Liberty
stcynic | June 27, 2006Thank goodness. The flag burning amendent fell one vote short of the 67 required to send it on to the states tonight. Madison's ghost will sleep a bit more soundly tonight.
stcynic | June 25, 2006Jonathan Alter has a compelling essay on the flag burning amendment under consideration - again - in the Senate (it's already passed the House). I'm with him on this one being a litmus test:
The phrase "litmus test" is in bad odor for good reason: politicians should be judged on a variety of positions, not just one. But deep down, nearly every voter has at least one litmus test--an issue so personally important that a politician who fails the test is forever tainted, or at least excluded from consideration for the presidency.
I inherited my one litmus test from my father, Jim Alter, who flew…
stcynic | June 24, 2006I've done more than my fair share of bashing the Bush administration for its many sins. But after seeing this executive order (hat tip to Jon Rowe), let me offer some mild praise. In most cases, it is the courts telling the other branches of government that they may not violate the rights of citizens, but after the Kelo ruling gave them essentially carte blanche to seize private property and transfer it to other private owners as long as they'll pay more taxes on the property, it's refreshing to see the other branches of government set explicit policies against such violations.
Bush doesn't…
stcynic | June 21, 2006As the Senate prepares to debate a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, and appears to be only one vote away from passing it, ThinkProgress has put together a short list of statements from veterans who are opposed to such an amendment. I'll just highlight a couple of them. From Colin Powell:
The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will still be flying proudly long…
stcynic | June 18, 2006Michael Kinsley has a brilliant column about the Bush administration's astonishing legal position that the inherent authority to do whatever they want in the name of pursuing terrorism cannot even be considered by a court to determine their constitutionality.
For years, all the intelligence agencies have been tussling with the American Civil Liberties Union over documents about the innovative Bush administration policy of locking people up in foreign countries where they can be tortured without the inconvenience of anyone knowing about it or bringing up, you know, like, the Constitution. It…
stcynic | June 17, 2006Jason shows once again why his writing is indispensible with this post about flag burning. In it, he explains in great detail why "an attack on a piece of cloth -- a piece of cloth that you don't even own -- is not an assault on America, or on you, or on the Sacred Idea of Freedom Itself."
stcynic | June 15, 2006I've written before about Washington's new law against internet gambling, one of the most obnoxious and hypocritical pieces of legislation imaginable. Remember how they assured everyone that they didn't intend to go after the players with this law? Apparently that's because they were planning to go after people who just talked about internet gambling. The Seattle Times reports:
The first casualty in the state's war on Internet gambling is a local Web site where nobody was actually doing any gambling.
What a Bellingham man did on his site was write about online gambling. He reviewed Internet…
stcynic | June 15, 2006Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in our history, West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette. The case dealt with the question of whether the government could force students to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, and it was brought by a family of Jehovah's Witnesses who believed that to do so would be blasphemy because only God is deserving of such a vow. Justice Robert Jackson's opinion is incredibly powerful, one of the most lucid and bold statements on liberty ever written.
The historical significance can't be…
stcynic | June 13, 2006It took less than 24 hours for the newspapers to begin calling for Pennsylvania's mandatory helmet law to be reinstated following Ben Roethlisberger's accident yesterday. But folks, Roethlisberger is a big boy. His life belongs to him, not to any of us, and he made a choice. A bad choice, certainly. A horrible choice. But guess what? He is now paying the consequences for that choice. Just like people who choose to bungee jump, smoke cigarettes, snowboard, race cars, eat too much pizza, or play with firecrackers pay the consequences for their choices all the time. We don't need government…
stcynic | May 18, 2006Christian groups are attempting to censor the Da Vinci Code movie all over the world, wherever they can get away with it. In Thailand:
In Thailand, government censors ordered the final 10 minutes of the film be cut following a meeting Tuesday with a coalition of Thai Christian groups protesting the content of the film.
"If they are going to screen this, we asked that they cut out the conclusion of the movie that Jesus still has heirs alive today," said spokesman Manoch Jangmook, of the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand.
They were turned back in South Korea:
In South Korea, which has 13…
stcynic | May 17, 2006Here's a perfect example of those "family values" we're always hearing about. The town of Black Jack, Missouri is going to evict a family from their home because they don't meet the town's definition of a family. By any definition, it's a family - a man, a woman, and her three children. But they're not married, so they don't meet the town's definition. And the city council sounds like a real set of winners:
Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.
The town's…
stcynic | May 16, 2006When the NSA's program to build a database of every phone call made in America was revealed the other day, I mentioned one obvious way that it could be misused, by providing blackmail material for political enemies. If they have evidence that a candidate or legislator called, for example, a phone sex line at some point, that could easily be used to coerce them to change a vote, drop an investigation demand, or pull out of a race. And if you don't think this kind of blackmail goes on, think again. It's been used even against civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King.
Here's a second way…
stcynic | May 11, 2006USA Today reports on a massive NSA database of every single phone call made in the United States, compiled with the help of the three largest telecom companies.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans - most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not…
stcynic | May 9, 2006Via Radley Balko comes these two reports. The first is from Arkansas, where a bill has just passed both houses of the legislature that would ban smoking in any car if there's a child in the car. And the Arkansas governor loves the idea:
Huckabee said Friday afternoon that the bill sounded like a great idea.
"It's obviously protecting the child against secondhand smoke," the governor said at a news conference Friday. "I think it's a great bill. I'm glad that's cleared both houses. Delighted."
Anyone wanna start a pool on how long before it becomes a crime to take a child to McDonald's? Isn't…
stcynic | May 3, 2006While we're on the subject of the Cato Institute, it's worth checking out their new report, written by Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, about Bush's abysmal track record on constitutional matters. It's funny, just a few months ago I had a hardcore liberal accuse me of being a "primitive reactionary" for defending the Cato Institute against his charge that the think tank was in the pocket of corporate paymasters. I pointed out that less than 10% of Cato's funding comes from corporate sources, but what good are facts against someone with an ideological axe to grind?
Liberals generally like to think…
stcynic | April 28, 2006Yes, yes, I know - Godwin's law and all that. But the term is so perfect that I choose to use it, even while recognizing that the analogy is obviously absurd. I refer, of course, to the full range of health and longevity fetishists who push for ever more intrusive regulation of what we eat, drink or otherwise take into our bodies. The folks who are encouraging more lawsuits against fast food restaurants on behalf of people who claim McDonald's made them fat - as though Ronald put a gun to their head and made them eat big macs and fat-saturated fries 3 times a day.
The latest target of my ire…
stcynic | April 28, 2006And it's on the same topic. In response to the Day of Silence, a group of religious right organizations sponsorded a "Day of Truth", encouraging kids to speak out against homosexuality. At Mira Loma High School in California, a group of students staged an after school protest in response to the Day of Silence, wearing t-shirts that said "Homosexuality is Sin". 13 students were suspended when they refused to take off the shirts. A suit will be filed, of course. Probably many suits, since the same thing happened at other schools. Thankfully, there is one voice of reason and it belongs to a…
stcynic | April 28, 2006When I'm looking for wingnuttery to have a little fun with, I can always be sure to find something crazy at any website associated with Alan Keyes. Today's example is this column at RenewAmerica by Pete Fisher in which he argues that we should actually evict all Muslims from the US. Yep, you read that correctly. But we'll get to that in a minute. We'll start from the beginning, where he is upset by what he saw at a rally by some radical Islamic group from Queens, NY:
Identified by Kilafah flags they are also noted for their nasty remarks about Jews, Christians, homosexuals, Israel, Danes and…
stcynic | April 27, 2006An alternative student newspaper at the University of Oregon, The Insurgent, has printed a set of offensive cartoons that depict Jesus on the cross with an erection, and kissing another man, among others (the cartoons don't appear to be available at the link above). Naturally, this brought out the Christian censors. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, demands an apology and says that the university should have prevented the publication of them. In fact, he got so upset that he didn't get the response he wanted from the university that he wrote to the governor and all the state…
stcynic | April 25, 2006Nat Hentoff, long one of my favorite writers despite his surprising and indefensible position on the Terri Schaivo situation, has a column in the Village Voice about the importance of civics classes in public schools. He points to the abysmal ignorance that study after study has shown about some of the very basic facts about our system of law. I'll post a long excerpt from that column below the fold:
In a national study last year, Future of the First Amendment, funded by the Knight Foundation, more than 100,000 high school students were interviewed on what they know of the First Amendment.…