News Roundup: Anger, Insanity and Nakedness

Let’s do another news roundup. Why? Because I said so! Just kidding. Actually, because there are several little stories we can’t cover in separate articles so here they are all lumped together in a big old steaming pile of news! Get ready for dogs, sex, and Hawaiian Stalinists!

● Item One: Dog Show Gone Wrong. In case you missed it, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show started last night and finishes tonight. I never miss this as I think dogs are great. And much like the Super Bowl, part of the attraction each year is when Pedigree puts out new ads. The last few years have featured David Duchovny talking about dogs with the tag line, “dogs rule.” Here are some samples: We’re for Dogs / Shelter Dogs / Doggie Dentures / Rub My Belly.

Imagine my surprise when these commercials did NOT appear last night. Instead, we got some lame generic commercial for Purina using some nondescript song. Totally forgettable pabulum. Hmm.

So I promptly turned to the internet to discover what had gone wrong. It turns out that Westminster decided to drop Pedigree as a sponsor because they didn’t like Pedigree focusing on shelter dogs. Seriously. Said Westminster’s spokesidiot David Frei:

“Show me an ad with a dog with a smile. Don’t try to shame me. We told Pedigree that and they ignored us. Our show is a celebration of dogs. We’re not promoting purebreds at the expense of non-purebreds. We celebrate all dogs. When we’re seeing puppies behind bars, it takes away from that. Not just because it’s sad, but it’s not our message.”

To quote Bufford T. Justice, “you aaaaasshole.” Over the past few years, Westminster has gotten a bad reputation because of many of the breeding practices associated with purebreds. Specifically, their standards are creating dogs with breathing problems, back problems, bad joints and mental issues. They’ve been protested and some people have even considered legislation against the things they promote.

Pedigree, by comparison, is for all dogs, not just purebreds, and they’ve matched seven million dollars in donations in the last couple years to help the dogs who need it most. Westminster has not.

Westminster is not only stupid, they are shameful. I suggest they fix this by next year or I won’t be back. In the meantime, up yours Westminster, and your little sponsor Purina too.

● Item Two: Accidentally Naked? A high school football coach had to resign the other day when he “accidentally” posted naked pictures of himself on Facebook. How does that happen “accidentally”? Between this and Sandusky and the guy in Syracuse and the various women’s coaches who keep getting fired for inappropriate behavior with their players and the NFL assistant coach who got arrested driving naked through a fast-food drive-thru, something has really gone wrong in coaching.

● Item Three: Bringing Sexy Back. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin wants Russians to have more sex to halt Russia’s population decline. Maybe they need more coaches? Interestingly, the land of mail-order brides and alcoholism actually has finally stabilized population-wise. In the 1990s, there was speculation Russia’s population would fall by a third by 2050, but that didn’t happen and now they’ve even begun to grow by a few thousand over the past few years. Still, it’s a good political strategy for Putin: how can you go wrong telling people to have more sex?

● Item Four: Machete. Liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer just learned a little something about the joys of law and order when he was robbed at machete-point in his Caribbean vacation home by a masked intruder. Being a liberal, he will no doubt draw the wrong lesson and endorse a seven-day waiting period for machetes. . . or vacation homes.

● Item Five: Big Brother Is Watching, Aloha. Finally this item. I’ve said before that Republicans get stupid when you mention terrorists or criminals. Too many “conservatives” will happily throw away all their rights in the name of safety based on false promises and vague assurances that we can trust government not to abuse absolute power. Combine this with the Democratic instinct to monitor and control you and you have the makings for an American police state. Here’s proof.

Hawaii’s legislature is debating a bill which will require Internet providers to keep track of every website their customers visit. Basically, your provider will need to keep a continuing file showing every website you visited in the past two years. In—flipping—sane!

Why would Hawaii do this? Because Republican Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine is being “harassed” by a web designer named Eric Ryan, who claims Pine owes him money. He launched a website called KymPineIsACrook.com where he makes the claim that she stiffed him (but not in a Russian way). She also contends that Ryan hacked her e-mail account. Hence, Hawaii needs “tougher cyber laws.” Of course, the Democrats jumped on this and are pushing this insane bill.

Ok, let’s cut through this.. First, if he’s lying about the money, sue him for slander. Clearly he’s not lying because she’s taken no action in that regard. Secondly, if he has hacked her e-mail, then he’s already committed a crime under the Patriot Act. So no additional laws are needed. Third, even if a law was needed, it is to punish someone for hacking an e-mail account, not a law that requires private companies to spy on all citizens so some messed up Hawaiian legislator can get her Stalin on.

Think about this. One man is harassing her, so she wants the government to keep Stasi-like files on everyone in Hawaii?? How does that make sense? What possible purpose could this serve except to let her see who visited his website. And then what? “Re-education” camps? This is pure totalitarianism, make no mistake. And for those inclined to trust the government’s motives, this should wake you up. This is why government really acts -- because some intolerant a-hole with a grudge and a debt problem decides to use the government to help them in a personal fight.

Government is evil and those who would use the government to control others are evil.


Also, don't forget that it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site (LINK), and in honor of Valentine's Day, might I recommend revisiting the Top 25 Romance Films article (LINK).

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Through The Legal Looking Glass--The Nine Gray Eminences

Associate Justice Stephen Gerald Breyer was born in San Francisco on August 15, 1938. He comes from a Jewish religious background, and the law was part of his life from his infancy. His father was a noted San Francisco attorney who, among other things, served as legal counsel for the San Francisco Board of Education. His younger brother Charles is a federal judge for the Northern District of California, located in San Francisco.

Breyer's family was actively involved in the Boy Scouts of America, and both Stephen and Charles became Eagle Scouts. He never lost his love for the Scouts, and in 2007 he was honored with the Distinguished Eagle Scout award. He attended Lowell High School, which has always been the "academic" high school for San Francisco. San Francisco is a very small town geographically, so it has always been possible to have most students attend their local schools while the top students were sent to the one or two college preparatory public schools. The prime schools had special programs, of which Breyer took definite advantage. He was active in the Lowell Forensic Society, and even had the opportunity to participate in debate tournaments which allowed him to take on future California Governor Jerry Brown and future Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe.

Breyer went on to Stanford, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in philosophy. He then went to Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Magdalen College. He returned to the United States, and received his LL.B from Harvard Law School. Breyer has always been cosmopolitan despite his otherwise solid middle class background. He is married to Joanna Freda Hare, a noted British psychologist who is also the daughter of John Hare, First Viscount Blakenham. Although Breyer remains a practicing Jew, his oldest daughter Chloe is an Episcopalian priest and his wife is an Anglican communicant. He also has another daughter, Nell and a son, Michael.

After law school, Breyer clerked for Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg during the 1964 Supreme Court term. He then served in various government legal capacities, including the Anti-Trust division of the Attorney General's office, an assistant prosecutor in the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and special counsel to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary where he ultimately became Chief Counsel from 1979 through 1980. Although he spent considerable time working with Ted Kennedy at the committee, he also helped the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act which brought the Civilian Aeronautics Board to an end.

Breyer also taught law at Harvard Law School and at the same time taught policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He was, and is, considered a master of administrative law and regulation. In 1980, he was appointed as a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1990 to 1994 was the Presiding Judge. At the same time he served on the Judicial Conference of the United States and the United States Sentencing Commission, playing a key role in reforming federal criminal sentencing and creating uniformity of sentencing through the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

Although President Bill Clinton at first considered Breyer to replace Justice Byron White on his retirement, he decided on Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead under pressure from the left wing of his party. But shortly thereafter, Harry Blackmun announced his retirement, and in 1994 Clinton nominated Breyer. He was confirmed by a vote of 87 to 9. The junior justice on the Supreme Court is treated like a perpetual freshman until someone newer comes along. Breyer was the second-longest serving junior justice, on his way to becoming the longest-serving when Justice Joseph Alito assumed the dubious honor in 2006.

Breyer is neither a "living constitution" advocate nor a strict constructionist. The proof of this is that his major debate opponent is Justice Anton Scalia. But they don't argue over whether the Constitution is constantly "evolving," but rather over where original text and original meaning are insufficient to form an opinion resulting in Breyer's concept of the "purposes and consequences" of the original text. Despite his frequent joining with the liberal wing of the Court, it is a result of this Scalia/Breyer difference of judicial philosophy rather than any concurrence with the concept of reading the text in strictly modern terms. The truly liberal justices such as Ginsburg will diverge from precedent unless the text is so cast in concrete that it is not capable of interpretation.

Also, unlike the liberal justices, Breyer has consistently shown deference to the acts of Congress and the prerogatives of the Executive Branch regardless of which party and which political philosophy is currently in power. Breyer often shows a strong streak of leaning toward "process" over strict interpretation. Thus, he defends federal sentencing guidelines as necessary to the orderly process of judicial consistency, while Justice Scalia believes that the Sixth Amendment requires submitting to a jury all the elements of the crime as they relate to sentencing, including the reasonable doubt standard. Oddly, this results in the "conservative" Scalia supporting judicial discretion and the "liberal" Breyer opposing unrestrained judicial discretion. Normally, that would be considered a role-reversal.

Like my top bet for next Obama appointment, Cass Sunstein, Breyer is an unwilling judicial activist because of his fondness for Isaiah Berlin's seminal work Two Concepts of Liberty. Berlin posited, and Breyer agrees, that "liberty" has two manifestations. The first and more common understanding is that liberty is essentially freedom from government intrusion. There is very little disagreement on this concept, but in order to expand on the concept of liberty, Berlin needed to give this first manifestation a name. He calls it "negative liberty" because it defines what government must not do if it wishes to promote liberty. Berlin then describes his second manifestation of liberty--"positive liberty." That is, the freedom to participate in the government.

Breyer has taken "active liberty" into his judicial philosophy, and unlike Berlin, sees it as more important than "negative liberty," rather than an equal and balancing view. Breyer also interprets freedom to participate in government as requiring the most democratic use of judicial power to assure it. That leads him to view cases before him in terms of which interpretation most closely uses the text to support democratic rather than republican principles. This leads Breyer to see the Supreme Court as the protector of the democratic intentions of the Constitution ("substance") over the republican intentions of the Founders who wrote it ("procedure").

But again, that does not make him a radical or a "living constitutionalist." He still insists that step one is to look at the original text, then the original intention, and only when those are not manifestly clear, then to the democratic impulse of the Founders. Sunstein (remember that name folks, I'm making a cautious prediction that he will be an Obama appointee to the High Court) leans strongly toward "active liberty" taking precedence over "negative liberty," requiring that only a very high and compelling order of wording and intention within the text of the Constitution should ever be preferred over a modern interpretation of the venerable text.

Breyer, on the other hand, believes strongly that "active liberty," however attractive in theory, should never lead to "the abdication of your role of enforcing the limits in the Constitution, whether in the Bill of Rights or in the separation of powers." Critics of Breyer have said that he finds the text and original intent muddy more often than is meet and proper. His most active critic is Professor Peter Berkowitz of George Mason University Law School and a Fellow at the Stanford Hoover Institution. Berkowitz says that Breyer will always err on the side of the text being unclear in order to pursue "active liberty" results. "Breyer's position demonstrates not fidelity to the Constitution, but rather a determination to rewrite the Constitution's priorities." That leads him to activism, despite himself. Berkowitz goes on to say: "Active Liberty (the title of Breyer's treatise on the subject) suggests that when necessary, instead of choosing the consequence that serves what he regards as the Constitution's leading purpose, Breyer will determine the Constitution's 'leading purpose' on the basis of the consequence that he prefers to vindicate." This, Berkowitz concludes, is the explanation for why Breyer so often ends up concurring with the intentionally activist justices.

For instance the Constitution is silent on abortion. Rather than see that as an automatic right of the states because the Constitution failed to enumerate abortion as a federal prerogative, Breyer sees abortion as an unaddressed textual matter requiring the application of active liberty. Thus, he has consistently voted with the far more doctrinaire liberals on the Court in striking anti-abortion statutes. Breyer is also a reluctant virgin on the idea of incorporating foreign and international law into Supreme Court decisions. He states that he believes that use should be persuasive, but not binding. As a practical matter, that is a distinction without a difference. But if he were truly a judicial liberal activist, he would not have been so consistent in voting to uphold law enforcement on Fourth and Sixth Amendment issues. He has also been the least arrogant of any of the justices in his pattern of showing extreme deference toward the acts of the legislative and executive branches. He has the best record of upholding acts of Congress, voting to overturn them at a lower rate than any other justice since 1994.
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