Please go, Ron

In a display of a serious irony deficiency, Ron Paul uses his taxpayer funded, government website to argue for secession from an overly intrusive government.

Is all the recent talk of secession mere sour grapes over the election, or perhaps something deeper?

Sour grapes, with a delicate bouquet of racism and batshit insanity.

Currently there are active petitions in support of secession for all 50 states, with Texas taking the lead in number of signatures. Texas has well over the number of signatures needed to generate a response from the administration...

Dear Texas, No. Sincerely, Barack H. Obama

...and while I wouldn't hold my breath on Texas actually seceding, I believe these petitions raise a lot of worthwhile questions about the nature of our union. Is it treasonous to want to secede from the United States?

To want to? No. To try? Yes.

Many think the question of secession was settled by our Civil War.

It was.

On the contrary; the principles of self-governance and voluntary association are at the core of our founding.

Yes, they were. But it's still treason.

Clearly Thomas Jefferson believed secession was proper, albeit as a last resort. Writing to William Giles in 1825, he concluded that states:

"should separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers."

Keep in mind that the first and third paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence expressly contemplate the dissolution of a political union when the underlying government becomes tyrannical.

You see, Ron, it might surprise you and many of your Tea Party followers to find out, the Declaration is not part of the Constitution. It's also not part of our law codes. I know, you've only collected a government paycheck to write laws that pass Constitutional muster off and on for thirty-six years, so you might not have had time to learn that fact. Do we have a "government without limitation of powers" yet? No. One of those limitations is that Constitution thingy that your not so familiar with. Another, paradoxically, is that part of the government that you collected a paycheck from. You members of Congress are supposed to show some restraint, if only because you fear the other party coming to power some day. Third, are the American voters, who still get to throw you out if they don't like how you're doing your job. You see, under a government with truly unlimited powers, we don't get to do that.

The Federal government kept the Union together through violence and force in the Civil War, but did might really make right?

It might not have made it right, but it did make it legal. Remember what I said about voting above? The "Federal government" is not an entity separate from the American people. It is chosen by American people and made up of American people. We chose to keep the Union together and, in doing so, we made it legal.

Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. Some felt it was treasonous to secede from England, but those "traitors" became our country's greatest patriots.

The founders of most new countries were almost always, at one time, traitors to the old regime. That does not make treason "a deeply American principle." Being founded by secession does not make secession "a deeply American principle." Let me put this in terms you might understand. You're a gynecologist. Being born of a cesarean section does not make climbing screaming and naked through your mother's abdomen a deeply defining characteristic of your being and it certainly does not justify doing it a second time.

Drift off topic. Whine, whine, whine.

If a people cannot secede from an oppressive government, they cannot truly be considered free.

You might be right, but you are pulling a bait-and-switch con on us. You started when you brought the Declaration into this. The Declaration of Independence is a philosophical argument. Let me repeat myself, the Declaration is not part of the Constitution, nor is it part of our law codes. A philosophical argument can always be made for secession, though it won't always be a valid argument. Whining because you lost two elections in a row is not a valid argument. Not getting your way is not a valid argument. And even when you do have a valid argument for secession, it's still treason and you better be sure all of your fellow secedees are on your side and you better be ready for a fight.

Schatzi is not a bigot

Schatzi Ziegler of Leesburg, Virginia is having a yardsale, but she's very picky about who she will let buy her chipped china, eight track tapes, and old board games (except for the fact that the dog ate most of the blue pieces, the Risk game is just like new!).

i will not sell to LGBT, muslims, or illegal immigrants. if you don't like that you can kiss my uber white daughter of the American revolution American Irish Ashkenazi Jewish German ass. i am not racist or a bigot, but I have standards or morality, patriotism, and lawfulness which i will not abandon for the sake of a few bucks. puhleeze. get real people. moral boundaries are HEALTHY for the individual and for society....and bowing to "political correctness" and wanting to be liked over standing up and doing the right thing is something only people who can't think for themselves do. get real.

(Sparse use of punctuation and capitals in the original.)

It should go without saying, but I'll say it again anyway, any person who qualifies their statements with "I am not a bigot" is almost certainly a bigot. I have a question for Schatzi that is not related to her alleged not-bigotness: how are you going to enforce this?

"How much do you want for the cracked punchbowl?"

"Before I answer that, I'll need to subject your driver's license, birth certificate, and heterosexual marriage license to advanced testing by our crack team of right wing bloggers. If you pass, it's five dollars. If you fail, I'm going to sic the dog on you, just as soon as he finishes barfing up those little, blue, plastic game pieces."

Now that I think about it, this could be a very fun yardsale to attend.

Separated at birth

Michele Bachmann and Bat-boy
This has been another edition of Cheap Shots with your host, John.

Maybe we're being too hard on BP

Their disaster recovery plan for the Deepwater Horizion rig emphasized the importance of protecting walruses and sea lions. So far not one walrus has died from oil in the Gulf. We should give them credit for their successes.

You guys are the best sorts of people

In my experience -- and I'm just generalizing here -- the more intelligent, perceptive, and morally pure a person is, the more they agree with me. Certainly less dim witted and embarrassing. Most of the people I admire most uphold my beliefs. This brings us to Jay Nordlinger of The National Review:

In my experience -- and I'm just generalizing here -- the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Certainly the less snarky and narrow. Most of the people I admire most, admire the 43rd president.

I'm sure you all agree with me in in detecting a wee bit of self-congratulatory nincompoopery in Mr. Nordlinger. I might even go so far as to say he's a complete ass. In fact, I think I will go that far. Jay Nordlinger is a complete ass.

I may need some help with this one

Steve Benen at Political Animal points out a bit of Fox News BS* from last week. According to Media Matters:

An April 17 headline posted on TheFoxNation.com -- Fox News' new and allegedly bias-free website -- claimed that the "Taliban Copies Democrat Playbook." The headline linked to an April 16 New York Times article headlined, "Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan." In fact, the Times article -- which described insurgency tactics such as roadside bombs -- made no mention of the Democratic Party.

Benen comments picks up the story by pointing out Fox News' hypocrisy** in in this:

This, apparently, is "Fox Nation's" idea of being clever. You see, the Taliban is exploiting class rifts in Pakistan, so the Taliban is necessarily emulating the "Democrat [sic] Playbook." How droll.

But the reason this was of particular interest is because there was one recent instance in which a leading American politician really did want to see a major U.S. political party share a playbook with the Taliban. It wasn't, however, a Democrat -- it was National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who said GOP lawmakers should emulate the Taliban because "they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes."

Let me see if I understand this. Fox News (a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP Big Wurlitzer) thinks the Taliban are using the Democratic playbook. Pete Sessions thinks Republicans should use the Taliban playbook. Does that mean Sessions thinks the Republicans should use the Democratic playbook? The Democratic Leadership Congress thinks the Democrats need to be more like the Republicans who should be imitating the Taliban who are copying the Democrats who... My head hurts. I'm going to go gargle Scotch till the world makes more sense.

* The phrase "Fox News BS" would like to give a big shout out to its friends at the Department of Redundancy Department.
** The phrase "Fox News' hypocrisy" also wants to give a big shout out to its friends at the Department of Redundancy Department.***
*** The Department of Redundancy Department wants nothing to do with this post.

The jokes write themselves

From TMP:

It looks like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has now become more careful with her use of the English language. In an interview with NewsMax, Bachmann spelled out in detail what she means when calling for people to be "armed and dangerous" on the issue of cap-and-trade. ... "I want them to be armed with knowledge, so they can be dangerous to the policies of the left."

Michele Bachmann. "Armed with knowledge." I can't wait to see what Rachel, Keith, and Jon have to say tonight.

We have a contender

Next December when you're looking for the dumbest headline of the year, keep this one in mind. We had a heavy rain last night. This morning, the Seattle Times has a banner headline—all caps, the full width of the front page—reading "DOWNPOUR." There really is a story here; we had some serious flooding out in the county. However, all that headline tells me is that it rained in Seattle in the winter. Anyone who has ever visited Seattle in the winter knows that it rains almost every day from October to April. No rain is worth a headline, downpours are not. Is a headline like that really supposed to sell newspapers? No wonder the newspaper business is in trouble.

On Buckley

William F. Buckley is dead. Though he was an entertaining character in the American cultural scene and a talented wordsmith, his politics were repulsive and the crop of acolytes he raised to prominence are a vile, mostly destructive, presence. There is a direct intellectual line from Buckley defending white privilege in the South to Malkin arguing in favor of nationality-based internment, or Goldberg arguing that FDR was a fascist. Movement conservatism and all it's excesses are his legacy. While I feel honest, liberal compassion (something his followers wouldn't understand) for the pain that those who knew him must be feeling, I don't share their pain. He did far too much damage to this country for me to miss him.

What a surprise

The multi-national coalition of far right nationalists in the European Parliament has broken up because the members don't like each other.

The European parliament's far-right bloc faces collapse after Romanian MEPs said they would quit over an Italian colleague's "xenophobic" remarks.

Italian MEP Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-daughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, reportedly described Romanians as "habitual law-breakers".

[...]

The Romanian MEPs' move would take the far-right bloc's membership below the minimum required for a grouping in the parliament.

The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) grouping was created in January, after the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU boosted the number of far-right MEPs in the European parliament.

Who would ever have suspected that this wasn't going to work?

Not much I can add

By now you know that Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence. You've probably also been to eleven other sites that have pronounced it disgraceful. If any one still harbored any doubts that Bush is nothing more than a sock puppet with Cheney's hand inside, this is the time to put those ideas aside. Though it does make me feel bad over all those nasty things I said about Paris Hilton. Looks like she had the wrong friends.

Just asking

Has a guest on Hardball ever thought to ask Chris Matthews:

Chris, you're a complete misogynist and you hate Hillary Clinton with a flaming passion so bright the sun itself pales into insignificance next to it; what's that all about?

It might clear up a lot.

'Bout time you noticed

Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS)

For the last fifteen years, talk radio has been at the beck and call of the Republican Party, happily distributing their talking points, rallying the troops, getting out the vote, and whipping up a lynch mob to bash traitorous liberals at a moment's notice. More than any other single force, talk radio has been responsible for keeping the Republicans in power for the last fifteen years. Now that they have taken a stand independent of the Party on one issue, immigration, they have become a problem that must be dealt with. Not only is Lott ungrateful, arrogant, and hypocritical, he's stunningly short sighted. If he breaks the power of talk radio over this one issue, where will he get a lynch mob next time he needs one?

In other words, he has my whole-hearted support to move forward on this.

Virginia terrorist plot foiled

ABC News is reporting a terrorist conspiracy involving a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

Authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

"There were indications that there were others involved in the manufacturing of these devices and we are still investigating these individuals with the assistance of ATF, Virginia State Police and FBI. At this time it is not believed that these devices were going to be used to interrupt the funeral services at Liberty University," the Campbell County Sheriff's Office said in a release.

The devices might not have interrupted the funeral, but the screams of those being burned to death might have interrupted it.

I should point out that my use of the word "terrorist" above is my own conclusion based on the description of a group of people trying to intimidate others into silence by using an explosive device to murder them. So far none of the news stories have used either the word "terrorist" or "terrorism" to describe the plot. I suppose that's to be expected; as we all know, it's not possible to be a terrorist if you are a white, Christian conservative.

Ham's dino-follies

Next weekend, Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis Creation Museum is scheduled to open near Cincinnati. Ham expects the museum to be a big success and draw a quarter-million visitors the first year. That number might not be too far off since some tens of thousands are planning to check it out from sheer morbid curiosity. The second year's attendance will be the one to watch.

Ken Ham's version of Genesis appears to have been designed to appeal to second-graders. Not only are all of the neat stories in the beginning of Genesis literally true. In Adam and Eve's day all of the animals were friends. None of the carnivores ate meat, so they never hurt or scared the lambs or deer. Cats never chased mice and dogs never chased cats. Not only that, but people and dinosaurs lived together and were friends. The dinosaurs let people put dino-saddles on them and ride them around like ponies.

Despite--or perhaps because of--all of this promiscuous friendship, God decided to kill most of the people and animals. God decided to give the people and animals one last chance. He told Noah to build a big boat and take two, or maybe seven, of each animal to save them while He destroyed the world with a flood. Noah did as he was told and God did as he promised. Afterward, Noah let all of the animal couples go free to fill the world. Sadly, because the new world wasn't as nice as the old one, some of the animals became carnivores and started eating the others.

My tone might be disrespectful, but my facts are not inaccurate. This is the version of Biblical history that Ken ham is telling in his 60,000 foot, twenty-seven million dollar museum. This is no roadside attraction. The models and dioramas in Ham's museum have been built by some of the leading craftsmen in the field. But the story is still ridiculous.

Take the dinosaurs. After years of denying the reality of dinosaurs, most creationists have now accepted them and rearranged their theology to account for them. Ham has adopted a child-friendly dino-buddies in saddles narrative. The Bible says God commanded Noah to bring all of the animals onto the Ark and Noah was a righteous man, so there is no weaseling around and saying the dinosaurs went extinct in the flood. All species that have ever existed had to be on the Ark (although Ham's variety of creationists have some slick logic to reduce that number). Any extinction that has occurred had to have happened after the flood. Ham realizes that all of the dinosaurs couldn't have died the next day, so he says many must have lived into recent time, some might even be alive today. He basically endorses every monster and cryptozoological sighting in history as true in order to make room for his dinosaurs. Dragons? Real. Lake monsters? Real.

What about that sudden conversion to meat eating by all of the carnivores? That's a problem he doesn't talk much about. But think about it; it might help explain all of those extinctions. The day after the Ark landed all of the animals were walking around, stretching their legs after their long confinement. Mr. and Mrs. Tyrannosaurus Rex were feeling a little peckish and suddenly their old friends the unicorns looked awfully tasty. There's your first extinction. Within a few hours the ferrets ate the pixies, the coyotes ate the jackalopes, and the wolves disemboweled one of the Irish elk. Mammoths being smarter than most grazers headed north and stayed away from their old neighbors for a few years, but their days were numbered. I'm just guessing; maybe Ham has a better story.

Meanwhile a coalition of secularists, liberal Christians, and Atheists are planning to picket the opening. I have mixed feelings about that. While I agree with the sentiments of the protesters--the secularists and Atheists want to say that not every one in that part of the country is a credulous rube, and the liberal Christians want to point out that Ham doesn't speak for all Christians--I'm not sure protesting won't play into Ham's hands. Ham is a sophisticated media manipulator; his PR is anything but ham-handed (yes, that was intentional). The protest will bring profitable publicity and Ham will be sure to play the persecution card.

But no one asked me how to handle this, so let's just sit back and watch the show. This is not going to go away. The museum is Ham's move to become a major player in the culture wars. We'll have plenty of time dissect his arguments. Meanwhile, Memorial Day is one of the great yard work and barbecue weekends of the year. While Ken Ham loudly proclaims his martyrdom, let's take a moment to remember the folks who really did have the courage to die for what they believed. Ham compares rather badly to the real thing.

Mission accomplished

Dick Cheney on FOX News this morning:

We didn’t get elected to be popular.

Stolen from Mustang Bobby.

We already knew that

There's not much to say about this, except that it confirms what we already knew about President Bush: He's a dishonest weasel with utter contempt for the democratic process and a petulant child who will do anything to get his way.

President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination.

Democrats had denounced Fox for his 2004 donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group's TV ads, which claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam, were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat's losing the election.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation, Bush withdrew the nomination last month. On Wednesday, with Congress out of town for a spring break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

Maybe the reason people are so interested in stories about Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, and that crowd is that they show a level of maturity that is far beyond that of the leader of the free world. It's refreshing to watch comparative grownups for a change.

Stupid boss stories

It seems being under thirty is no guarantee of swiftness.

Apparently, Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard before he had a chance to take any history classes.

That might explain the 22-year-old's tired retread of Jerry Rubin's "Never trust anyone over 30" rhetoric at a venture capital conference.

According to VentureBeat, Zuckerberg told attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford this weekend that old people (you know, over 30), are just well, a little slow.

"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)

"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."

Zuckerberg has just opened his company up to a lawsuit by every job applicant over the age who didn't get the job. Go get 'em, geezers. Why fulminate when you can litigate.

I don't get animal rights radicals

This had my jaw on the ground.

Berlin Zoo rallied to the defense of Knut, a three-month-old polar bear cub, Tuesday, rejecting demands that the animal be allowed to die after being abandoned by its mother.

The fate of "cuddly Knut" has gripped the German capital since his birth in December. Rejected by his mother Tosca, the cub was adopted by a zookeeper who moved into the animal's enclosure to care for him round the clock.

Some animal rights campaigners think this will humanize the bear too much and want the zoo to stop saving young animals.

"Hand-rearing a polar bear is not appropriate and is a serious violation of animal rights," Bild newspaper quoted animal rights campaigner Frank Albrecht as saying.

"In fact, the cub should have been killed," he added.

Fortunately, the zoo's response was the German equivalent of "don't be a stupid git."


Better off dead?
I'm a moderate where animal rights are concerned. Our cats, Marlowe and Mehitabel, were abandoned kittens adopted from no-kill shelters. I support strong anti-cruelty legislation. I eat meat, but I try to avoid feed-lot meat and buy free-range organic meat whenever possible. I support some animal testing and research for drugs, but oppose its use for vanity products like cosmetics (the skin-care products that Clever Wife makes are all tested on me). I'm a strong environmentalist and preservationist. I believe in hunting for meat, but not for trophies. I find PETA offensive and counter-productive.

I've run into this argument before that states any interaction with animals that changes their behavior is by definition cruel and a violation of an animal's rights. This seems to be the argument that Frank Albrecht is making above. Death is better than domestication is how the argument goes and so the zoo should kill abandoned babies, even when they belong to endangered species.

There are a number of good counter-arguments to this position, including the above mentioned "don't be a stupid git." Why should we believe that Albrecht's concept of an animal's rights in any way resemble the rights that the animal would ask for if it could conceive of such an idea and communicate it to us? All life is governed by a drive to continue, as an individual and as a species. If we could communicate, in any meaningful way, I think most animals would put the right to live at the top of their list of rights. I'm sure they would also object to someone else deciding whether their life is worth living. This is not the same as deciding whether they live. Animals regularly decide that other animals will not live. They make this choice, not because they have made a moral/philosophical judgment that the other animal's life is not worth living. They make it based on the determination that the other animal is more valuable to them as supper than as scenery.

Marlowe and Mehitabel are asleep on a chair in the other room. They are well fed, well groomed, warm, dry, and safe from predators. Their life expectancy is more than twice what it would be in the wild. In exchange for this, we have made some modifications to their behavior that leave them slightly behaviorally stunted and kitten-like. They are more sociable than most adult cats in the wild. Okay, we also took their gonads. If they could communicate, I think they would say they would like to go outside and chase birds more often. I am quite sure they would not say that they would rather be dead than suffer the unspeakable cruelties that I inflict upon them.

What's offensive? Limiting rights is

Via Josh Rosenau we find this little bit of news from Kansas.

A legislative staffer who put an anti-war bumper sticker with a profanity on her car and parked it in the Statehouse garage upset one lawmaker and had the governor and others debating the limits of free speech.

[...]

The red bumper sticker contains only two words in white — the f-word followed by “war.”

[...]

The complaint about the sticker came from House Majority Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, a former Marine. He said the language offended him.

“We have a lot of kids coming out of this building every day, and I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Merrick said.

I wonder what it was about the message that offended former Marine Ray Merrick. Was it the profanity or was it the overall message that massed numbers of people trying to kill each other over abstract concepts might be less than nifty. Would he have objected to a bumper sticker that said "I heart war" or one that had the f-word followed by “pacifism”?

There is a serious, free speech issue here and some kind of legal determination on this is long overdue. Does an employer (whether government or civilian) have any business telling their employees what opinions they may express on their personal cars. Each of the last few election cycles has come with stories of people being fired or punished for their bumper stickers.

Employers have always had trouble letting go of control over their workers at the end of their shift or at the door of the workplace. In recent years, many employers have tried to exercise control over their employee's health habits, using the cost of insurance as a justification. I don't think we'll ever get a one hundred percent clear legal determination over the limits of an employer's rights to interfere with their employees' private lives, or just what constitutes "private" in these cases, but free speech should be a fairly simple issue.

Since this touches on three sore points for me -- free speech, privacy, and bullying bosses -- it should be no surprise to my readers to find that I think the employers should take a flying leap. The only limits on an employee's rights either should come from the community at large (such as a general ban on profanity in public) or be justified by a legitimate business interest (a company has a legitimate interest in not providing free parking to an employee whose car carries a sticker that has the f-word followed by the company name).

Notice the restriction I put on enforcement by the company. I don't think they have the right tell the employee not to display that bumper sticker anywhere, but I do think they have the right to deny privileges such as parking on company property for that vehicle. I have a second restriction in mind with that phrasing. Limitation of employee privileges should be justified by a legitimate business interest. Preventing an employee from using the company parking lot to advertise against the company is legitimate, but preventing an employee from using the company parking lot to express an opinion that the employer or even the community at large disagrees with is not. Employers might claim that giving parking space to that opinion implies endorsement of that opinion (this is the argument most likely to come from government), but this argument doesn't pass the smell test. Does anyone actually think that the public is so naive that they believe a company endorses the opinions of every bumper sticker on every private car (not company vehicles) in their parking lot? If I see a bumper sticker at the Ballard farmer's market that says "Disco Roolz" I do not assume that the city of Seattle or the farmers of western Washington (or anyone in their right mind) endorses that opinion. I assume that one poor creature of limited taste managed pass the drivers' test and to pull together enough money to buy a used car.

Why hasn't this been decided by the courts?