Guest Post: Bill of Rights According to Leading Republican “Scholars”

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First Amendment – Government shall not make any law that has any potential effect on religious people, or companies owned or run by religious people, feeling like they can’t make everyone else around them conform to their views. The right not to practice religion is meh. Companies and media outlets shall not discipline racist or homophobic people from spewing hate. All other free speech is meh.*


Second Amendment – The right to have and carry openly lots and lots of guns, assault rifles, whatever, shall not be impacted in any way, especially if you are white. Militias are awesome, and have a little bit to do with this Amendment, but only if you are white.

Third Amendment – Blah blah blah, something about soldiers.**

Fourth Amendment – Some types of searches and seizures are not cool, but by seizure we don’t mean killing an unarmed black person. That’s not really a seizure so that’s totally ok. Or it’s reasonable, or something. This Amendment is only occasionally important.

Fifth Amendment – Due process! For corporations! And right not to self incriminate for corporations, bank executives, and pharma bros. No double jeopardy, we can all agree to that.

Sixth Amendment – Speedy trials for accused, but you can totally waive that. An impartial jury is important but “impartial” is really quite relative, isn’t it? And assistance of counsel, but we’ll be pretty flexible about what’s considered competent and totally underfund public defenders and not require assistance of counsel for misdemeanors or other things that may land you in jail like debt.

Seventh Amendment – Definitely a jury should be required for civil actions, except if the corporate defendant has made someone sign an arbitration clause as a condition of employment or use of a service, in which case juries aren’t really that crucial (not mentioned twice in the first seven amendments or anything).

Eighth Amendment – Torture and capital punishment are not cruel or unusual punishments, and this amendment only applies to citizens. And “excessive bail” shall not be required but what does “excessive” really mean?

Ninth Amendment – Blah blah blah something about the rights here not affecting other rights? Who knows.**

Tenth Amendment – States rights! Except for liberal states (including states that want to legalize marijuana or that have sanctuary cities).

 

*Except for libertarians, who take this Amendment at its words.

**No one really uses this one.

Musing on the passing of Justice Scalia

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Randomly:

These two sayings have been bouncing around in my head:  Thumper’s Mother* —  “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all;”  Alice Roosevelt Longworth — “If you can’t say something good about someone, come sit right here by me.”

Many people, possibly casting about for something nice to say, praise Scalia’s “fine legal mind” or words to that effect.  But that seems to me like eulogizing someone for having really good looking toes.  Or excellent hair.  Your brain is just another body part.   The fact that it worked quickly, or generated scathing bons mots, or was especially astute at plumbing the intentions of the long-dead committee who stapled together our Constitution, seems secondary or tertiary or hundred-ary to how you used your brain.  (Or your feet.  Or your . . . hair?)   On that score, it is very hard to find anything good to say.  Scalia’s jurisprudence insulted and excluded LGBT and Black Americans, closed the courthouse doors on non-corporate citizens, and sent hundreds of our fellow human beings to their death at the hands of our own states.  And often that fine mind of his refused to stop with a legal analysis of why our LGBT friends and family should not be able to marry or why universities should not be permitted to open their doors a bit wider for people whose great-grandparents WE HELD IN CHAINS.  So often, especially in dissent, he used that fine mind to craft scathing insults for those who disagreed with him.

He was a bully, and he used his powerful brain the way a bully uses his powerful fists.  We would not eulogize a bully for his awesome fists.

There is no universe in which Antonin Scalia could have been considered a good person.  Honestly, I would have trouble eulogizing a liberal judge who decided every case just the way I would, but insulted and demeaned his sibling judges, the litigants before him, and his fellow human beings.

Am I speaking ill of the dead?  Yes, I suppose I am.  But as one Tumblr philosopher noted, “we don’t speak ill of the dead in America unless they were unarmed and black.”  It’s time to make that practice more inclusive.

Update:  Don’t miss Lao Bao’s second comment below — and be thankful that he’s teaching our next generation!

************

* Oddly, I had remember this as Peter Rabbit’s mother, possibly because my father used Beatrix Potter as the source of a fair amount of conveyed wisdom.

 

CREEC-Colorado visits CREEC-California

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Earlier this week, Tim and I got the chance to check out CREEC’s California office.  Come along for a quick tour!  Julie Wilensky, Director of our California office, and Executive Director Tim Fox in front of the building where our California office is housed.

Image: white woman in light blue shirt and black slacks next to white man in wheelchair with brown coat and khaki slacks, both on the sidewalk in front of a building bearing the logo sign "WeWork."

CREEC’s office is in the infinitely-hip WeWork building, which offers individual offices,

Image: the "CREEC" logo on the glass door to an office; inside are visible an asian man drinking from a coffee mug, a white woman in a blue shirt, and a white man in a brown coat.

and conference rooms, for example, this one with a giant scrabble game on the wall:

Image: giant scrabble game on the wall, with letters in the middle spelling out "God Is Love Tony."

And – so not kidding! – free beer on tap:

Image: beer tap handle that reads "wework draft beer."

I think I was most impressed with the view, though.

Image: clear blue sky over tile-roofed buildings with hills in the background. Stop by and visit if you’re in the neighborhood!

[Cross-posted at CREECblog.]

Imagine for a moment . . .

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. . . that CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) published a photo of Donald Trump with a scattering of bullets next to his head.  How about a Black Lives Matter tweet with photos of police and bullets?  Heads would explode.  Pundits would rant.  Investigations would be launched.  Conservatives would be outraged.

But this?  It’s apparently acceptable for a leading conservative cause to use this image:

Image: copy of tweet from NRA with showing photos of a black woman in a red-checked suit jacket and a white woman in a green turtle-neck and black suit jacket with four bullets arrayed next to the photos. Text reads: "sounding off on one of the most ridiculous anti-gun schemes introduced in some time.

Why isn’t this terrorism?  If terrorism is “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims,” this certainly qualifies.  Violent intimidation in pursuit of political aims.  The only silver lining is that they are losing and this shows their desperation.

Photos of the day #potd

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Trying to stick with this this year.  My other resolution is to procrastinate less, so aaahahahahahahahahahahaaaa *snort*  we’ll see how that goes.  Anyhoo, photos for days 1, 2 & 3 of 2016.

1/1/2016:  Yeti Feet!  (Barbered soon thereafter.)

Image: golden retreiver dog's paw with much long hair sprouting through her toes.

1/2/2016:  Dumplingpalooza!

Image: close up of a pair of hands making dumplings next to a silver bowl of stuffing and a bamboo steamer of completed dumplings. Can see that the person is wearing a Wonder Woman logo shirt.

1/3/2016:  Random photo of orange piping.

Image: Close up of bright orange piping arrayed vertically in the photo.

Domestic terrorism.

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We need to call it what it is:  terrorism, home grown and largely ignored.  Armed assholes occupying a federal building.  Terrorism.

Among those joining Bundy in the occupation are Ryan Payne, U.S. Army veteran, and Blaine Cooper. Payne has claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents in a standoff last year in Nevada. He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

He has been a steady presence in Burns in recent weeks, questioning people who were critical of the militia’s presence. He typically had a holstered sidearm as he moved around the community.

Source: Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters | OregonLive.com

Winter Photos

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I haven’t been very good at photo-of-the-day-ing, but here’s a winter photo dump.  Mostly dogs.  Preview:

Image: two golden retrievers wrestling in the snow.

 

 

Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes. – The Washington Post

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The article makes very interesting points about the racial disparities in our views of paying college athletes.  But to a sorta kinda labor lawyer, the most striking sentence is this:

In survey after survey, strong national majorities oppose paying college athletes. In March 2015, for example, an HBO Real Sports/Marist Poll found that 65 percent of Americans do not think college athletes in top men’s football and basketball programs should be paid.

Image: Three football players, two in light blue uniforms, one in an orange uniform. The one in orange is African-American. He is carrying the football and jumping to avoid a tackle by one of the players in blue, who is also African-American. Another player in blue, race unknown, watches from the right. I have an idea:  let’s take a poll about whether we want other people who entertain us to be paid.  I’ll bet that if actors weren’t paid, Tim and I would not have had to spend $39.98 to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens.   While we’re asking whether we should pay college athletes, let’s also take a vote on whether college coaches should be paid.  How about other college employees?  Just think how cheap college would be if professors worked for free!

This poll should be dismissed as silly, but apparently asking consumers of entertainment whether the entertainers should be paid is not only a thing but a thing that is taken seriously by the potential payors.

 

Texas Governor Orders Founding Fathers/Constitution Display Removed from State Capitol (but the Nativity Can Stay)

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The governor of Texas removed an approved display involving the Statue of Liberty because . . . Texas has a budget surplus that it would like to redistribute to ACLU lawyers?

Source: Texas Governor Orders Atheist Display Removed from State Capitol (but the Nativity Can Stay)

BTW the headline originally read, “Texas Governor Orders Atheist Display Removed  . . .” but there’s nothing anti-God there, just pro-America and pro-Constitution.  Honestly, the full-support-for-civil-liberties-lawyers theory is the only one that really fits.

Bomb squad safely detonates device after police arrest man who threatened Muslims

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Call it what it is:  terrorism.

RICHMOND — Members of a police department bomb squad safely detonated a possible explosive device at the house of a Richmond man arrested early today in connection with threats against the city’s Muslims.

Source: Richmond: Bomb squad safely detonates device after police arrest man who threatened Muslims – ContraCostaTimes.com