Tag Archives: first amendment

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

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.

Photo dump from the Droid

Random cellphone photos that entertain me without actually being worthy of an entire blog post.

Let’s hear it for the First Amendment:

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Do these people know about revisions to the rules of professional conduct permitting brand names for law firms?

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We love The Belvedere where you can get pierogis and they have a beer named after an astronomer!

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So you can feel like a true carnivore when you eat your hamburger:

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Stay on the sofa or get off the sofa — it’s so hard to decide!

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In the DU Law School café.  Kids today have it so easy!

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A neighborhood bar offers a bit of advanced wine-pouring guidance:

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And finally, as a passionate avocado fan, I am always sort of annoyed that the Safeway thinks I need subtitles to figure out which avocado is ripe.

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