Constitution

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Kathy Griffin, Hypocrites, and the First Amendment

Comedian Kathy Griffin recently posted a picture of herself holding a severed bloody Trump head.

In comparison to all the crap conservatives posted about Obama — including actual death threats — it was mild, but still provocative. screen_shot_2017-05-30_at_1.47.48_pm_-_h_2017

Of course, that was the point, wasn’t it? Provocative? Isn’t that what comedians sometimes are like?

Immediately, GOP members without any sense of irony screamed about how inappropriate it was. “But the children may see it!” they yelled. Griffin lost some jobs, was criticized all over the internet, and many said she should be arrested for this.

Because, you know, if there’s one thing conservatives love, it’s America. They just hate what it stands for — you know, like that damned First Amendment, which is meaningless if it only protects speech we all agree with.

Then — and here is where you roll your eyes — GOP members who complained that the photo would harm children are now running that photo in campaign ads on prime time TV.

Why, it’s almost as if they really don’t care about the children at all and are merely blatant hypocrites!

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Thin-skinned babies want to punish flag burners

Freedom of Speech is meaningless if it only protects speech we all like.

Trump, soon to be known as “the Tweeting President,” has declared that people should be jailed for burning the American flag. flagburning.jpg

People who claim to be patriots (but who don’t quite grasp the concept) are cheering him on, pointing out that burning the flag is an insult to America and the veterans who have fought for what the flag stands for.

Well, duh. Of course burning a flag is insulting. So is standing on a corner with a sign saying “God Hates Fags.” They know it’s insulting when they do it. That’s why they do it.

But America has thicker skin than Trump, who spends more time thinking about how much he can’t stand Saturday Night Live than he does going to necessary intelligence briefings.* America knows that we can take the insults, because we’re better than that.

And we know that if we start banning speech we don’t like, then it may be our speech they come after next. The Founding Fathers knew that when they wrote the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court knows that, as they have ruled many times. You have to protect speech we hate. Speech we all agree with doesn’t need protecting.

So if you really believe in freedom, if you really are a patriot, then mean it. Stand for what the Constitution guarantees. Don’t make exceptions.

Don’t be a thin-skinned baby who can’t take an insult — you know, like the immature child that a minority of us chose to lead us.

*I am not making that up

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How to Honor the Founding Fathers with the Electoral College

“The Electoral College was set up with a specific purpose in mind and we should do what the Founding Fathers want,” people say to me whenever I argue for getting rid of it.

Well, fine. If your desire is to do what the Founding Fathers wanted, then we’ll need to change a few things.Stock Photo of the Consitution of the United States and Feather Quill

  1. Stop having Presidential elections. There’s nothing in the Constitution about them. The Electors are chosen by the state legislatures in any way they wish. They could choose the lobbyists who give them the most money if they wanted to.
  2. How the state legislatures are chosen is not provided for in the Constitution either. So we should allow states to just appoint these people, too.
  3. The Founding Fathers also intended that whoever came in second place would be Vice President. Nothing wrong with that, right?
  4. Even if the states do decide to have elections, those states should only allow white men who own property to vote. Hey, do you want to honor the Founding Fathers or not here?

Of course, in those days where it could literally take weeks to travel from state to state, each state was much more independent and unique, almost like the way the European Union is now. We were less a country than a collection of independent states (which is why we are called the “United States of America” and not just “America”).

That changed quickly. People started seeing the President as the leader of all the people and not as just some figurehead off there in the distance. (Seriously, does anyone know who the leader of the European Union is?)

And the states started having elections to choose this leader. Congress decided on a date for these elections — because that’s not in the Constitution either — and soon, the popular vote winner in that state decided who the electors were. By 1824, this led to the election of Andrew Jackson, exactly the kind of person the Electoral College was set up to prevent getting into the White House. Thus, within forty years of the writing of the Constitution, while some of the Founding Fathers were alive, we had already moved away from the original intent of the Electoral College.

So for those of you who say we should keep it in order to honor what the Founding Fathers intended:  You’re 200 years too late.

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Why someone might not stand for the National Anthem

I’ve never heard of this Colin Kaepernick guy before today, but apparently people are mad at him because he used his Constitutional right to protest our National Anthem by not standing for it when it was played.

Of course, he’s now being attacked left and right (okay, mostly right) by people who think he should be punished for not standing up for the Anthem that represents the country that allows people to not be punished for not standing up for the Anthem. Funny, that.

And all of the attacks on him go after him as the messenger of something that they don’t like. Why? Because they can’t attack the message itself, which is this: The National Anthem supports slavery.

Seriously. You don’t hear it in the first verse that everyone knows, but later on the lyrics say this:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

What’s that about? Simple. The British were attacking us in 1812 and they promised to free the slaves when they won. They accepted escaped slaves, who fought with the British. Francis Scott Key was proud of the fact that the Americans were able to stop this, putting into the lyrics that we should feel patriotic that the slaves met “the gloom of the grave” for daring to rebel against the United States.

After the war, the US demanded the return of the escaped slaves who lived, but the British refused. So there’s at least that.

But yeah, I can see why someone would say that we shouldn’t have a National Anthem that glorifies war and slavery.

And protesting is more patriotic than blindly accepting something wrong any day.

 

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Who cares what the Founding Fathers thought?

The Founding Fathers were a bunch of politicians, not too different from the politicians we have today (except that they were all rich white men). Some were tremendously intelligent people who deserve all the accolades they receive. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams — great men who did their best to create this great experiment.constitution_quill_pen

Others have been lost to history. William Blount? Alexander Baldwin? Pierce Butler? Some were mediocre men, who fought against giving people any power, who argued to keep slavery, who forced the great men into compromises like the 3/5ths clause and the 2nd Amendment in order to gain their votes.

You know — politics.

And that’s why it is so frustrating when the Constitutional Fundamentalists say that we should obey the “will of the Founders” when interpreting the Constitution.  Well, which Founders?  This wasn’t adopted unanimously, you know. To argue that we should never have a position about the Constitution based on who won is like saying we should never question Obamacare because hey, it got passed by some politicians so it’s gospel and cannot be challenged.

And that’s the key — I call these people Constitutional Fundamentalists because they view the document like it’s a religious holy book, handed down by the Founding Gods, and we should obey what the Founders said. (And, of course, 100% of the time, just like religious fundamentalists, these people know exactly what the Constitution means and it matches their own personal views perfectly! Isn’t that amazing!)

The Founders created a foundation for a building — the Constitution provides the very minimalist blueprint. “Freedom of Speech” it says, but it doesn’t go into any detail. Does it include libel and slander? Television and internet? Can you cause a riot and claim this freedom as a defense? Can you reveal military secrets and not get punished? The Constitution doesn’t say.

That means it has to be interpreted, just like it had to be within a few years of its passage, when the Supreme Court had to make decisions and Founding Fathers argued before members of the Court (who were also Founding Fathers) and they didn’t all agree! 

So with all respect to the great men who founded this nation, 230 years later, who cares what they thought? These were guys who thought you could cure diseases through bloodletting. They thought humans could be property, women should be close to property, and killing natives for land was perfectly fine.

This would be like trying to add air conditioning and heating to your home but being told “No, the original blueprints from 200 years ago don’t mention that, so you can’t do it.” We should not have our society limited, Amish-like, to a time that no longer exists.

Many religious fundamentalists already understand this. They already ignore the parts of the Bible they want to ignore, recognizing that something that was written so long ago should not guide modern thinking.

Somehow, Constitutional fundamentalists have yet to reach that stage.

 

 

 

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Our Government’s on the side of the Good Guys

Attorney General Lynch made it quite clear that not only will she do her duty to serve the United States Constitution, but that our government is on the side of the Good Guys, fighting against those who would take away the rights of others.

Her speech against the bigotry we are seeing in North Carolina and elsewhere was wonderful, and I just have to include a few quotes here:ag

This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them – indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country – haltingly but inexorably – in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.

This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do – what we must never do – is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human.

What this law does is inflict further indignity on a population that has already suffered far more than its fair share. This law provides no benefit to society – all it does is harm innocent Americans.

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. No matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. Please know that history is on your side. This country was founded on a promise of equal rights for all, and we have always managed to move closer to that promise, little by little, one day at a time. It may not be easy – but we’ll get there together.

Conservatives are aghast, of course, because Big Government is interfering with their right to treat other people as if they are inferior because their god fears them in bathrooms or something. These conservatives are in favor of “state’s rights” and “limited government” only when they agree with what is being done. When it comes to personal liberties such as the right to get married or gay rights or abortion — well, government just can’t be intrusive enough.

“It’s a public safety issue,” they say, as their nose grows to Pinocchio lengths. “Well, no, there have been absolutely zero cases of this happening, but — but — public safety!”

Hey you know what is a real threat to public safety, unlike this pretend threat? One that actually causes deaths on a daily basis? Letting people carry guns everywhere. Yeah, fat chance that they’ll do anything about that public safety issue.

We all know it’s not about public safety. It’s about damned religious aversion to any kind of sex — the same kind of idiotic view that wants to keep people in love from getting married because it creeps their god out.

 

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Why I hate hate crimes

A recent trend in law has been to punish people for thinking in ways we don’t like.

The way it usually works is this: People who get into fights or threaten others because of their race or sex or religion or sexual orientation can be charged with crimes usually called “ethnic intimidation” and the like. hate crimes

So if you beat up someone, you can be charged with assault. But if your reason for beating them up is because of their race, you can be charged with assault and more.

See the distinction? We’re now making it a crime to have views we don’t like. This seems to me to be a clear violation of the 1st Amendment’s Freedom of Speech clause — and as I’ve said many times, that clause means nothing if we don’t protect speech we hate. Speech we all agree with doesn’t need protection.

I think it is perfectly fine for the criminal’s views to come into play at sentencing. A judge should be able to take into consideration the motives and reasons for the attack when deciding a proper punishment. We do that now, even in cases that don’t involve “hate crimes.” Giving someone a harsher sentence and/or requiring other sanctions when their motives are based on hatred and intolerance is justifiable.

But the crime itself punishes people for saying things we disagree with, and that’s where it goes too far.

I had a case once where a man was arguing with a woman who butt in front of him in line at the supermarket, and as they yelled at each other, he ended up calling her a “stupid nigger.” He was arrested and charged with Ethnic Intimidation. He told me he was so angry at her that he just said the thing he knew would hurt her the most, but that his anger was not based on her race — it was because she had butted in front of him in line. “If she had been overweight, I would have called her fat,” he said.

That’s not an admirable thing for the man to do, but it shouldn’t be illegal. Our current laws against harassment could have covered this situation just fine and still punished him (and, chances are, had he not said this, they probably both would have been charged).

I was ready to use this case to challenge our state’s Ethnic Intimidation law, but as it turned out we worked out a deal to a much lesser charge, he paid a fine, and it went away — which was the best result for my client.

There is a big difference between laws prohibiting discrimination and criminal laws that punish you for being a bigot. I think everyone has the right to be a bigot. Why, without bigots, how would Fox News stay in business?

 

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Law is Politics

The legal system makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all politics.

There are those who insist that the law is absolute; that there is only one interpretation of it; and that only crazy radical liberals engage in “judicial activism.”

But the bottom line is that the law is whatever judges say it is.

Every judge has their own opinion as to what the “original intent” of the law was. If everyone agreed on what the “original intent” was, we wouldn’t need judges.

Even the Founders disagreed over the wording. The scales-personal-injury-lowConstitution was written to be specifically vague in parts because that was the only way they could get it passed.

You know — politics.

Within a few years of its passage, there were cases before the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution’s meaning. The very Founders who wrote the damn thing argued before the Court as to how it should be interpreted.

Whenever anyone says there is only one “original intent” they always amazingly also know exactly what it is and — even more amazingly — it always matches what they already believed. (Sort of like religious nuts who are convinced there is only one interpretation of the Bible and it’s always the same thing as their own.)

And the meanings of words change over time. “Cruel and unusual punishment” does not mean the same thing in the 21st Century as it did in the 18th. The 14th amendment gives rights to “people” but at the time it was written, it did not include women or gays (and barely included blacks). Meanings change. Society changes.

Conservative judges interpret the Constitution just as much as liberal judges do — the difference is that liberal judges tend to be more honest about it. Or maybe the conservatives ones are just deluded, like Scalia was, that he had some great “insight” into the Founders’ desires, like he was an avatar to the gods. It was the conservative justices who reinterpreted the 2nd amendment to turn it into a personal right after 200 years. It was the conservative judges who decided that corporations were “people” and money was “speech.” And a new Court could turn around and say “nope” and change it back, using the exact same words in the Constitution.

Politics.

I know some people want the law to be like a science, where you can do an experiment or do some research and know the answer, but it isn’t. It’s politics. It’s written by politicians. It’s judged by people who are elected (and are therefore politicians) or who have been appointed by politicians. The judges don’t all agree, just like politicians don’t agree.

And most of them (if they aren’t deluded) will admit that the Constitution is not a religious document written by gods; it’s a political document written by a bunch of politicians.

 

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Not Mourning Scalia

Do I need to remind people of the terrible, hateful, and racist things this man has said over the years about women, gays, blacks, minorities, non-Christians?antonin-scalia-12-16-15-1.jpeg Not to mention the power of the government to screw over your Constitutional rights.

If he were the head of the KKK you’d all be happy he’s gone. But in fact, with the same views, he was instead given power to DO things about his bigotry and hatred. The fact that he had power is MORE reason to be glad he’s gone.

No, I am not going to pretend to be sorry for his passing just because he was on the Supreme Court. He was a horrible man and the world is a better place without him and the harm he caused.

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Patriotism, Hypocrisy, and Empty Phrases

by guest blogger Alma Alexander

So I just read one too many stories about the histrionic American pseudo-evangelistic jingoism that passes for patriotism these days. In this instance, a story about a girl who attested her (constitutional) right to participate or not in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The story I read left a lot of the details out. It said the girl had been “mistreated” for “failing to stand”, or declining to stand, for the pledge of allegiance and apparently it was this mistreatment that led her to seek the attention of the school nurse.

Who mistreated her? Why? And how did this result in her needing medical attention?

The nurse then demanded to know why the victim of this mistreatment hadn’t stood for the pledge. The little girl said that she had a right not to participate, at which point the nurse flew into a high dudgeon… and refused to treat whatever the damage was that it had been considered necessary to send the child to her for in the first
place.

It gets worse. This:

“‘The student reports that she left the nurse’s office in tears and went to the administrative offices to call her mother … A secretary then led the student to an office, but at that time the same nurse appeared again, saying, ‘She isn’t calling a parent until I have a long conversation with her!'”

I beg your pardon? Even a felon arrested for murder is entitled to a phone call. An eighth-grader was refused – even potentially refused – the right to call her own mother before the nurse had a ‘long conversation’ with her?

Really?

Really?

American hypocrisy about patriotism and what it really means is becoming egregious. In America, patriotism is coming to mean frothing at the mouth about American exceptionalism at every turn, denouncing anyone who isn’t ‘measuring up’ to the zealots’ standards, flying flags the size of a king-sized bed above car dealerships which proudly peddle Toyotas or Subarus.

The things that are going on inside the country right now – the things that a true patriot would be appalled by – the senseless gun deaths, the militarization of our police, the endless useless foreign wars begun by lies and perpetuated by some an effort to make everyone else out there toe some kind of utopian American line (‘we bring democracy to the world’ is the excuse. But there are frequently underlying reasons which are never addressed in the open.

Here’s the thing, America. You didn’t invent democracy. The very word comes from ancient Greece which was a country before you were a gleam in your Founding Fathers’ eyes. It is not your job to impose a given political system on the rest of the world, no matter how much you yourself are enamored of it.  And here’s another thing – take a look in your own back yard – (America hasn’t had a true democracy in years) – all that – all that a true patriot would be truly concerned about – all that doesn’t matter, truly, so long as you can wrap yourself in the flag and pretend you’re better than everyone else.

Germany had a national anthem which contained the words “Deutschland Uber Alles” – and when it acted on that phrase, the world went to war about it. When America imposes its will on other nations – at the business end of a gun if everything else fails – it is operating under a very similar principle.

It’s like this.

If you think it’s okay for a nurse to refuse to treat a child because she didn’t think that child measured up to her ridiculous sense of ‘patriotism”, it’s also okay for someone in the middle east to start screaming about holy war if somebody says a cross word about something they believe in. If one is okay, so is the other.

What is going on in America today is just blatantly hypocritical, this adulation of “USA! USA!” as though no other nation ever had a flag, or a love of country. Let me tell you something – Russians call their country Mother Russia, they love it fiercely, and yet somehow they manage to do so without a Russian flag above every used car dealer.

Patriotism isn’t empty phrases, or wrapping yourself in that flag. Patriotism is treating your country’s children when they need medical attention and you are the medical professional in charge. If you were a Christian nurse with strong religious and patriotic dogmas in place and your country was at war – would you really be justified in refusing treatment to a wounded child who happened to be Jewish or Buddhist or (god forbid) Muslim? What would Christ say about that, even if you take it upon yourself to unilaterally repudiate the Geneva Convention?

America diminishes itself – both in its own purview and in the eyes of the world – with every action like this nurse has taken. Patriotism isn’t the same as religious zeal and evangelical Christianist conservative cant. Patriotism isn’t histrionically screaming about the inviolate Second Amendment every time grieving mothers stand at the gravesides of children mowed down by bullets in the streets, in shopping malls, in cinemas, in schools. Patriotism isn’t building a wall between the USA and Mexico. Patriotism isn’t shutting down the Government of your country every time you don’t get your way in Congress.

Patriotism is much harder than this. Patriotism means doing hard things, it means knowing and loving your country and its history, yes, but not to the point of making that history an obstacle to its future – or, worse, retelling that past so that it is more palatable to you. History is what happened, and no amount of whitewashing so that you feel better about it is going to change a word of it.

Yes, the American South kept slaves. No, those human beings in chains were not “better off” in that era, nor were they happy about those chains, nor about the ability of those in charge of them to use them like cattle. But it happened. The repercussions of that are dragging their muddy tails through America’s today and its tomorrow, but we can’t clean up after it until we accept that we are seeing it there and stop pretending that the monster isn’t even in the room with us.

Patriotism is facing up to our mistakes, and trying to move forward from them in a direction that doesn’t leave everyone mired in that mud forever. But this is not easy. It’s much harder than screaming at little girls at how unpatriotic they are, or than getting into a froth about a “War on Christmas” and on white America, or than simply showing up to wave a tiny paper flag in a crowd while some politician-du-jour spouts platitudes that waft like pretty soap bubbles above your head. Patriotism involves a passionate love of your country, and your people.

This does not then translate into calling that love, as it manifests in other people and other nations, by other and more offensive names, or proclaiming that Americans who love their country are “patriots” while everyone else who has the gall to say they love their own country is a “dangerous nationalist” or a “terrorist” and therefore a fair target. How dare those ignorant savages not love America above their own land?

Patriotism is, at its best, a noble thing. But it’s being perverted into something shadowed and furtive; it’s being weaponised (if you aren’t with us you’re against us); it’s being poisoned by the fake evangelists for whom it’s just easier to spout the cliches than it is to act upon a true patriotic impulse.

If you want to know, one of those would have entailed that nurse’s keeping her mouth shut in the face of events during that fracas in a middle school somewhere in middle America. Her patriotic duty was to educate and to ‘doctor’ her nation’s children. Not to indoctrinate them.

Alma Alexander is an American novelist and short story writer