, so the appointment would be a relatively empty one. It would be Congress actually running the military, remember, and furthermore the Framers truly didn't envision any future wars, on their own soil or any others' --a state of mind totally and sadly lost to us today.

Much less would they have predicted some future military-garbed Commander-in Chief-manque' who might parade around a carrier-deck in foreign waters with a "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him. Nor would they have envisioned the President sending the "Militia" of the several states to some overseas desert-outpost, either. The military "Service" they had in mind in that second half-sentence for what is now the National Guard would be to fight the Redcoats if they had the temerity to come back (they did) ... but mainly to put down riots. Which ... if there were a major one today ... would be a major problem, since all the soldiers of our state militias are out-of-state by about 10,000 miles. (more)
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#181 Our Unconstutional Middle-East Wars

Can you just imagine the reaction of Jefferson, Madison, or Adams ... or Franklin, Hamilton or Jay (at right) ... or a fortiori George Washington, he of the "avoid-foreign-entanglements" valedictory--when confronted with the question: "Sir, What do you think of our current President sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?" Okay, I know this little bit of business borders on the intellectually naive, but, playing along, if you could get an answer before they all dropped dead all over again in apoplectic shock, you know what it would be. Beginning with the obvious, even in the 18th Century: "Why, son, everybody knows that Afghanistan is the Graveyard of Empires! How did our troops get there in the first place?!" This would be followed by myriad other founding-fatherly objections. So very many, and so well-known, that I can leave them to you. Except for Constitutionality.

Though I'm sure many were swayed by the President's speech last week--I predict his approval ratings going up a few notches (which is good for doing good in other crucial areas)--but for those who legitimately were not ... take heart. Not only would the Founding Fathers find the Bush/Obama [oops] desert adventures preposterous, they would declare them gravely unconstitutional. Nothing new here, I know, but it should be said again. In fact, "WWOFFD?" might be a good T-shirt blazon for the kids in these war-anguished times. But really, it's what our FF's wouldn't do that is the point. If they were in Congress, the vote to DECLARE such military adventurism would simply never have come up. Constitutionally, the CONGRESS makes war; only then does the PRESIDENT wage it. In that order. It's a little more complicated than that today, for one reason only: the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

More of that later, but first: it's surprising just how little is said about War, in the Constitution. No single Article of the seven is devoted solely to the subject, nor a single Section of an Article. In fact, it's only THREE WORDS of one half-sentence, located in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, bundled up with 17 others of seemingly equal importance like coining money, establishing a post office, and pursuing pirates. Under the general rubric introducing the Section--"Congress shall have the power ..."--will appear in due numerical course the little #11: "To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal [i.e. seizure of property], and to make rules concerning captures on land and water." That's it.

So little is said, I believe, because there was so little concern. The Framers apparently thought their wars were decisively over. And with the new and improved version of the (flawed) Articles of Confederation, now to be called the Constitution of the U.S., foreign powers just wouldn't have a chance against such an undivided national state. It also didn't hurt to have a vast ocean between us and Europe, either ... and NOT to have a KING. Wars would henceforth be a European problem, the "sport of kings"--as it had always been--on the hunting grounds of a fractious and fragmented Continent. A newly "constituted" America would be immune to all of that, and by its very nature immune from making such senseless warfare. John Jay argues as much in three of the Federalist Papers he authored, dealing with the influence of foreign powers. Here's an excerpt from FP #4:

It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay ABSOLUTE MONARCHIES will often mke war when their nations are TO GET NOTHING BY IT, but for the purposes and objects MERELY PERSONAL, such as a THIRST FOR MILITARY GLORY, REVENGE for personal affronts, AMBITION or PRIVATE COMPACTS [Halliburton, Blackwater?] to AGGRANDIZE their particular families, or PARTISANS. These and a variety of motives, which affect only the mind of the SOVEREIGN, often leads him to to engage in WARS NOT SANCTIFIED BY JUSTICE, OR THE VOICE AND INTERESTS OF HIS PEOPLE. But INDEPENDENT of these inducements to war ...

But are we? Well, we don't have a Monarch, but an "Imperial Presidency" has sufficed for the past six decades. (more)
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#178 The Middle-East War: Withdrawal-Withschmrawal

Despite President Obama's disclaimer in his AfPak speech--"We do not seek to occupy other nations"--yes we do. Although the blood-letting of American troops in Iraq seems to be down to a trickle, for the latest example, the poor civilians of that quasi-nation still donate blood by the gallons, and since we're responsible for re-starting our bellum absurdum there, we'll have to be there to catch it, or not, but be there just the same ... and OCCUPY the hellish place INDEFINITELY. That's simply the way America and its Armed Forces have operated over the last 60 years ... with only one exception: Vietnam. But more about that, and even Germany, later.

Wisely therefore, while Mr. Obama gave us a definite time-span of 18 more months for war ... not so for withdrawal. I think he knows in his heart that once he has now taken this fatal step toward escalation, there's no getting out. To avoid that, Obama would have to do the right thing, the Monte Python thing, and "Run away, run away"--something that for some reason no President has ever done. Even though it's common sense in every other walk of life. Cut your losses; don't throw good money after bad; know when to hold 'em ... etc., etc. But nooooo, le jeux sont faix now for Obama, and the losing roll of the dice can be read easily "between" the following lines:

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and BEGIN the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this this TRANSITION RESPONSIBLY, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will CONTINUE to advise and assist Afghanistan's security forces to ensure that they can succeed OVER THE LONG HAUL.

Already, just yesterday, even these fuzzy time-schemes ("begin" is the weasel-word in the first sentence) have begun to be eroded by Obama's own people--namely Gates and Clinton--who spoke to the only definitive date of July 2011 as being far too early, thereby pushing the imaginary withdrawal schedule even farther into a vague future. In the Graveyard of Empires.

No, as much as our President would like to deny it--

For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. WE DO NOT SEEK TO OCCUPY OTHER COUNTRIES. We do not claim another nation's resources [not oil?] or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours [not the "gooks" of Vietnam?].

--we're there to stay. It's our history. For speaking of "empires"--we've got one, whether we like it or not. Bill Maher sounded the alarm last week on his HBO show. He did my homework for me, accompanied by his inimitably scowling wit. Enjoy:

Forget about bringing the troops home from Iraq [or Afghanistan]. We need to get the troops home from World War Two! Can anybody tell me why in 2009 we still have over 50,000 troops in Germany, and more than 30,000 in Japan? At some point these people are gonna have to learn to rape themselves ... Bush and Cheney liked to keep us all sphinctered up about how terrorists might follow us home. But actually we're the the people who go to your home and never leave. These are the facts: America has over 5000,000 military personnel on over 700 bases, with troops in 150 countries. We're like McDonald's with tanks. Including 37 European countries, because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro-Disney ... And why? How did this country get stuck with an EMPIRE? ... The reason is that once we land in a country, there is no exit strategy. We're like cellulite, herpes, and bad Irish relatives ... we aren't going anywhere. We love you long time.

Over the last half-century-plus, starting with Korea and no end in sight, the only exception to this rule has been a country that Bill didn't mention: Vietnam. We got outta there. On no uncertain terms. Therefore, the Vietnamical corollary to the American Invasion and Occupation Rule must be: The only way to be rid of the our military presence, once it's there, is to wait for it to devastate your country completely; to kill hundreds of thousands of your civilians collaterally; to sacrifice the lives of over 50,000 of its own senselessly; and, most important, for it to be defeated ignominiously. As for you folks in Afghanistan?... not quite there yet. We're destined to "love you long time."
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