AmericaWantsToKnow.com

Barack Obama's Rockettes problem

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:34:00 +0000

When the world famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes go into their signature high-kick routine, it appears to the audience that the dancers have their arms around each other's waists. But they don't.

"Rockettes don't actually hold on to each other," Rockette Kristin Jantzie explained in an interview, "We just gently touch the velvet of the costume."

That's so they don't all come crashing down if one of them falls.

Like the Rockettes, Members of Congress stand for election every two years in their own districts, each on their own two feet, not quite connected to the other members of their party, whatever it may look like from the audience.

President Obama called Democratic lawmakers to the White House on Thursday and reportedly instructed them that voting against health care reform would hurt their chances of re-election this fall.

Good luck with that.

If they didn't know how to get elected in their districts, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

While they're in Washington, Members of Congress have every reason to play along with the party leadership. That's how they get good committee assignments and that's how they get provisions added to legislation that will help them get re-elected.

Then they go home and campaign.

Sometimes they don't even include their party affiliation in their ads.

They know what they're doing. This is their area of expertise. This is what they do.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's representative government in action. If the health care bill doesn't have enough votes in Washington, it's because it doesn't have enough support in the country.

So President Obama shouldn't be calling lawmakers in to instruct them.

He should be calling them in to listen to them.

Last November, President Obama pressured reluctant House Democrats to cast a difficult vote for the health care reform bill, telling the lawmakers that their 'yes' vote was necessary to keep the process moving forward.

This week the White House told those same Democrats that they can't 'flip-flop' now and vote no.

Sure they can.

Just watch them.

They're not going to fall like dominoes if they can help it.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier America Wants To Know post, "Dead you know."

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The Second Amendment and the big surprise

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:03:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to decide the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which is expected to settle the question of whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is one of the rights that is "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore binding on the state governments the same way it's binding on the federal government.

There was a dust-up in the oral arguments between Justice Antonin Scalia and attorney Alan Gura (who successfully argued the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case) over whether the incorporation could be accomplished through the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause instead of the "due process" clause that has been used to incorporate other rights in the past.

Justice Scalia said he doesn't like "substantive due process" but he has come to accept it, and he complained that Mr. Gura was trying to go against "140 years of our jurisprudence" to remake constitutional law. Justice Scalia accused the attorney of "bucking for a place on some law school faculty."

The snide comments only serve to call attention to the fact that the Incorporation Doctrine appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and is the creation of imaginative judges, totally disconnected from the principle of government by consent of the governed.

Confused? Don't be. Here are the ten things you need to know about the Incorporation Doctrine in order to make sense of this debate:

1. When the Bill of Rights was written and ratified, it was intended and understood to apply only to the federal government. The powers of the states were limited only by their own state constitutions.

2. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was written and ratified to put some limits on the powers of the states, but nobody at the time thought the Amendment made the Bill of Rights apply to the states.

3. From 1868 until 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled over and over again that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. Not once did anyone in Congress or the state legislatures stand up and say, "Hey! That's wrong! We meant for it to apply to the states!"

4. After everybody who debated and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment was safely dead, the U.S. Supreme Court quietly began to suggest that maybe the Fourteenth Amendment actually was intended to pick up certain parts of the Bill of Rights and make them apply to the states.

5. Over the course of the 20th century, the justices of the Supreme Court gradually added more and more rights to the list of rights that were "fundamental" enough to be "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they left some wiggle room, permitting state laws that infringed those rights if the states could show "a compelling reason."

6. Nobody knows exactly what constitutes a "fundamental" right or a "compelling" reason. They have been different things at different times to different justices.

7. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, states and cities can be sued in federal court over virtually any police procedure, school policy, local ordinance, state law, or state constitutional amendment.

8. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, local and state voters have lost the power -- guaranteed to them by the always-ignored Tenth Amendment -- to have the laws they want on all kinds of controversial issues, including but not limited to: prayer in the schools, Ten Commandments displays, abortion, panhandling, pornography, flag-burning, drug searches, police interrogations, admissibility of evidence, jury trials, and the death penalty.

9. At no time did any voter, elected official, or state government formally consent to this arrangement, nor were they asked.

10. Under the Incorporation Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has invented various balancing tests to decide which fundamental-right-infringing laws will be allowed and which ones will be struck down. Each new decision is instantly binding on every jurisdiction in the country.

That brings us to the Second Amendment and the big surprise that awaits gun-rights supporters if the Supreme Court grants their wish: a ruling that the Second Amendment is "incorporated" and binding on the states.

It's actually worse for gun rights if the Second Amendment is incorporated than if it isn't.

For every Chicago gun ban that is struck down in one of these cases, there will be dozens or hundreds of jurisdictions that end up adopting gun restrictions they never had before. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually spell out certain kinds of gun regulations that are allowable, using one of its fundamental-rights-vs.-compelling-interests balancing tests.

That's when gun-control advocates will besiege every city council and state legislature and demand those regulations.

City and state lawmakers who previously would have rebuffed those demands with a firm Second Amendment argument will be stuck, forced to acknowledge that the Second Amendment allows whichever restrictions made the cut in the latest Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

The justices could use McDonald v. Chicago or another case like it to give the green light to gun registration, or mandatory trigger locks, or a ban on "assault weapons," or a safety-training requirement, or a ban on gun ownership by anyone who's ever been clinically depressed.

Can you imagine a politician standing up to the pressure for gun-control laws like these after the Supreme Court specifically rules that the Second Amendment allows them?

The Incorporation Doctrine simply transfers power from state and local governments to the federal courts. Just as local governments have to consult the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings before they can close down a topless bar next to a high school, they will have to study the Supreme Court's rulings on gun restrictions whenever gun-control advocates show up with a list of demands.

It's just a matter of time before somebody gets shot and a city is sued for not having gun-control laws.

The better way to protect gun rights is to fight for state constitutional amendments in all fifty states to guarantee the right to keep and bear arms. The amendments may not succeed everywhere, but in the states where they do, gun rights will be safe from the constant threat of infringement by a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: For a history of the Incorporation Doctrine complete with detailed source notes and a bibliography, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing." It's published as an appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment, and can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

You might also be interested in the 2006 America Wants To Know post, "The cat, the bag, and Justice Scalia."

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Tabloid update: "Clinton Heart Transplant"

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:32:00 +0000

Just when the National Enquirer is accepted into the Pulitzer Prize competition for its John Edwards reporting and you start to think you can believe what you read in the tabloids, the Globe goes and splashes its front page with a headline screaming, "Clinton Heart Transplant!"

The story is completely bogus and we wouldn't even bother to tell you about it, except that you know as well as we do that you Googled for it and now you're here.

Welcome. We won't disappoint you.

"Frantic search for donor!" the cover announces, "Bill's secret battle to stay alive!"

As a matter of fact, there is a picture of Hillary Clinton inside with a rolled-up newspaper in her hands.

But it's nothing the Secret Service can't handle.

No, former President Clinton is not in need of a heart transplant. The Globe reports that he's told friends he's "terrified he has less than two years to live" unless he gets one, but the Globe says "it probably wouldn't solve his cardiovascular problems."

The president's doctors concur with the Globe.

President Clinton recently underwent a procedure to put stents in his arteries, and without getting into a lot of medical detail, there's nothing wrong with his heart.

Nothing that Mrs. Clinton can't fix with a rolled-up newspaper.

Still, the Globe reports that the former president has asked his aides to look into the possibility of a heart transplant, overseas if necessary.

"Bill has friends in high places all over the world and knows he can get a new heart," someone identified as a friend told the Globe, "Even though his wife Hillary and his doctors have all told him he doesn't need to take such a radical step, he won't give up."

Well, we feel for him. He's had a terrible scare. You see things in a hospital that make Stephen King look like Mother Goose.

Hang in there, Mr. President. Things wouldn't be the same around here without the Big Watermelon.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Clinton! Parkinson's! Michelle! Baby Tragedy!" and "Clinton Only 1 Year to Live!"

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How John Galt could have helped Tiger Woods

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Tiger Woods made his first public appearance yesterday since the not-quite-Norman-Rockwell Thanksgiving that revealed all the trouble. It was painful to watch.

Using language of self-abasing humility, he proudly made it known that he employs a lot of people, creates a lot of wealth, and helps millions of children.

"To everyone involved in my foundation, including my staff, board of directors, sponsors, and most importantly, the young students we reach, our work is more important than ever," Woods said. "From the Learning Center students in Southern California to the Earl Woods scholars in Washington, D.C., millions of kids have changed their lives, and I am dedicated to making sure that continues."

The world's greatest golfer stood rigidly at the podium and spoke as if his neck was in a vise. "For all that I have done, I am so sorry," he said. "It's hard to admit that I need help, but I do."

He sure does.

He needs help from Ayn Rand.

"I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in," Tiger said on Friday.

Did he?

"Altruism," Ayn Rand explained to Playboy magazine in 1964, "is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue."

The novelist and philosopher advocated a different moral system: "a nonmystical, nonaltruistic, rational code of ethics -- a morality which holds that man is not a sacrificial animal, that he has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself."

This is an excerpt from the Playboy interview:

PLAYBOY: You are sharply critical of the world as you see it today, and your books offer radical proposals for changing not merely the shape of society, but the very way in which most men work, think and love. Are you optimistic about man's future?

RAND: Yes, I am optimistic....Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man's mind. You will see man's unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? -- I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.

If John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand's 1957 masterwork, Atlas Shrugged, had visited Tiger Woods, he might have told the golfer that he has split himself in two: living by the values of reason, purpose and self-esteem in his professional life but abandoning those values in his personal life, with predictable results in both cases.

From the Playboy interview, this is Ayn Rand on the value of reason:

"Reason is man's tool of knowledge, the faculty that enables him to perceive the facts of reality. To act rationally means to act in accordance with the facts of reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong. A whim is an emotion whose cause you neither know nor care to discover. Now what does it mean, to act on whim? It means that a man acts like a zombie, without any knowledge of what he deals with, what he wants to accomplish, or what motivates him. It means that a man acts in a state of temporary insanity."

On the value of purpose:

"The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose -- a productive purpose....A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man's life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find."

On the value of self-esteem [elaborating on her view that the kind of man who spends his time running after women is a man who "despises himself"]:

"This type of man is reversing cause and effect in regard to sex. Sex is an expression of a man's self-esteem, of his own self-value. But the man who does not value himself tries to reverse this process. He tries to derive his self-esteem from his sexual conquests, which cannot be done. He cannot acquire his own value from the number of women who regard him as valuable. Yet that is the hopeless thing which he attempts."

If Ayn Rand's hero had paid a visit to Tiger Woods, he might have explained to him that his accomplishments on the golf course were only possible because he used reason to assess the facts of reality and apply his rational mind to the challenges of the game, because it was his purpose to become the greatest golfer of all time, and because he regarded himself as equal to the task.

John Galt might have explained to Tiger that the failures in his personal life resulted from his attempt to fake reality and portray himself as a perfect, people-pleasing fantasy figure, when in fact he was unhappy and adrift, loathing himself for failing to live up to the fake reality he created.

John Galt might have advised Tiger to close his foundation, give up his endorsement deals, divorce his wife and get back on the golf course. "I am who I am," the script might have read. "It was a mistake to mislead you for the sake of selling products and funding scholarships."

The reaction to that speech might have been: "Don't close the foundation! We need you! We love you! All is forgiven!"

The truth would set him free.

Instead, he's going to attempt to regain the fake reality through a public display of therapy, religion, marriage counseling, and philanthropy.

"I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again," Tiger wept.

Believe -- the word itself tells you that he's faking it.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand has some interesting thoughts on what she called, "The Meaning of Sex":

"The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think -- for the same reason -- that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you -- just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself....

"Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives -- and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values -- and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws -- and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex -- nothing but shame...."

Ayn Rand diagnosed Tiger Woods pretty well, didn't she?

You should see what she says about Barack Obama.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous post, "Decoding Don Draper."

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"Dead you know."

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:33:00 +0000

"Did you hear this one," legendary comedian Stan Laurel wrote to a friend in 1963, "Two Englishmen: 'Heard you buried your wife last week.' 'Oh yes. Had to -- dead you know.'"

Not everyone is so matter-of-fact in the face of bad news.

"It can't be dead, it shouldn't be dead, and I'm presuming won't be dead," Democratic pollster and strategist Stanley Greenberg told an audience on Wednesday, speaking of the health care reform bill.

"No, no, it's resting, look!"

"Look my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now."

"No, no sir, it's not dead. It's resting."

President Obama has invited congressional leaders of both parties to a televised health care summit on February 25. "Let's put the best ideas on the table," he said.

"Remarkable bird the Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage, innit?"

"The plumage don't enter into it - it's stone dead."

"No, no - it's just resting."

Politico reported today that nine Democratic senators have signed a letter asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "to bring the public option back up for a vote."

"It's bleeding demised."

"It's not, it's pining."

"It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot."

"The Senate has an obligation to reform our unworkable health insurance market -- both to reduce costs and to give consumers more choices," Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet wrote in his letter to Majority Leader Reid, "A strong public option is the best way to deliver on both of these goals, and we urge its consideration under reconciliation rules."

'Reconciliation' is an arcane Senate procedure invented for passing budget bills without permitting filibusters. It can only be used to pass measures that relate directly to the federal budget. A provision requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions, for example, wouldn't qualify.

"A reconciliation bill won't work," Politico reported, quoting Lawrence O'Donnell, who was staff director of the Democratic Senate Finance Committee during the '93-'94 health care debate. "When people talk about its 51-vote threshold they're forgetting that is just the final vote. Every day the bill is on the floor it will face 60-vote procedural hurdles. For instance, should Republicans challenge a provision's inclusion and get a favorable ruling from the parliamentarian, without 60 votes, Democrats will be unable to overturn it – leading to a bill that looks more like Swiss cheese than health reform."

O'Donnell said the health care bill went into its "death throes" when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "We don't have the votes for passing the Senate bill."

"That should have just ended it," O'Donnell said. "Any discussion of another scenario is juvenile. It's ridiculous."

Since Election Night in Massachusetts, O'Donnell told Politico, Democrats have moved into "full bluff mode" in order to keep their liberal base from going "bonkers."

"If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies."

"We need to take our time" getting to a final health care bill, President Obama told donors and supporters of Organizing for America, his former campaign operation. He said a pause will allow "everybody to get the real facts."

We've got them, thanks.

"This is an ex-parrot!"

Copyright 2010

Source note: The Dead Parrot Sketch is of course from Monty Python's Flying Circus, available on DVD from Amazon.com.

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous America Wants To Know posts on health care reform:

Insanity
Tom Daschle: Done
Step right up to see the Amazing Health Care Reform!
Just kill it
Gazing into the future
Bad at math
Yes we can and no we won't
The big half truth
The right to kill health care reform
The secret health plan
The midnight sausage factory
Why health care reform will fail
History, and history
Predicting slavery
Health Care Reform Dinner Theater
Punch Lines

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We turn casting director

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:21:00 +0000

Ordinarily, America Wants To Know doesn't dabble in show business, but we would like to send an open letter to actor Jimmy Smits:

Cookie, baby, sweetheart, you've just got to buy the film rights to this guy's story:

That's Israeli cult leader Goel Ratzon. He's sitting in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, where he's in some trouble for having 21 wives.

Don't you love these Valentine's Day feature stories?

Goel Ratzon is facing charges of rape, sodomy, enslavement and sexual abuse within his family. He disputes the rape charge. "Stroking" minors does not constitute rape, he explained to the court.

It's nice that Bill Clinton's defense lawyers found work again.

According to the indictment, Goel Ratzon kept peace in the family with strict rules, enforced by financial penalties. The fine was 100 shekels for questioning another wife about her whereabouts, 2,000 shekels for catfights, and 200 shekels for "talking nonsense."

This story has blockbuster written all over it.

And don't miss the surprise ending, when Tiger Woods buys the Gaza Strip and converts to Judaism.

Copyright 2010

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Genius and courage

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:12:00 +0000

If the framers of the United States Constitution could have lived to see the events of last week, they would be congratulating themselves on a job well done.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy led a 5-4 majority to rule in the case of Citizens United v. FEC that the First Amendment does not permit a law that criminalizes campaign ads paid for by corporations and similar groups.

Justice Kennedy wrote that the law in question, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act), was having a "chilling effect" on political speech. The law and the regulations following from it were so complex and uncertain, Justice Kennedy wrote, that they amounted to a prior restraint on speech. "A speaker wishing to avoid criminal liability threats and the heavy costs of defending against FEC enforcement must ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak," he wrote, exactly the sort of government power "that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit."

The people who currently hold government power reacted to this decision with extraordinary hostility.

"This week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence," President Barack Obama intoned in his weekly radio/Internet address. "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," he said, "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest."

Over in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the decision will allow "special-interest dollars to dictate the details of public policy."

On the other side of the Capitol, Senator Chuck Schumer said he will hold hearings to look for a way to get around the Supreme Court's decision.

Speaker Pelosi said she's looking at "legislative options available to mitigate the impact of this disappointing decision."

And President Obama said he has "instructed" his administration "to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision."

The president was so angry at the Supreme Court that he lashed out at the the justices during his State of the Union address, accusing them to their faces of believing that "American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities." He said he was "urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems." [That was milder than his written speech, which read, "to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."]

Of course, the First Amendment can't be overturned by an act of Congress.

It was the genius of the Founders to protect our liberty by dividing and limiting government power. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition," they wrote in Federalist No. 51, which is titled "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments."

It was published in 1788, but it's still in what book dealers call "very good" condition.

Federalist No. 51, written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, says the "preservation of liberty" requires that each branch of government "have a will of its own," with the members of each department having "as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others." The framers agreed to "some deviations" from this principle, one being the appointment and confirmation of judges. Because of "peculiar qualifications being essential in the members" of the judicial branch, the most important consideration was "to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications."

The safeguard of liberty was "the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, [which] must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them."

That's exactly what you saw on television during the State of the Union address: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and five of his colleagues calmly dismissing a presidential rebuke and the congressional standing ovation for it.

It's the framers' design. The Supreme Court doesn't answer to Congress or the president.

Still, it takes courage to stand up for the First Amendment in the face of withering criticism from those who find freedom of speech to be an obstacle to their plans.

"It will be that much harder to get fair, common-sense financial reforms, or close unwarranted tax loopholes that reward corporations from sheltering their income or shipping American jobs off-shore," President Obama seethed in his remarks about the Citizens United decision, "It will make it more difficult to pass commonsense laws to promote energy independence because even foreign entities would be allowed to mix in our elections. It would give the health insurance industry even more leverage to fend off reforms that would protect patients."

He's angry because the Supreme Court threw out a law that would have kept banks and insurance companies and oil companies and other corporations from running ads to give voters their side of the story when they are threatened and attacked by progressive politicians -- "men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims," in Ayn Rand's words.

Corporations are no longer disarmed in the 30 days before a primary election because Justice Anthony Kennedy took a courageous stand for freedom of speech, and not for the first time. In 2002 he led a 5-4 majority in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, striking down a law that banned "virtual" child pornography, computer-generated images created without real children.

The withering criticism of that decision came from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

Justice Anthony Kennedy deserves credit for defending freedom of speech without fear or favor.

Incidentally, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the 1990 decision that was overruled by Citizens United, is a good example of the trouble caused by the Incorporation Doctrine, the Supreme Court's 20th-century project of applying some parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the invention of the Incorporation Doctrine, the state of Michigan would have had a perfect right to restrict freedom of speech.

That's because the Bill of Rights was intended to apply only to the federal government, not to the states.

It was 1925, in the case of Gitlow v. People of State of New York, when the Supreme Court first suggested that the U.S. Constitution required the states to guarantee freedom of speech and the press. As late as 1922 the Court held that the Constitution "imposes upon the States no obligation to confer...the right of free speech."

Over time, the Supreme Court developed its theory that certain rights are so fundamental to the concept of due process of law that they must apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars any state from denying due process to any person.

It gets a little tricky when the Court tries to explain which rights are "fundamental" and which ones are not. It gets even trickier when the justices cut the states some slack and allow that there may be a "compelling state interest" justifying the law, and as long as it's "narrowly tailored" it's probably constitutional.

In the now overruled Austin case, the Supreme Court held that "Section 54(1) of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act," which prohibited corporations from using their general treasury funds for campaign ads, did not violate the First Amendment because there was a "compelling state interest" in "preventing corruption" and the law was "sufficiently narrowly tailored to achieve its goal."

When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in the 2003 McConnell v. Federal Election Commission case, the Austin decision was cited as a precedent.

The made-up balancing tests that the Supreme Court uses to apply the First Amendment to the states -- fundamental rights, compelling state interests, narrowly tailored laws -- were being applied to a law made by Congress, even though the First Amendment says that when it comes to freedom of speech, "Congress shall make no law."

That's the muddle that has been made by the Supreme Court's ever-evolving and constitutionally unauthorized Incorporation Doctrine.

"The biggest stretch that the Court has made was interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the Bill of Rights to the states," Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute in February, 2006. "Nobody ever thought the Bill of Rights applied to the states. It begins 'Congress shall make no law.'"

But Justice Scalia would rather not talk about it.

"I'm not about to tell the people of New York state or of any state that their state government is not bound by the First Amendment," he said. "Okay?"

He's not really asking.

If we were following the Constitution as written, Michigan could ban corporate spending on campaign ads, and New York could require terrorists to testify against themselves, and California could ban jury trials, and Alabama could segregate its public schools. That's our federal system, as written, and as it used to be before the Incorporation Doctrine.

We have spent the last 75 or so years allowing the Supreme Court's decisions to substitute for constitutional amendments. That's why you hear about "test cases" going to the Supreme Court instead of "ratification debates" going on in state legislatures.

It's a risky practice. We're always just a 5-4 decision away from somebody's freedom being overruled.

Constitutional rights are most secure when they're in the plain language of the Constitution.

And even then it takes a Herculean effort to keep them.

Thanks, Justice Kennedy.

Copyright 2010

Source note: The Ayn Rand quotation is from Atlas Shrugged; it can also be found in her book, For the New Intellectual, in "The Meaning of Money."

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Rewriting the First Amendment." For more information and complete source notes on the history of the Incorporation Doctrine, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," free online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm and also published as the appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment

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Janteenth

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:33:00 +0000

Mark the day. January 19, 2010, is the day American taxpayers went to the polls and declared that they are not slaves to everybody else's needs.

It was October, 2007, when candidate Barack Obama told a small child in Durham, North Carolina, "We've got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money."

That statement was at odds with the Constitution, which protects an individual's right to his own life, liberty and property. The U.S. government does not have the power or the responsibility to even out the distribution of wealth in the United States.

Now that Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown has defeated Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy, it's clear that the tea party protests in April and the town-hall meeting protests in August were not "Astroturf" demonstrations, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted again and again. They were the genuine article.

A lot of Americans don't want the government ramming through new entitlement programs and running up record-breaking debt; and then lecturing the country about shared responsibility, otherwise known as higher taxes and mandatory payments.

Freedom means the right to enjoy the fruits of your own efforts, what Abraham Lincoln called the right to eat the bread earned with one's own hands.

That's not going to change.

Copyright 2010

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Tabloid update: Exploding marriages

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:47:00 +0000

"Obama Marriage Explodes!" the National Enquirer headlined on an April 2008 cover, but at the time there was nothing inside the magazine to back it up. The story was about Michelle Obama's fears that there might be photos and love notes from women in her husband's past that could create a huge embarrassment for them just before the election.

Senator Obama reportedly told his wife that there were no love notes and no photos.

That was all there was to the story, but to a casual observer in the supermarket checkout line, the cover gave the impression of a full-blown Clinton-style scandal.

At the time, America Wants To Know speculated that the Clintons were behind the story, possibly planting it through their attorney, David E. Kendall, who had represented the National Enquirer for fifteen years.

We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Mr. Kendall and to take another guess.

Recently we were reading up on the latest revelations about former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, not in the Enquirer -- we're getting to that -- but in New York magazine, excerpted from the new book "Game Change" by political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin:

Roger Altman picked up the phone in his 38th-floor office on the East Side of New York and found Edwards on the line. Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and a supporter of Hillary’s, was chairman of the investment group Evercore Partners. Since 1999, Evercore had owned a stake in American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer--and it was that connection which prompted the call that day in the first week of October [2007].

There was no reason for the Clintons to pay David Kendall's hourly rate when they could just pick up the phone and call Roger Altman.

So we stand by the guess that at a critical point in the 2008 primaries, the Clintons fed a phony story to the National Enquirer, trying to neutralize the infidelity issue by making voters think the Obama marriage was no different than theirs.

Or maybe everybody was just psychic.

Because last week the Globe headlined its cover, "Obama Marriage Explodes!" and this time it appears to be true.

Back to that in a minute.

The reason John Edwards called Roger Altman on that October day was to beg him to stop an upcoming story in the National Enquirer. The story was going to allege that he had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. Edwards told Altman the story was outrageous and untrue.

It was all true.

Roger Altman told Edwards he didn't think he could do much about it, but he would call the publisher and talk to him.

Which he did.

But it was all true and the publisher had the evidence.

Then Elizabeth Edwards called Altman. "You must do something about this, she begged," according to Heilemann and Halperin. "It's cruel, it's unfair, and it's untrue. This is way too much for me. I can't take it. It's killing our family. It's killing me."

That was the strongest card she could play but it wasn't enough to stop the National Enquirer from exposing the whole sordid story of presidential candidate John Edwards recklessly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife with a woman his aides considered a dangerous bimbo groupie.

Edwards denied the story and denounced the Enquirer as trash, which the editors didn't appreciate. They ran a follow-up story in December showing Rielle Hunter six months pregnant.

Yet Elizabeth Edwards didn't walk out on the marriage. Instead she helped to develop a damage-control strategy and continued to help her husband run for the Democratic nomination for president in Iowa. Aghast at these developments, top staffers quietly plotted to leak the whole story to the New York Times and destroy the campaign in case Edwards somehow pulled out a victory in Iowa.

But Barack Obama won Iowa and John Edwards began an effort to sell his endorsement to the highest bidder in exchange for the VP nod, or the job of Attorney General, or something appropriate to his standing in the party.

Edwards was still holding out for a deal in February, when Rielle Hunter's baby was born, and in May, when Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary. It was then that Obama called Edwards and offered him a prime-time speaking slot at the convention, and for that, Edwards endorsed him.

Then in July, the National Enquirer staked out a Beverly Hills hotel and caught John Edwards meeting Rielle Hunter and their baby.

Edwards decided to appear on ABC's Nightline and semi-confess to infidelity without admitting paternity, which just made everything worse. The invitation to speak at the convention was withdrawn.

"Game Change" details the screaming arguments between John and Elizabeth Edwards as well as the couple's grandiose and abusive treatment of the campaign staff.

John Edwards was very nearly elected vice president in 2004, and there was a moment in time when he looked like he might become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008.

According to "Game Change," that's the precise moment when senior Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urged freshman Senator Barack Obama to run for president.

"Edwards was regarded almost universally by his former colleagues as a callow, shallow phony," the authors write.

Former colleagues certainly didn't rush to defend him this week when the National Enquirer hit the newsstands with its cover story, "John Edwards Caught Cheating AGAIN!"

But this time it's different. "Humiliated wife finally kicks him out," the cover promises. The story says Mrs. Edwards threw her husband out of the house after Christmas, screaming that she was finally going to sign the divorce papers that have been gathering dust since her lawyers drew them up last year.

"The Enquirer has learned exclusively that the philandering ex-senator embarked on a 'sex-and-booze bender' after what appeared to be a marriage-ending blowout fight," the tabloid reports.

John Edwards reportedly moved to the couple's vacation home on Figure Eight Island near Wilmington, North Carolina, where he crawled the local bars every night, hitting on female employees and customers. Bartender Stephanie Breshears said Edwards tried on "four consecutive nights" to get her to go home with him after her shift at the Kornerstone Bistro.

"I think he's scum," Ms. Breshears told the Enquirer.

Now THAT'S the kind of judgment we've been looking for in a president. Why don't people like this ever run for office? We'll come back to that.

But first, the Obamas' exploding marriage.

America Wants To Know suspected that the president was cheating on his wife when we saw the Secret Service's odd reaction to the gate-crashers at the state dinner for the prime minister of India.

We also thought it was a bit odd that the president's aides waited three hours to tell him that a suspected terrorist tried to blow up a plane over Detroit with an underwear bomb on Christmas Day. Three hours? Imagine for a moment that you worked for the president. Under what circumstances would you just not disturb him?

That's what we thought, too.

Three hours is about right.

The Globe says the president's marriage "has been pushed to the brink of destruction by the intense pressure of White House living. That's the word from stunned insiders who say the First Couple is fighting tooth and claw behind closed doors and their 17-year union is edging ever closer to a shocking final meltdown."

The Globe's sources say "their marriage has been like a war zone." They're "screaming at each other" and "glaring" and "stomping off in different directions."

President and Mrs. Obama were trying to patch up their marriage with the Hawaiian vacation, the tabloid says, renting a $9 million ocean-front house along with two neighboring houses for friends who joined them on the trip.

"The whole holiday was a disaster," a source tells the tabloid, "They got into a huge fight the second they were on the island."

Some of the Globe's details are corroborated by mainstream press reports. The Obamas didn't go to church on Christmas and the couple didn't exchange gifts. That's in the Globe and also in the Washington Post.

"Barack can't believe how much Michelle has been spending since she became First Lady," the Globe reports. The spending, if not the disbelief, is corroborated by the NBC TV station in Dallas with a slideshow of Mrs. Obama's designer clothes, including a pair of black flats by Maison Martin Margiela that retail for $640 (but can be had for less):

Reporters on the Honolulu trip also took note of Mrs. Obama's absence from the group of eighteen friends and family members who accompanied the president on a trip to buy shave ice, otherwise known as snow cones, on New Year's Day. "First Lady Michelle Obama didn’t make the outing," ABC News volunteered.

It doesn't prove anything.

But there have been signs of stress. There was that we-just-had-a-fight body language when the first couple arrived at the Blue Duck Tavern in Washington for an anniversary dinner last October:

And when they left:

And there were those odd comments Mrs. Obama made to a New York Times magazine reporter about "bumps" in their marriage with the president "studying the carpet as she answered."

And just this weekend the president surprised his wife with a birthday dinner at a local restaurant. The guest list included the first lady's mom, her chief of staff, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, two friends from Chicago, Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife.

As comedian Argus Hamilton would say, just the two of them and their food tasters.

We don't know whether Michelle Obama is the type of person who would stay or leave if her husband was revealed to be a faithless philandering egomaniac. She might be Elin Woods, packed and out of there, or she might be Hillary Clinton, staying in it for the power and the glory and the salaried make-up and hair stylists.

What we do know is that too many of our presidential candidates fit the description in "Game Change" of John Edwards' implosion: "an archetypal political tragedy in which the very same qualities that fuel any presidential bid--ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion--became all-consuming and self-destructive."

Ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion. The qualities that fuel any presidential bid.

This is really dangerous.

Is it an unintended consequence of thirty years of campaign finance reform?

Not so very long ago, a small group of people could donate a large amount of money and finance the candidacy of a person they believed would make a good president, or senator, or congressman.

No more.

Now a candidate has to be willing to spend two or even three years raising small donations and shaking every hand in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now a candidate has to be the kind of person who is so driven to be famous and powerful that no indignity is too great. Instead of thoughtful and accomplished candidates who do not wish to be publicly humiliated, we've got candidates who only went into politics because their parents stopped them from running away to join the circus.

Quick, guess how many recent presidential candidates have had issues with their fathers and are desperate to prove their success in a poignant and futile effort to win their father's approval.

Did you guess ALL of them?

Maybe we should take another look at those campaign finance laws. They were based on the belief that large donations were corrupting, but there must be a better way to keep corruption out than to make our candidates run a two-year obstacle course that no completely sane person could possibly tolerate.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "The case for adultery," "Hillary's shocking secret illness!" "Political marriages on the rocks," "Obama marriage explodes!" and "The strange but true source of extreme partisanship."

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Jay Leno's winning hand

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:54:00 +0000

Do you remember where you were on that autumn day in 2004 when you heard the shocking news that NBC was going to replace Jay Leno with Conan O'Brien in five years?

It was shocking because the Tonight Show host had just signed a new contract, because he was number one in the ratings, and because nobody gets five years' notice that they're going to be fired.

Even in a business that competes to deliver ever-younger and more gullible audiences to advertisers, it was shocking that NBC would openly insult Jay Leno's viewers by publicly declaring that they were old and unwanted.

Jay Leno's old and unwanted audience was still delivering top ratings and profits for NBC when the clock ticked to the doomsday moment, and suddenly the decrepit old viewers of 2004 looked like a potential ratings smash for a rival network, a nuclear weapon that ABC or Fox could use to blow up Conan O'Brien.

And so the very best minds in the very worst business reached a wildly extravagant and screw-proof deal for Jay Leno to stay at NBC.

If he succeeded at 10 p.m., terrific. If he didn't, they knew a secret that would allow them to push Conan out of the way and put everything back as it was before.

NBC's agreement with its affiliates allows it to start the Tonight Show as late as 12:05 a.m. to allow for those occasional half-hour special reports on tennis championships, or the Olympics, or similar big events.

And now there are reports that Conan O'Brien's contract doesn't actually specify or guarantee the Tonight Show's time slot.

So NBC is able to avoid a huge contractual penalty payment to Conan O'Brien by moving the Tonight Show out of the Tonight Show's historic time slot instead of canceling it or firing him, and perhaps they could even sue him for breach of contract if he leaves the network. Conan's management team didn't see it coming when they negotiated his NBC contract six years ago.

Conan told his viewers he won't do the Tonight Show at 12:05 a.m. and he accused the network of trying to dismantle the great Tonight Show franchise. He complained that he was not given as much time as his predecessor -- only seven months -- to develop the formerly number-one show into a ratings success.

Now Jay Leno is being blamed for undercutting Conan O'Brien by staying at NBC, by delivering weak prime-time ratings that allegedly hurt the late-night schedule, and by agreeing to move back into the 11:35 p.m. time slot.

But the larger story here is the shattered myth of the all-powerful youth audience. Back in 2004, NBC executives were terrified that Conan O'Brien would go to another network and take the future of television with him. They had no confidence that Jay Leno could hold on to younger viewers. They made a bet that in five years, the decision to replace Jay with Conan would look like a stroke of genius.

Not quite.

Maybe someday, someone will bet against the Baby Boom and win.

Don't bet on it.

Copyright 2010

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Punch lines

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:00:00 +0000

So there's this very old joke about a Beverly Hills gynecologist who is seeing a new patient, a 67-year-old married woman, and he is startled to discover that she is still a virgin.

Without dragging out the story, the essence of it is that there's no medical, psychological or educational problem, it's simply that she's been married for 42 years and is still a virgin.

The doctor asks her why.

"Well, doctor, it's like this," the woman explains. "My husband is a William Morris agent. Every night he sits on the edge of the bed and tells me all the wonderful things he's going to do for me."

Does anything about that joke remind you of the health care bill?

On Saturday, President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to claim that health care reform will create "good, lasting jobs" and "shared prosperity."

He claimed that it will offer the security of "quality, affordable health care" even if "you lose your job, change jobs, move or get sick."

He claimed that "costs will finally come down for families, businesses, and our government."

Then he said this: "Here's what else will happen within the first year. Insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care to their customers - so that we can start catching preventable illnesses and diseases on the front end."

That's the point where his argument went from absurdly comical to pie-throwing hilarious.

There's no such thing as "free preventive care." Somebody's going to pay for it, unless the president plans to propose the repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment so he can enslave medical professionals.

Whenever the government requires insurance plans to pay for something extra, the premiums go up to reflect the additional cost of the services.

America Wants To Know is self-employed and pays for an individual Blue Cross policy which goes up in price every single time the state or federal government mandates a new benefit. Remember the extra night in the hospital for new mothers? Premiums went up. Remember the last-minute addition to the October 2008 bailout bill, mandating coverage for mental health problems? Premiums jumped more than 30 percent the following January.

Nothing is free.

We're going to pay for it as policyholders, or we're going to pay for it as taxpayers, or we're going to pay for it in long waits and limited services caused by price controls. Or all three.

If the final health care bill really contains a provision requiring insurance plans to offer "free" preventive care, hundreds of millions of Americans are going to see their premiums and other co-payments rise to cover that extra cost. While that has happened many times before, this will be the first time that Americans can put all the blame on their elected officials.

And they will.

No joke.

There's something Shakespearean about the way the Democrats are barreling ahead to pass a health care bill before the voters can get to the polls to stop them. They're marching to their own tragic fate, unable to alter their course, doomed to fulfill the awful prophecy now revealed to have been their death sentence: Change.

Maybe it's not Shakespeare as much as it is Rod Serling.

("Mr. Chambers! Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, 'To Serve Man,' it's... it's a COOKBOOK!")

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Insanity," "Bad at math," "The midnight sausage factory," "Why health care reform will fail," and "Health Care Reform Dinner Theatre."

Source note: The quotation is from the 1962 Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man." Read more at The Internet Movie Database, IMDB.com.

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Tabloid update: "Found! Bush Love Letters to Condi"

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:14:00 +0000

Last week's Globe tabloid featured a "world exclusive" cover story promising proof that they've been right all along about former President George W. Bush's marriage-shattering affair with his Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

While we don't doubt that they've been right all along, this story doesn't prove it.

"Intimate love notes George Bush sent to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been found in a stash of missing White House e-mails," the Globe reports, "insiders believe."

It's true that a stash of missing White House e-mails have been found. On December 15, 2009, the Associated Press reported that computer technicians located 22 million missing White House e-mail messages from 94 days of the Bush administration. The AP got this information from two groups that filed lawsuits over the Bush White House's faulty electronic record-keeping system.

The two groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, said they're settling the lawsuits, which were filed in 2007.

But the e-mails haven't been made public. "It will be 2014 at the earliest before the public sees any of the messages because they must go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records," the AP reports.

Nobody talking to the Globe claims to have seen the e-mails personally, but "a pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" told the Globe, "George is absolutely panicking" because "he has confided there were a series of e-mails between Condi and him during that time frame that should never see the light of day - NEVER."

The time frame in question is between March 2003 and October 2005, "when sources say the Bush marriage was already strained," the tabloid reports.

"He says during his lowest times he reached out to Condi and talked in detail about his loveless marriage to Laura - and once he even told Condi he wanted her by his side," the Globe's insider reveals.

America Wants To Know is a little skeptical.

According to published reports, President Bush stopped using e-mail when he left Texas and moved into the White House.

In June, 2008, former deputy associate director of the White House Communications Office Jaime Sneider wrote in The Weekly Standard, "George W. Bush told a small group of friends just days before being sworn in, 'Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace.' In the last eight years, President Bush has not sent a single message. And future presidents are all but certain to follow in his footsteps."

It's just not plausible that President Bush sent embarrassing love notes through the White House e-mail system.

Does that mean the Globe is one hundred percent wrong?

America Wants To Know doesn't think so.

If President Bush wrote embarrassing love notes to Condoleezza Rice, there's at least one person who would have copies of them.

Condoleezza Rice.

She's writing a book, you know. The Associated Press reported last February that Crown Publishers, a division of Random House Inc., will pay her $2.5 million to write three books, starting with "a memoir about her years in the administration of President George W. Bush," due out in 2011. "Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House," Crown's press release promised.

Could she be the source for this story? Is she the "pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" who talked to the tabloid?

It's not impossible.

Previous stories in the Globe have featured photos of former first lady Laura Bush looking glamorous and lovely, but this one has just one small photo of Mrs. Bush, and she looks like a witch.

The former president, who in the past has been pictured in the Globe looking like a wreck, looks impish and cute in this issue. There are four photos of Mr. Bush and Dr. Rice looking affectionate, two in which he's kissing her cheek, one that shows his arm around her shoulder as they both wave to cameras, and the cover photo, which shows them exchanging knowing looks as if they share an amusing secret.

Even if the former Secretary of State is not the source for the Globe's story, it's plausible that former President Bush is panicked over what might come out in her book, or in the book his wife Laura is writing. A year ago the New York Times reported that Mrs. Bush signed with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write a memoir which will be published this year.

Scribner said the book will offer "an intimate account of Mrs. Bush's life experiences."

So, this much of the Globe's story we can be sure is true: the former president is panicked. With two women in his life writing a "candid narrative" and an "intimate account," any husband would be.

Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Suicidal Bush in Therapy!" and "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!"

This is serious

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:51:00 +0000

Two travel bloggers in the United States of America were visited by special agents of the Transportation Security Administration Tuesday night and served with subpoenas demanding to know who gave them a Christmas Day TSA memo about changes in airport security procedures.

"YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR," the subpoena begins. It demanded a response by December 31.

On December 31, the TSA backed off its deadline and gave one of the writers until January 20 to respond or challenge the subpoena in federal court.

The other writer wasn't given more time because he had already surrendered his laptop computer to the federal agents. Steve Frischling was visited at his Connecticut home for several hours on Tuesday night, and the agents returned for another visit Wednesday morning.

"Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn't cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo," the Associated Press reported.

Under that threat, Steve Frischling gave the federal agents his laptop computer.

Do you understand how serious this is?

The United States government threatened to interfere with a citizen's employment in order to intimidate him.

The subpoena served by the TSA agents was not signed by a judge. "The administrative subpoena — a demand for information issued without a judge's approval — is a civil, not a criminal document. If Elliott refuses to comply, the TSA could ask a judge to hold the writer in contempt," the AP explains.

The distinction between civil and criminal penalties may not have been made clear to Chris Elliot and Steve Frischling when federal agents knocked on the doors of their homes Tuesday night. Chris Elliot called a lawyer, and Steve Frischling was intimidated into surrendering his computer.

Under the law, ill-considered as it may be, the TSA has the authority to issue an administrative subpoena. But nowhere in the law is the TSA authorized to threaten a citizen with the loss of employment.

Which part of the Constitution does this violate most egregiously? The First Amendment right of free speech? The Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures? The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? The guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws? The Ninth Amendment guarantee that citizens have additional rights even if they're not specifically enumerated in the Constitution? The Tenth Amendment guarantee that the federal government has only the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and all other powers remain with the states or the people?

Everything in the Constitution prohibits the government from using its power in this way.

In Iraq, where the government owns all the major industries and nearly everybody works for the government, this kind of intimidation is built into the daily lives of Iraqi citizens.

In the United States, it should never, ever happen.

Whoever came up with the idea of threatening Steve Frischling with the loss of his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines should resign or be fired immediately, and so should everyone who signed off on that idea, and so should the agents who delivered that threat.

All year long we've watched as the government threatened auto executives and bank executives and insurance company executives with the loss of their livelihoods if they didn't go along with the administration's directives.

Now the government is coming in the night to knock on the doors of citizens' homes and threaten them with documents that say "YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED."

It is worth mentioning that these writers were subjected to this treatment because they published something. Not because they are suspected of breaking any law. Not because they had information about an imminent threat to anyone's safety.

The United States is not automatically a free country because we shoot off fireworks on the Fourth of July.

We have to work at this.

Call your congressman and your senators. Tell them you want the federal government to stop governing through intimidation. Tell them you expect the federal government to protect your freedom, not to trample on it.

U.S. House of Representatives main switchboard: 202-224-3121. Click here to find contact information for your representative.

U.S. Senate main switchboard: 202-225-3121. Click here to find contact information for your senators.

Copyright 2009

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Going down

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:18:00 +0000

If you were President of the United States and your poll numbers were heading toward the earth's core, how would you celebrate Christmas?

Would you dress up your beautiful family and go to church? Would you tell reporters cute stories about the kids opening their presents on Christmas morning as you and your wife looked on with pride and love? Would you go to a homeless shelter or hospital and help serve Christmas dinner?

That's not how President Obama did it.

"The president and his wife, Michelle, started their day at 6:40 a.m. by going to the gym -- a feat unimaginable to most parents of young children eager to open presents on Christmas morning," the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

If you were president, would you give your wife a beautiful gift that would make all the married female voters in America think you're a wonderful husband?

"The first couple did not swap presents," White House aides told the Post, "and the Obamas did not attend church services, instead spending the day at the oceanfront home they are renting in Kailua, on the island of Oahu."

Later in the day, the Obama children opened presents with their cousins, the Post reported.

President Obama is tenaciously pursuing an unpopular agenda, and he does himself no favors by missing the easy lay-ups.

A week from now, when pollsters call people at dinner time and ask if they approve or disapprove of President Obama, no one will attribute the drop in popularity to the president's decision to skip church services and family gift-giving in favor of working out and playing golf. There will be so many other things to blame by then.

But keep an eye on the answers to questions like "Does President Obama share your values?" and "Do you trust President Obama to pursue the right policies for our country?"

That's where the Ghost of Christmas Past will rattle his chains.

Copyright 2009

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Cracking the e-books

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:56:00 +0000

It can take years to write a book but it takes only a week to read one, so the question a writer is asked most often is probably, "When's your next book coming out?"

Recently there has been an even more annoying question, if that's possible.

"When's your book coming out as an e-book?"

The reason that's an annoying question is that it takes longer to read this sentence than it takes to download an entire book from an overseas file-sharing site that is conveniently making e-books available at absolutely no cost whatsoever.

E-books are making suckers out of authors and publishers, who are currently on the phone screaming at each other over how to divide the royalties from e-book sales.

E-books are also making suckers out of consumers who pay hundreds of dollars for the latest e-book reading devices. Hackers cracked the proprietary code of Amazon's Kindle before the Christmas trees were even up and e-books are now available in the ubiquitous PDF format that can be read on any computer running Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

Which is a free program, by the way.

So in about twenty seconds you can find and download the brand-new book of your choice. And don't worry, there are no security cameras or mall cops to catch you.

Don't be afraid that this is too technical or difficult. Let's try it together. What should we steal? How about Sarah Palin's new book?

First, we'll go to Google and search for "Rapidshare" (that's a file-sharing site "in another land," as comedian Robert Klein used to say) and the title of Governor Palin's book, "Going Rogue."

Why, look at that, we can steal the audio book, too. Isn't that nice. So convenient.

But for now, let's just click on the second search result, fileshunt.com/rapidshare.php?file=going+rogue.

Well, that didn't take long. Here are four different links to take us to free pirated copies of Governor Palin's book. Good thing she didn't spend six years writing it or she'd really be aggravated. Let's click the "trusted download." As Senator McCain can attest, it's best to deal with someone who's been fully vetted.

This link has brought us to download-zzz.com, where we can see that the book is available in an assortment of formats. Number seven on the list is in PDF format, which any computer running Adobe Acrobat Reader can open with a single click of a mouse.

It's easy to print, too, in case you're one of those people who doesn't like to read on a screen.

Of course, then you'd have to pay for paper and toner. Unless you're at work. Hey, why not, you're done with your Internet shopping, right?

Okay, let's click on the PDF link and see what happens.

Here the web site asks us to select our country from a list. Is that because the laws in some places don't allow us to steal Governor Palin's book? Don't be silly. They just want to give us better service. "Choosing the download server closest to you will result in faster download speeds," the web site helpfully explains.

Isn't that nice? Don't you feel like an idiot for buying a Kindle?

Now let's click the download button and see if we have pulled this off successfully.

Uh-oh! We got a warning! Let's see what it says.

"In order to download this file you have to be registered and logged in. If you have NOT registered yet, click 'Register' and follow the easy steps. Creating an account is free, easy and only takes seconds."

So, have we hit the security barrier? Is this where we have to put in our real name, credit card number, verified PayPal address?

Don't be silly.

All they want is your e-mail address. They promise to protect your information ("Download-zzz.com never releases e-mail addresses to third parties for any reason whatsoever and your personal information will be securely stored in accordance with our privacy policy") but if for any reason you're worried that they can't be trusted, just go over to Yahoo or Google or AOL and sign up for a free e-mail account. Use a fake name. What, is this your first robbery? You don't know this stuff already?

You can see that you're required to check the box next to the words "I have carefully read and agree to the Terms and Conditions." Be sure to click the link and read those terms and conditions. That's where it will tell you that you may not use this file-sharing service for the purpose of stealing copyrighted material. And the next time you park your car next to a broken parking meter, be sure to put money in it anyway.

Hey, what's THIS? They want us to pay a membership fee? That is SO not going to happen. If we didn't pay the author and we didn't pay the publisher and we didn't pay for the Kindle we're certainly not going to pay YOU, pal.

These people have a lot of nerve, asking us to pay $1.95 for membership (marked down from $39.85, which apparently they had no luck collecting).

Download-zzz.com offers testimonials from satisfied customers to help convince visitors to part with two dollars for their service. Here's one:

"I have found Download ZZZ to not only be helpful in getting the freshest media content and software versions, but also reliable and fast," writes the happy customer. "In today's market, such service is a really rare example of quality. Customer support is very good as well: quick answers and quick results for me. And I got all of this at a very reasonable and fair price."

Look, it's only two dollars, and people are entitled to be paid for their work, right?

Just kidding.

You can go back to Google and search "Rapidshare" and "Going Rogue" and "FREE download," and this time don't fall for that "trusted download" scam.

This is all just another way of saying that the authors who are calling their publishers to demand a share of e-book revenue are never going to recoup the cost of the long-distance phone call. That is, if they pay for long-distance phone calls. You can call on the Internet for free, but some authors still use typewriters.

America Wants To Know started a small publishing company this year and is currently writing a series of slightly twisted detective novels which have been and continue to be one hell of a lot of work.

When's the next book coming out?

Aiming for the fall of 2010.

When's the book coming out as an e-book?

Sometime after Sarah Palin is elected president. Look for it midway through her third term.

Copyright 2009

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Obama love child surfaces

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:25:00 +0000

The tabloids can stop searching for the long-rumored love child of President Barack Obama.

The Associated Press has located him. He's in the fifth grade in Selma, Indiana.

Of course, the AP didn't report that the boy is the child of the president. Everybody's off for Christmas and they won't put it together until Monday, or maybe after the first of the year.

But America Wants to Know won't make you wait. Here are the facts:

Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan told reporters that a Selma Elementary fifth-grader was riding the bus to school on the last day before the Christmas vacation when he suddenly decided it would be a good idea to give away money. He handed out ones and fives to the other children, and his special friends got twenties.

The child gave away $300.

When the bus arrived at school, the other children went straight to the principal and the teachers and turned the kid in. They were angry that he was holding out on them.

The children complained that they only got meager little ones, fives and twenties, while the fifth-grader had ten thousand dollars in his pockets.

Of course, the money that the child was handing out belonged to somebody else.

It belonged to his grandparents.

No one is sure exactly how it could have happened, but the boy broke into his grandparents' safe and took all their cash.

Maybe Ted Sorensen wrote a speech for him.

Copyright 2009

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Health Care Reform Dinner Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:22:00 +0000

America Wants To Know is pleased to present a choose-your-own-ending production of "Who Killed Health Care Reform?"

Possible Ending Number One:

Senator Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, stays up late into the night on December 23rd, reading the polls by firelight. In the car on the way to the Senate the next morning, he has an epiphany and becomes a Republican. He casts the deciding vote against the health care reform bill after an impassioned speech calling for lawmakers to renounce corrupt deals and start over from scratch. He is celebrated on Fox News Channel as a maverick and his new party promises him seniority on a bunch of good committees.

Possible Ending Number Two:

The Senate votes 60-40 to pass the health care reform bill and it goes to conference in January, where everything in it is thrown up in the air again for lobbyists and lawmakers to bat around. The bill is written in a locked room by the glow of ten iPods running an app that imitates a lighter. The bill goes back to the House, where it passes, and to the Senate, where it fails. Everybody blames President Obama.

Possible Ending Number Three:

The Senate passes the health care reform bill on Christmas Eve and it goes to conference in January, where everything in it is thrown up in the air again for lobbyists and lawmakers to bat around, and the bill is written in a locked room, and when it comes out no one has time to read it and it's shoved through the House and Senate with not a single vote to spare. President Obama signs it in a triumphant White House ceremony and then copies are distributed so everybody can find out what they just passed. A week later, two hundred million Americans get letters from their health care providers telling them that everything is now different and some of it is more expensive. A roar goes up that can be heard on Mars. Congress scrambles to fix a hundred provisions of the new law, but too late, the voters throw out most of the Democrats and some of the Republicans and when the new Congress arrives in 2011, the first thing they do is repeal the whole mess.

Wait, wait, hold everything, America Wants To Know has just received an urgent text message from the White House ordering us to present their side of the argument.

All right.

Possible Ending Number Four:

The health care bill passes and everyone gets everything they want at everybody else's expense. When it is pointed out that nothing in the bill adds up, Congress goes into special session and repeals the laws of mathematics. South Carolina secedes from the Union and within three hours 49 states follow. President Obama announces in his State of the Union address that he plans to bring hope and change to the Washington D.C. public schools and also a couple of the subway stations.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Gazing into the future" and "Yes we can and no we won't."

Royal travels

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Will everyone please stop complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi travels like a queen?

Yes, it's true, she took five Air Force jets to Copenhagen because she had to be there to offer your hard-earned tax dollars to Third World socialists and tin pot dictators.

Yes, she tried to get a bigger Air Force jet to fly back and forth from Washington to California because she didn't want to be inconvenienced by refueling stops or, heaven forbid, commercial flights.

But it is simply wrong to accuse her of traveling like a queen.

This is a picture of the queen traveling to her Sandringham estate for Christmas:

Really, that's the Queen of England.

Queen Elizabeth chose to travel on an ordinary commuter passenger train, elegantly and regally making the point that she understands the economic hardship in her country and is not out-of-touch with the British public.

It's probably no accident that Her Majesty did this on the very day Prime Minister Gordon Brown and her son, the Prince of Wales, took separate jets to the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen to lecture everyone else on the importance of reducing their carbon footprint.

So let's all stop insulting the queen by accusing Nancy Pelosi of acting like her.

If you are annoyed at Speaker Pelosi for her policies or her perks, here's something constructive you can do about it.

Meet John Dennis:

He's running for Congress in California's 8th Congressional district, currently represented by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Here's his website, http://www.johndennis2010.com.

Here's his page on the issues of "Liberty & Privacy," where he begins by quoting Patrick Henry: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."

Here's the page where you can chip in five or ten dollars to his campaign: https://www.completecampaigns.com/public.asp?name=DennisJohn&page=8.

If you'd like to send Speaker Pelosi a message, you can always call her office. But if you'd like to make sure she gets the message, send five dollars to John Dennis for Congress.

Copyright 2009

Rewriting the First Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Suppose you wanted to amend the Constitution to bar Congress from restricting freedom of speech in any way.

How would you word it?

You might write something like this: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

That certainly sounds airtight. Congress shall make "no law" abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

"No law."

Not "no unreasonable law."

Not "no unfair law."

"No law." Congress shall make "no law" abridging (definition: depriving, cutting off) the freedom of speech or of the press.

That should do it. We would just need to get it approved by two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, and then by three-quarters of the fifty state legislatures, and it would be the law of the land.

Of course, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble by reading the Constitution we already have, because that's what it says now.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently puzzling over the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which stems from a documentary motion picture critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton. At issue is whether the movie is some kind of an illegal campaign advertisement under the campaign finance laws passed by Congress.

It's possible that the justices will throw out the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act and any number of other restrictions on who can say what when about incumbents and their challengers.

It's also possible that the justices won't throw out these laws and instead will continue to decide on a case-by-case basis which restrictions on campaign donations and ads are reasonable, and which ones aren't.

And this brings us to the strange case of Congressman Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida.

Rep. Grayson wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on December 15 asking him to investigate and prosecute Angie G. Langley for putting up a website that is critical of him and seeking to raise money to defeat him next November.

The website is called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com. "Utterly tasteless and juvenile," Rep. Grayson complained in his letter.

The congressman wants Ms. Langley fined and imprisoned for five years for violating 18 U.S.C. 1001.

Maybe Angie G. Langley has violated 18 U.S.C. 1001 and maybe she has not, but either way a citizen of the United States has a perfect right to ask:

"What the hell kind of an unconstitutional law prohibits a citizen from criticizing a congressman and trying to raise money to defeat him in the next election?"

And while we're thinking about it, "What the hell kind of an unconstitutional law makes a congressman believe he can threaten a citizen with arrest for ridiculing him?"

It's easy to say Congressman Alan Grayson is a whack job and no one in the Justice Department will take his request seriously. But it's no small thing to be threatened with arrest by the United States government. It's expensive to defend yourself against federal charges, and just the reported possibility of charges can be enough to destroy a career and throw a life into financial chaos.

Do we want to live in the kind of country where citizens are afraid to criticize elected officials and terrified to raise money to defeat them?

Let's hope the U.S. Supreme Court throws out the entire body of federal campaign finance law. Justices and lawmakers take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Perhaps we should make them take an oath to read it, too.

Copyright 2009

Predicting slavery

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor today and said Republicans who oppose the health care reform bill are just like the 19th century politicians who supported slavery.

"If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"

He also compared health care reform opponents to people who opposed the civil rights movement.

"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today," the Senate Majority Leader said.

America Wants To Know predicted these comments in a September 4, 2009, post titled "Why we're fighting." Here it is:

Why we're fighting

Believe it or not, the battle over health care reform has its roots in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court ruling that banned racial segregation in schools.

The Brown ruling was a landmark decision because it reversed the precedents which stretched all the way back to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment were very careful to leave racial segregation untouched. Twice they specifically refused to adopt language that banned discrimination on the basis of race, citing their fear that the courts might use that language to strike down racial segregation, a result, they said, that was "not intended."

When the 20th century Supreme Court struck down racial segregation, the justices were asserting the power of the federal courts to set aside both precedents and statutes in order to achieve justice, a result that they believed could not be achieved by strictly following the Constitution.

Racial segregation, like slavery before it, was protected by the Constitution's division of power between the states and the federal government. It takes the approval of three-quarters of the states to amend the Constitution, and that's a very steep hill to climb. Who knows how many generations of African-Americans might have been forced by law to live as second-class citizens if the Supreme Court and the federal government had not stretched their powers in order to force the states to ban racial discrimination.

But here's the problem.

Not everything is slavery.

In fact, nothing else is slavery. No other injustice compares to turning people into property, so that the Constitution's vitally important protection of property rights would perversely hold people in bondage in the name of liberty.

Even though women, and immigrants, and gays, and Jews, and Catholics have experienced discrimination in the United States, nothing compares to slavery.

Nothing.

However, to many people who came of age in the post-Brown era, any attempt to prevent the federal government from enforcing fairness of any kind, on any issue, is equivalent to opposing court-ordered desegregation.

That's why so many people are accusing health care reform opponents of racism, as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel did on Thursday.

Is it racist to want to hold the federal government to the constitutional limits of its power?

In the case of school segregation, it was.

But is private health insurance like segregation? Is market pricing for pharmaceuticals like segregation? Is state-by-state regulation of insurance companies like segregation?

Are locally-controlled school curricula like segregation? Are lower federal taxes like segregation? Is a balanced budget like segregation?

You would think so, to listen to some politicians. Yesterday Vice President Joe Biden called the $787 billion stimulus bill "morally right."

Reasonable people can disagree over whether it is "morally right" to borrow money for federal spending and then send the bill to everybody's grandchildren, but right now we're all too angry at each other to be reasonable.

The health care reform bill is a dead body, and the politicians pretending to revive it are just maneuvering to get somebody else's fingerprints on the knife. But this is an argument we're going to keep having until we face the fact that Brown v. Board of Education was necessarily unconstitutional, and not a model for the expanded use of federal government power to solve every problem.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: For more information and complete source notes on the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the desegregation cases, please see the appendix to The 37th Amendment at www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

Argus on Tiger

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Comedian Argus Hamilton has decided to honor the world's number-one golfer with a Special Collection of Tiger Woods jokes on his web site. Tiger joins the exclusive company of previous honorees Eliot Spitzer, Mel Gibson, Larry Craig, Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin and the California recall election.

You can find the jokes at http://www.ArgusHamilton.com/tiger.htm.

Read Argus five days a week (Tuesday through Friday and Sunday) at www.ArgusHamilton.com/argus.htm.

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The case for adultery

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:22:00 +0000

Notice anything about these pictures?

The first one is Michaele Salahi meeting the president at a White House state dinner last week. The second one is Monica Lewinsky meeting the president at a White House Christmas party in 1996.

All politicians have a gift for charming people, so maybe that's the reason the facial expressions of the women are so similar.

They both look really... what's the word... comfortable.

They look delighted and effusive and in love.

Just a coincidence, surely.

Or is it?

This week the Obama administration announced that White House social secretary Desiree Rogers would not cooperate with a congressional investigation into the breach of security that allowed Michaele Salahi and her husband into the White House.

"Based on the separation of powers, staff here don't go to testify in front of Congress," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday.

Seriously?

"It doesn't even pass the laugh test, to be quite blunt about it," said George Mason University public policy professor Mark Rozell, the author of a new book on executive privilege.

But House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson decided not to fight the White House. He refused to authorize a subpoena for Desiree Rogers' testimony as requested by Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Three uniformed Secret Service agents were put on paid administrative leave this week although everyone continues to praise their outstanding work, and no one from the social office is in trouble although everyone acknowledges that procedures could have been better.

Earlier this year, President Obama had to do major damage control after he casually sided with a black Harvard professor against a white police officer, so the president might incur the seething wrath of law enforcement officers across the country if he permits three Secret Service agents to be saddled with blame for someone else's incompetence.

And he did campaign on greater transparency, specifically criticizing the Bush administration's unwillingness to let presidential aides testify before Congress.

What is the big secret that's worth all this political risk?

Is it presidential adultery?

After the party-crashing incident, press secretary Robert Gibbs went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show and was asked if the president was angry.

"I think it is safe to say he was angry, Michelle was angry," Gibbs said.

Did you catch that? The anger of the president is presumed. The anger of the first lady was witnessed.

A few months ago, the Obamas gave an interview to the New York Times Magazine about how the presidency has affected their marriage. Mrs. Obama hinted that things weren't perfect. "The bumps happen to everybody," she said.

Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor wrote:

"Clearly, the Obamas prefer to think of themselves as largely unaltered. 'The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address,' the first lady said, the president studying the carpet as she answered."

Maybe we should have been a little more suspicious when the president put up such a fight to keep his BlackBerry.

Here's a little more evidence that there might be more to the Obama-Michaele handshake than meets the eye.

Michaele's husband Tareq corresponded by e-mail with Pentagon official Michele Jones in the weeks before the state dinner. In one e-mail he wrote that he knew "for a fact" that six people who had been invited, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid among them, would not be attending:

The only administration official who has publicly acknowledged contact with the Salahis is Michele Jones, and Tareq Salahi was giving her this information, not hearing it from her.

Who told him? Were the Salahis in touch with someone in the social office? Why would someone in the social office share details of the RSVPs for an upcoming state dinner with people who weren't even invited to it?

Maybe there's a seedier explanation.

This is an excerpt from the Starr Report:

Ms. Lewinsky testified that she and the President had a sexual encounter during this visit. (176) They kissed, and the President touched Ms. Lewinsky's bare breasts with his hands and mouth. (177) At some point, Ms. Currie approached the door leading to the hallway, which was ajar, and said that the President had a telephone call. (178) Ms. Lewinsky recalled that the caller was a Member of Congress with a nickname. (179) While the President was on the telephone, according to Ms. Lewinsky, "he unzipped his pants and exposed himself," and she performed oral sex. (180)

The numbers in parentheses are footnotes, where Independent Counsel Ken Starr scrupulously documented the source for every unbelievable but corroborated detail. You can read it here.

Did Michaele Salahi hear the RSVP information in the same way Monica Lewinsky overheard telephone conversations with Members of Congress?

If Michaele Salahi has a personal relationship with the president, the Secret Service agents on duty might have recognized her and believed that she was expected inside the White House for the state dinner, and you can bet they'd know better than to call the social office staffers who work for the first lady.

In fact, the Secret Service acknowledges that the agents did not call the social office staff. No explanation for this departure from the agency's protocols has been given.

Not publicly, anyway.

Is it impossible that Michaele Salahi is having an affair with President Obama?

Would anyone who was having an affair with the president post photos of her White House visit on a Facebook page? Wouldn't that be rather indiscreet?

"Between 1995 and 1998, Ms. Lewinsky confided in 11 people about her relationship with the President," the Starr report says.

This is a photo of then-Senator Obama with Michaele Salahi, her husband, and celebrity guests at a polo event in 2005:

At the time that photo was taken, Senator Obama was living in Washington D.C. while his wife Michelle lived in Chicago with the kids.

A few days after the Salahis crashed the state dinner, the Obamas attended the Oregon State-George Washington University basketball game. Here's a picture of the president and the first lady in their courtside seats:

That's Mrs. Obama's mother sitting between them in the well-known Chelsea Clinton position.

Yes, it's just speculation.

It's hard to believe the president is cheating on his wife right under her nose inside the White House.

It's much easier to believe that three highly trained Secret Service agents decided for no reason to allow two uninvited and unscreened party crashers into the White House state dinner for the prime minister of India.

Right.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested the the earlier posts, "Bombshell" and "Mr. Rumsfeld's mythical privilege."

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Bombshell

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Have you ever worked for somebody who had a secret life?

America Wants To Know has had that experience a couple of times.

Whether it's a mistress or illegal drug use or a personal life that is different than the image presented in public, an employer's secret life is something that employees learn to keep secret if they don't want to find another job.

And that brings us to the strange case of the Secret Service and the state dinner crashers.

It seems inexplicable that in the post-9/11 environment, anyone would be allowed into the executive mansion without proper authorization.

So if we want to figure out how two aspiring reality TV stars crashed a state dinner at the White House and got this close to the vice president...

And this close to the president...

...we should begin with the assumption that very capable and competent people -- Secret Service checkpoints are not staffed by part-time mall cops -- had a reason to believe that Tareq and Michaela Salahi were expected inside the White House even though their names weren't on any list.

It is probably an indication that people often come into this White House without having their names on the kind of document that can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

It might be a clue that the president keeps certain visitors secret from his wife and anyone in the White House social office who is loyal to her.

When you work for someone who has a secret life, you learn quickly that some people cannot be questioned and some questions cannot be asked.

Suppose you worked for the Secret Service during the Hypothetical administration. Suppose President Hypothetical had a series of mistresses who darted into the White House at all hours. Suppose one evening you're working the checkpoint when a pretty young thing shows up for a White House event and says, "The president's expecting me."

Should you: a) Turn her away; or b) Call the White House social office and tell the first lady's staff the young woman's name.

It's a trick question. It's career suicide either way.

The right answer, of course, is: Don't call anybody who's not supposed to know, and don't put anything in writing. Just run the woman through a metal detector and send her in.

We'll probably never know the full story of why the Secret Service allowed the former Redskins cheerleader and her husband into the White House. It's easy for government officials to argue that the details of presidential security can't be publicly disclosed.

But you'll know we've guessed correctly if the Secret Service declines to fire anybody over this incident and instead transfers the responsible employee to another job.

Smart people with secret lives never release disgruntled ex-employees into the wild, where they might be hunted down by TMZ.com or the National Enquirer. They keep them on the payroll in jobs that keep them happy.

Is ambassador to France still open?

Copyright 2009

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Billboard on the One Term Expressway

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:26:00 +0000

Not that it required any special psychic power, but America Wants To Know predicted that the Fort Hood shooting had the potential to be a big political problem for President Obama.

If you remember, in a post titled "Obama picks a church" we bet everybody a hundred bucks that the president would attend services at St. John's Episcopal the Sunday after the Fort Hood massacre, just to demonstrate to a queasy public that the White House occupant who spent part of his childhood as a Muslim in Indonesia harbors absolutely no doubt about where he stands now.

We lost that bet. President Obama spent the weekend at Camp David.

We said it was "no time for fuzzy statements about multi-cultural understanding."

Good thing we didn't put any money on that.

"They are Americans of every race, faith, and station," President Obama said, describing the members of the U.S. Armed Forces during his weekly address following the Army psychiatrist's solo jihad, "They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendants of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America."

Some might argue that what makes this America is a set of beliefs and principles that transcends ethnic identity, religion and "station," but let's not quibble about it now.

This is a picture of a billboard that just went up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado:

KDVR in Denver reports that the sign belongs to a car dealership.

Maybe the president should have gotten those cash-for-clunkers reimbursements mailed out a little faster.

Yes, of course, the sign is obnoxious and whatever else anybody wants to call it. But when a local businessman is willing to put up a billboard like that and stand by it, the president has a political problem.

President Obama's detached reaction to the bloodbath at Fort Hood (he was in the Rose Garden the next day to "caution against jumping to conclusions" about the gunman who shouted "Allahu akbar," and he warned Congress against holding public hearings, which he described as "political theater") is just one of many peculiar actions on his part that seem to stem from some deep-seated belief that America deserves what it gets, due to past sins.

What did you make of that bow to the emperor of Japan?

It's as if he's always trying to make the point that America isn't better than any other country and in many ways is a lot worse.

He's certainly entitled to his opinion but if that's what he thinks, he's really in the wrong job. If you work for Coca-Cola and you're always trying to level the playing field for Pepsi, you're going to be president of Harvard in no time.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous posts, "Barack Obama, angry colonial," "Certifiable," and "Tabloid update: "Where Obama was really born!"

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Killing ourselves: Why terrorists should be tried in military courts

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Shelley) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:23:00 +0000

In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the convictions of three black Mississippi sharecroppers who had been viciously beaten by sheriff's deputies until, broken and bleeding, they confessed to the murder of a white planter.

"The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand," Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote. "It would be difficult to conceive of methods more revolting to the sense of justice than those taken to procure the confessions of these petitioners, and the use of the confessions thus obtained as the basis for the conviction and sentence was a clear denial of due process."

The case of Brown v. Mississippi established a precedent in both U.S. and state courts. The Constitution's guarantee of due process of law was not mere rhetoric; it had teeth.

Will the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knock any of those teeth loose?

Having no intention of ever bringing the 9/11 plotter into a U.S. criminal court for trial, the Bush administration authorized very severe "enhanced interrogation techniques" to be used against him in order to obtain intelligence information about the al-Qaeda organization and any future plots against the United States.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reportedly "waterboarded" 183 times.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees due process of law and the equal protection of the law to all persons, which means any law or procedure that applies to the rest of us will apply to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And vice versa.

If the U.S. District Court rules that some of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statements made while in custody are admissible evidence against him, will that upend the precedent of Brown v. Mississippi?

Will "enhanced interrogation techniques" be evaluated on a case-by-case basis when Americans are arrested?

Suppose a suspected gang member is picked up on the streets of Los Angeles and the police, believing he has information about an imminent murder, beat him up during an interrogation in an attempt to save somebody's life.

Or suppose a child kidnapping suspect is arrested and the police, believing he has left the victim somewhere to die, break his arm in order to find out where he abandoned the child.

Now suppose they arrested the wrong guy by mistake.

You see the problem.

It is too dangerous to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a U.S. court, not just because terrorists might attack the courthouse, not just because he might be let off on a technicality, and not just because the trial will give him a platform to spew his repulsive rhetoric. It is too dangerous because the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could easily undermine the legal precedents that protect Americans from abusive practices and wrongful convictions by law enforcement officials.

In 1934, Arthur "Yank" Ellington was pulled out of his house by a deputy sheriff, hanged by the neck from a tree, let down, ordered to confess to the murder of Raymond Stuart, and hanged again when he refused. Then he was let down, tied to a tree and whipped. When he still refused to confess he was allowed to return home, but a day or so later he was arrested and taken from his home, whipped viciously, and warned that the beating would continue until he confessed to the murder. He confessed. On no evidence other than his confession he was convicted in a Mississippi state court. The conviction was upheld in the state appeals court and by a divided state Supreme Court.

In 1936, the United States Supreme Court said the treatment of Yank Ellington did not meet the Constitution's standard for due process of law.

Is that a precedent this administration wants to overturn?

Well, Nixon went to China.

Copyright 2009

Source notes: Brown v. State of Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936). The spelling of Raymond Stuart's name is given as "Stewart" in the Brown v. Mississippi decision, but the local newspaper in Meridian, Mississippi, reported it as "Stuart," as cited in Richard C. Cortner, A "Scottsboro" Case in Mississippi, page 13 (1986). The brutal details of the case were recorded for history in the dissenting opinion of Mississippi Supreme Court Judge Virgil A. Griffith, joined by Judge William D. Anderson.

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "The trouble with waterboarding" and "The innocent tomatoes," and in the novel, The 37th Amendment, the story of a man convicted of murder in the year 2056, forty years after Americans repealed the Constitution's guarantee of due process of law. The 37th Amendment is currently in use in Northern Arizona University's Department of Criminology in an undergraduate class on wrongful convictions.

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