Just an “Opinion”

The Supreme Court in a recent ruling (Kennedy v. Louisiana) further narrowed the application of the death penalty to crimes against individuals that result in the victim’s death (crimes against the State are a preferred category).

Mr. Patrick Kennedy of Louisiana, petitioning the Court for his life, merely committed a particularly brutal rape on an eight year old girl.

Justice Kennedy (no relation), speaking for the majority, would argue that there is no degree of injury, pain or loss (one can never be restored, never made whole, left with no way back to the lives we lived) that kind of loss, no conceivable horror or unspeakable cruelty, however irrevocably ruinous that meets the threshold of moral depravity achieved by murder.

The Eighth Amendment (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment), interpreted according to modern precedent i.e., “evolving standards of decency” would find Mr. Kennedy’s extermination disproportionate to his offense, therefore unconstitutional.

The tangled logic and tangential considerations that clutter the opinion seem to be Justice Kennedy’s rationale for circumventing the unintended consequences of representative government.

Both presidential candidates criticized the decision, more or less convincingly. More in McCain’s case, less in Obama’s. Obviously their standards of decency haven’t sufficiently evolved, but then again they are politicians.

Alienable Rights

The journalist Mark Steyn is awaiting the judgment of a Human Rights Tribunal.

War crimes or white slaver was my first guess. My fall back position, in order of preference, was arms merchant, narco terrorist or black marketeer in human organs. I would have settled for multiple acts of public urination.

Imagine my disappointment to learn the charge (actually complaint) was for hate speech, a kind of verbal vandalism.

Steyn had the audacity to express an opinion supported by fact and logic. Offense was taken, or so claimed.

“Canada’s Human Rights Act defines hate speech as likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt”, (perhaps deservedly so). No weight is given to the truth (which is no defense against the charge) of what was said.

This “law” compels silence and sanctions coercion.

Free speech isn’t nearly as esteemed or enshrined by our neighbor to the north, or south for that matter. Something to consider the next time you hear arguments for globalization.

Change Starts with the Truth

Mr. Obama, in terms “sharp”, “stark” and “straightforward”, according to the NYT, made remarks about black illegitimacy and absentee fathers that would be difficult for a white candidate to make.

Though we can’t be certain which half of the Senator’s bi-racial ancestry was doing the talking, we’re told his comments were “courageous and important”.

The courageous Mr. Obama might be more credible and convincing had he stood with Bill Cosby, from the inception of his personal crusade. Cosby has been virtually outcast for being so vigorously outspoken.

Yet illegitimacy remains so flagrantly commonplace within (though not exclusive to) the black community as to be socially acceptable while being sociologically suicidal. This is a tragedy. The human cost of this moral squalor is chaos, rapacious violence and disabling hopelessness.

In polite circles (p.c.) this is called blaming the victims. That the truth can’t be told (particularly by whites) is part of this self-perpetuating pathology.

Writs and Wrongs

I have it on good authority, from my progressive friends, that the Constitution is a “living document”. Its interpretation currently influenced by foreign law, evolving standards of decency, penumbras and adumbrations, an activism born of social awareness and a doctrinaire left liberal agenda.

That these nine (lawyers) are unelected and unaccountable makes their potential for mischief undeniable.

In Boumediene v. Bush five liberal jurors became literalists.

The prevailing opinion cited the Suspension Clause having been violated. In the absence of rebellion or invasion, the public’s safety doesn’t require (or permit) the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

One would have thought such creative interpreters of the constitution could have divined, in a time of war without precedent, other threats to the public safety. Perhaps someone might reintroduce 9/11 by way of evidence or argument.

A Principled Idiocy

I want to add my voice, however feeble, confused and uninformed to the growing chorus of environmental stewards implacably opposed to the responsible use of our natural resources.

Admittedly our need is great and could become desperate.

Yes, it’s true that our economy could be driven into a deep and protracted recession.

Indeed, it will eventually become a national security threat.

No, I can’t be certain that our growing dependency and the vast transfer of our national treasure abroad won’t alter strategic and economic alliances with unpredictable consequences.

Yet, whatever the material and political cost to us and our posterity we can take satisfaction in the quasi religious delusional conceit that we are saving the planet.

Abortion: If at First You Don’t Succeed

You know how your tongue always finds that chipped tooth. Then having found it returns to its rough irregular edge. Occasionally your mind will snag on a line in a column the same way. And return to it the same way.

This column was written by William McGurn and ran in today’s (6/10) WSJ, on the op-ed pages.

“- as a member of the Illinois Senate, he (Obama) voted against legislation protecting a child who was born alive despite an abortion –“

I reread that line several times, convinced I’d misread it. It seemed counterintuitive, appalling and uncomplicated.

The balance of the piece concerned itself with the Senator reintroducing religion to the public square (after his party attempted to drive it out, with calumny and caricature).

All the talk of faith, morality and the abiding religious influence in American history come to nothing beside that vote: that denied protection to a child born alive despite an abortion.

Perhaps the Senator owes us an explanation, not another speech. I recommend it not be nuanced, qualified or overly clever.

Certainties And Other Conceits

I didn’t hear Senator and Candidate Clinton’s parting (or should that be parsing) shot. I’m told that with triumphal theatrics she “suspended” her campaign, to echoing cheers and fading shouts. Another addition to history’s mounding pile of footnotes.

Sometime today I’ll come upon her performance, settled and still, in the newspapers. Absent the immediacy and distractions one can reflect on the remains of a what might have been moment.

Perhaps in the ruins of dashed hopes and thwarted ambitions I’ll find a charred fragment of presumed inevitability.

A life lesson for us all.

Just ask Big Brown.

Not Likely

It’s not unlike being a forensic psychiatrist, mucking around the dark, dank, twists and turns of a megalomaniacal mind. So what is Hillary thinking and why would she accept (perhaps insist on) the vice-presidency?

The senate was only a means, never an end, to return in defeat would make it a dead end.

Her advantage and distinction (being the presumptive heir apparent) is forever lost. And the sense of betrayal and desertion by so many of her colleagues speaks volumes, in fact collected works. It might diminish the collegiality of the work place environment to the point of being an OSHA violation.

But most important, being offered the vice-presidency becomes her vindication and denies him an unalloyed victory. Additionally he would be denied his first major decision while having to admit (if only to himself) that his brand of social service socialism didn’t move, to the left, the majority of Americans.

Not that Hillary is less toxic to liberty, but she ran a leftist lite campaign assuming she was addressing the country and not the cadre’s.

Senator Obama is a man of great ambition and I believe greater arrogance, neither would be altogether appeased having to share a moment in history with his nemesis.

Better no presidency than a de facto co-presidency.

The End of the Beginning

The newspapers are full of it (generally speaking) reportage and opinion on Senator Obama’s having won his party’s nomination. History has been made, barriers broken and perceptions forever altered.

I suspect than even the world, to whose good graces the Senator promises to restore us, thinks better of our ill mannered and exceptionalist selves.

As for Senator Clinton (and the candidacy that would not die) she is trying to coordinate her own rapacious self-interest with party unity and national healing, in that order.

The Senator has neither conceded, withdrawn or otherwise indicated that she won’t hold her party hostage (I suspect a ransom note is being drafted).

Which brings us to John McCain (often mistaken for George Bush, by registered Democrats). I can imagine the Senator firing up the Republican Attack Machine (RAM), and setting the apparatus on cruise control (which includes race baiting, fear mongering and character assassination).

Democracy remains a contact sport.

Better Late

With great sadness and greater regret Senator Obama has severed his ties (not a decade too soon) with Trinity United Church of Christ. The (very) junior Senator and presumptive leader of the free world thought it best to distance himself from his pastor, his church and yet another of his spiritual mentors (the Reverend Michael Pfleger).

My understanding is that this last episode of pulpit induced Tourette’s was enthusiastically received by the congregation. Perhaps it’s time the Senator formerly resign from his religious and racial community as well. They too are becoming embarrassments. Is it possible his fellow congregants haven’t realized their next President is running on a post-racial, non-divisive, all inclusive, can’t we all get along ticket.