The Ablative Absolute

I've done this one before - or one like it.

The sentence structure of our 2nd amendment is important, and too many of us are either willing to be bamboozled by the Ammosexuals, or we're not willing to risk sounding soft and Librul on the issue of Gun Control.

Here's a bit I dug up in The Denver Post from a few years back:

The main argument about the amendment has always been a semantic one: What is meant? What is the intention? I use the present tense, because grammatical deconstruction is done in the here and now. We are not trying to divine intentions from our personal beliefs of what the Founders “stood for” or what they “believed.” The Founders are dead, but their words remain alive in the present, and their words, as well as their meticulous grammatical construction, leave no doubt as to their intentions.

Read these sentences:
“Their project being complete, the team disbanded.”
“Stern discipline being called for, the offending student was expelled.”

In both cases, the initial dependent clause is not superfluous to the meaning of the entire sentence: it is integral. The team disbanded because the project was complete; the student was expelled because his offense called for stern discipline. This causal relationship cannot be ignored. Reading the Second Amendment as “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed,” clearly shows the same causal relationship as the example sentences; in this case, that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed because it is essential to maintaining a well-regulated militia.

Words matter.  What those words meant to the people who wrote them 230 years ago can give us a decent perspective on what they thought was important back then and what can be carried forward to us all these years later, but that was way back then and this is right here right now. We have to deal with what's going on today.  We need laws that help us sort ourselves out now.  We need lawmakers and industry leaders who can see past their own profits and venal ambitions. And we need everybody to stop fuckin' around. Get something done. Now.

Cuz guess what, chicken butt - a coupla hundred more dead Americans since Orlando:

(the interactive map crapped out, so I put up this link to Slate instead)

Left Behind

What strikes me is that these people sound like children.  Whether they're 22 years old or 60 - when they speak, they sound like they think they know everything they need to know, and that there's just no way they could be trying to argue their point from a false premise.

The two Goober Squadlings in that report can't believe they won't get their way just because they think they're right and everybody else is wrong and, "Gee, Dad - it's just not fair - all the other kids did it".

And not to give ya too much of a whiplash, but we need to put some real schooling back into schools.  We need to teach kids about critical thinking, so they don't grow up to become easy marks for any random jagoff who can fool 'em into believing whatever he tells 'em in order to serve his own lust for power.

I'm not trying to set myself up as a paragon.  I've bought into all kinds of shit that ends up looking pretty stoopid in retrospect.  I owned a pair of Earth Shoes for fuck's sake - but c'mon, guys - at least I haven't let anybody convince me Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 is the only thing in the US Constitution that matters.

Skepticism is our friend, kids.

Apply the same principles to everything anybody says about their "deeper understanding".

The arrogance that seems always to grow from deliberate ignorance can get your dumb ass killed.

Today's Tweet

Protestors are now calling for the firing of deputies issuing marriage licenses. pic.twitter.com/ZBrNGNvLZG

— Victor Puente (@thevictorpuente) September 9, 2015

So that's kinda where we are?  The point where the rubes are convinced that Kim Davis isn't the one going against the law - it's the cops and the judges, and everybody else who's not willing to accept their Brand-X Knock-off Sharia?

Now, you can go ahead and try to make the Both Sides argument by saying 'the libruls' think the cops and the judges in Ferguson (eg) are the bad guys, and so yeah, it all evens out.  Sadly, that sounds plausible because we've internalized that kind of paralysis. We've allowed the Opinion Pimps and their Press Poodles and their Coin-Operated Politicians to use our sense of fairness against us for political gain.  

The very thing that's at the core of our strength as the Exceptional Nation is now turned against us and becomes our greatest weakness.  Oh dear, what're we to do?  How will we ever figure this out and get a handle on what's real and what isn't? 

Chill, Sparky.

Here's the thing that we just can't quite get each other to remember about the shit we were supposed to learn in 9th grade Civics class.  You know - way back when school was a place where ya learned a coupla things about how to know what the fuck is goin' on?  Yeah that.  Anyway, the question is: who's following the guiding principles of the US Constitution?  

• everybody's supposed to be treated the same
• we're gonna be a nation of laws, not men
• nobody gets to take their religion and turn it into law 

All of which is intended to help us keep our personal shit separate from our government shit; by giving us a kind of simple bench mark for when we need to figure out what's best for the most while maintaining Equal Protection for as many of us as possible.

The cops in Ferguson failed to fulfill their obligations under their oath by engaging in selective enforcement of the law, and then they allowed it to degenerate into an extortion racket, which is crazy stoopid understandable because if you're not willing to see that the first part is pretty fucked up, then how ya gonna not go full-on-rat-bastard-straight-outa-The-Godfather-crooked-cop?  Seems like a logical progression.

As an agent of government, Davis failed to live up to her oath as well.  She refused to hold up her end of the deal.  That's against the law.  Denying US citizens their rights under the constitution is illegal, and it doesn't matter that your imaginary friend told you to do it, because that's fucking illegal too.

So, if ya wanna try to make that Both Sides argument here, then what you're doing is called False Equivalence/False Dichotomy, and I'm callin' bullshit on that.

Today's Facebook Silly

(And a quick reminder that, for way too many of us, we're making our political decisions from deep inside an alarming deficit of knowledge about fairly simple concepts we were supposed to have learned in 9th-grade Civics.)

I see a lot of otherwise smart friends putting up some really dumb posts. I include myself in the first group of course, but there's no way I could ever break into that second group (of course again) because - you know - I'm just that awesome.

Main complaint du jour: Drug Testing people for Welfare-type Bennies.  This one pops up in various iterations; this time appearing on the wall of a high school buddy's sister:

She was a cop (I think).  She studied Law and Enforcement (says that in her bio). Did she just miss the sessions on Probable Cause and The Bill of Rights?  Or is it a little too much to expect law enforcement officers to know something about that silly old document they all swore to uphold?

Congressional Research Service:

Federal or state laws that condition the initial or ongoing receipt of governmental benefits on passing drug tests without regard to individualized suspicion of illicit drug use may be subject to constitutional challenge. To date, two state laws requiring suspicionless drug tests as a condition to receiving governmental benefits have sparked litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court has not rendered an opinion on such a law; however, the Court has issued decisions on drug testing programs in other contexts that have guided the few lower court opinions on the subject.

Constitutional challenges to suspicionless governmental drug testing most often focus on issues of personal privacy and Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches.” For searches to be reasonable, they generally must be based on individualized suspicion unless the government can show a “special need” warranting a deviation from the norm. However, governmental benefit programs like TANF, SNAP, unemployment compensation, and housing assistance do not naturally evoke special needs grounded in public safety or the care of minors in the public school setting that the Supreme Court has recognized in the past. Thus, if lawmakers wish to pursue the objective of reducing the likelihood of taxpayer funds going to individuals who abuse drugs through drug testing, legislation that only requires individuals to submit to a drug test based on an individualized suspicion of drug use is less likely to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, governmental drug testing procedures that restrict the sharing of test results and limit the negative consequences of failed tests to the assistance program in question would be on firmer constitutional ground.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If you suspect me of doing something illegal, then you gather your evidence, you attach my name (and yours) to it, you present it to the nice judge, and then the judge decides what happens next - not you; not by a show of hands from your little mob of drinking buddies; not some Coin-Operated Politician who needs you to concentrate on some shiny object so you won't notice he and his Sugar Daddies Uber-Patriot Donor Base have their hands in your pants.

It's called Due Process, and it's part of that whole American Exceptionalism thing.

Seriously, kids - we gotta brighten up a little.

Contrarian-ish

Out at the margins of the "mainstream" of issues is the problem of taking an oath of office.

By swearing on a bible and invoking the name of a god whose official involvement in  government is prohibited by the very constitution you're swearing to uphold, you're kinda negating the whole thing from the start.

We need to try a little harder to avoid setting ourselves up to fail.

About The Drone Thing

As usual, Hayes gets pretty close to what it's about.



The main thing to remember is that process counts.  The US was set up to put Process in front of outcome.  If we take care in how we get to the conclusion, we stand a much better chance of getting to the right conclusion.  That seems pretty important when we're trying to figure out who's next in line for a Hellfire Anal Probe.

We gotta get this one right, and I'm not convinced Obama's gonna get there for us.  Seems like he's willing to do some good Democrat things (equal rights, gun regulations, etc) but just as you start to think he's really pulling in the right direction, he cuts back and does something like this extra-legal assassination-by-drone shit.

I guess I'm just really hoping he's trying to rearrange the legalities - not to make it easier to blast somebody we don't like - but to be a little more sure that we blast the right guy(?), and to be a little surer about knowing who pulled the trigger and why they targeted any given dude.

Also hoping this isn't just another cynical move to defang the usual Repub attacks on Dems as being insufficiently BadAss.

Confluence

I love it when aspects of different and unrelated stories or events come together and link up to illustrate a point.

First, there's the problem with Arizona's (SB 1070) Papers Please law.  Opponents hate it for a variety of (I think) good reasons, but mainly because it turns Hispanics into 2nd Class citizens by reinforcing our silly notion that while profiling is kind of unpleasant; and we certainly wouldn't want it done to us; we need to make some exceptions because after all, we're practically under attack here, and really - if you look at all those illegals, the thing that stands out is that almost all of 'em are brown...

Second, months ago, an Afghani civilian who was supposed to be "on our side" attacked and killed a group of US Military and CIA, killing a bunch of them.  This was a big surprise because while the guy was suspected of being a double agent, they didn't expect him to go all Jihadi because he was in his 30's, he was married, he had a couple of kids...BECAUSE HE DIDN'T FIT THE FUCKING PROFILE!

The brilliance of the guys who put this country together is reaffirmed.  It's like they knew that whatever else happened, we weren't gonna make it unless we understood that we have to treat people like people.  We have to be willing to do the hard work of dealing with each other as individuals and as equals.