Category Archives: PC

When Pigs Fly. Or Something.

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SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court overturned gay marriage in the Land of Fruits and Nuts last week. Meanwhile the, um, corn-fed Iowans upheld gay marriage last month.

That seems more than odd.

Five states (Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont) have legalized gay marriage. More than 40 states explicitly ban it.

California has an unusually strong direct democracy. Voters can decide almost any question via propositions and state constitutional amendments. Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, passed in November.

The California Supremes upheld that Prop 8 was a permissible amendment to the constitution. “The measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term marriage for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law…”

California is not alone in changing its constitution on a whim. Florida had six constitutional amendments on the November ballot.

I generally favor direct action by an electorate. Every citizen votes directly in the classic New England Town Meeting. That works well but it is worth remembering that when the majority tries to teach a pig to sing, that majority ought not also be able to legislate the pig’s pleasure.

It is time states like California and Florida learn that a state Constitution may be a living document but it ought not be one that sways in every breeze. Oh yeah, and that pigs don’t like to sing.

[apologies to Robert A. Heinlein]

Hubris

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The U.S. Senate voted today, by an unbelievable 90-6 margin, to strip the money needed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison from the supplemental war bill.

The question: “To prohibit funding to transfer, release, or incarcerate detainees detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to or within the United States.”

It turns out that no other countries will accept the Gitmo detainees. It also turns out that all but six Democrats got religion when they suddenly discovered that, if the prison closes, those terrorists would suddenly get all the free lawyers and the constitutional rights and the three hots and a cot that those Democratic Senators all vigorously campaigned for just a few short months ago.

My goodness. Some terrorists might even be freed by the courts and allowed to settle in the United States.

Imagine that.

Those voting to provide the money to close Gitmo: Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jack Reed (D-RI), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) came out in favor of moving Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States because, she said, “the legal rights of these detainees are the same under the Constitution.”

Sen. Feinstein said “American justice has to be applied to everyone, because if it isn’t, we then become hypocrites in the eyes of the world.” Then she voted to deny the funds needed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Indeed.

Cops And Robbers

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Pirates snatched a United States-flagged Maersk Line container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia. The crew beat off the brigands but the pirates managed to hang on to Capt. Richard Phillips who is from Underhill, Vermont, about 25 miles south of North Puffin.

The Navy arrived. The pirates threatened to kill Captain Phillips. The world watched while a lifeboat tethered 100′ behind its stern stood off the world’s most powerful navy.

The Navy passed the buck to the President to allow them to use deadly force against the hijackers. President Obama granted permission three times but “only if the captain’s life appeared to be in imminent danger.”

Darned if it didn’t appear that the captain’s life was in imminent danger. Navy SEALs did their job and there are three fewer lawbreakers adding to the genetic pool.

Other pirates in Somalia bristled and promised to kill Americans in future hijackings to avenge the deaths of their brethren under the skull and crossbones. “In the future, America will be the one mourning,” the New York Times quoted pirate Abdullahi Lami as saying. I have to wonder why the cops can’t find this guy if the New York Times can.

At first glance, the incident was a police action and the Navy handled it well. The pirates committed grand theft-ship and kidnaping. The response was exactly what any trained law enforcement officer would bring to bear in a hostage crisis.

Seizing a United States-flagged ship is not a bank robbery.

Any Navy skipper has similar responsibilities but much more authority than the average police commissioner. After all, the average police commissioner doesn’t have combat troops, 5″ cannons, more than 100 missiles, and, perhaps, nuclear weapons. The cop on the street would ask for a sergeant or a lieutenant for permission to use deadly force to resolve a hostage crisis. The cop on the street would never ask the police commissioner. And a Navy Captain is not a cop on the street.

President Obama usurped the role of a police commissioner by micro managing this hostage crisis.

That sends the wrong message to the bad guys and a bad message to the troops.

The USS Bainbridge is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer with the right equipment and the right crew. President Obama should have sent the following message to Commander Francis X. Castellano: “Take whatever action you need to. I have your back.”

Period.

Terrorists changed the Rules of War when they first sent irregular “troops” to fight soldiers by blowing up civilians. The new Rules are simple: “if you attack a United States citizen or a United States property or a United States-flagged ship anywhere in the world, you have committed an Act of War against the United States.” We get to kill you all and let your God sort out which of you get to be Ahmed’s virgins.

Shooting at a man on horseback while riding at a gallop is man’s second hardest physical feat (hitting a major league pitch is the hardest). The Navy SEALs aboard the USS Bainbridge performed far better than their superiors on land.

Gay Ignorance

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Missy and Biff flew to South Puffin for vacation this week.

It’s a good time to be here. Unlike Michigan’s Upper Peninsula we don’t have six inches of snow on the ground. Even North Puffin is still in the throes of yack with temps in the 30s, a day full of cold rain, and ice floes on the rivers.

Missy works for the state but lives to fish and ride motorcycles. She been a little concerned of late because Vermont Governor Jim Douglas wants to cut about 10% of the nearly 8,000 state employees to help with the state budget shortfall. She wears a lot of makeup and loves her bling. I think she might believe the gold and sparkles attract fish. And, as Dolly Parton says, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

“I’m not worried about my job any more,” she said.

Cool, I said. Why not?

“All the State Houses can talk about is gay marriage,” she said, “and the fact Jim promised to veto it tonight.”

The Vermont State Senate rejected using a statewide referendum for a gay marriage bill because they did not want the divisive debate; they passed the “Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Promote Equality in Civil Marriage” on a 26-4 vote instead. The House gave the measure final approval on a 94-52 roll call vote. They are just six votes shy of the 100 needed to override the veto.

I never liked civil unions because they take us back to the days of segregated schools and segregated washrooms and segregated water fountains. “Separate but equal” is both deceitful and untrue. There is nothing “equal” in the comparison of a civil union with a civil marriage.

Legislatures across the land are too busy with side issues like steroid use and gay marriage to spend much time on the single deciding issue of 2009: my wife on three-fifths time and my WalMart stock dropping.

2009 is not going to be “the year that Vermont fixed the state economy (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t be “the year that Vermont passed universal health care (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t even be “the year that the United States Congress returned the Dow to 14,000 (or didn’t).”

Nope. This is going to be “the year that Vermont made gay marriage the law of the land.”

Thank goodness for that. The Vermont legislature has already shown it has no clue about running a mom-and-pop grocery let alone running a state. In that, they take after their brethren, the Barney Rubble brigade inside the Beltway.

I like Jim Douglas. I’ve known him for years and I understand he would really like to get the legislature to concentrate on the problems at hand.

Jim is wrong about the focus, though.

He should indeed veto S.115 but he needs to find something else to distract the legislature pretty quickly; the legislators won’t stay busy for more than another week overriding the veto. I recommend a year-long investigation into Mickey D’s involvement in professional football. Have you seen the size of those guys? They didn’t get that big at the salad bar.

It wouldn’t hurt to convince Congress to underwrite a nationwide study of mushroom management, too. We’re already in the dark.

BROKEN NEWS

We are in serious jeopardy. Vermont Governor Jim Douglas did indeed veto the legislation as expected but six house members who had voted against the measure last week switched sides to override that veto, making Vermont the fourth state to sanction gay marriage.

The final vote was 100 to 49

I had written that the legislators wouldn’t take more than another week to override the veto. Now the Governor needs something tomorrow to keep them out of mischief.

Anybody have any spare tea bags?

Hessian Horsemen and Other Stories

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Oops.

Honey, I’m afraid the knife slipped.

I think this column might be in bad taste. You have been warned.

Sam Calhoun lives in a rambling farmhouse in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom with Sarah, his wife of 17 years, their six school-aged kids, and a floppy eared cocker spaniel named Jehoshaphat.The Kingdom is the remote northeast corner of the state, an area comprising Essex, Orleans and Caledonia Counties. It is bordered by the Connecticut River in the East and Jay Peak in the West. North of it is the wilderness of deepest, darkest, Canada. South is the state capitol, Montpelier. 80% of the Kingdom is covered by forest; right now 100% of the Kingdom is covered by snow. It is listed in “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.”

Nice place to visit. Pretty rugged place to live.

Mr. Calhoun is a lumberjack by trade in a time when more wood products come from Canada and China than from Vermont. He struggles dawn to dusk to eke out his living from the hardscrabble landscape.

Jehoshaphat is Sarah Calhoun’s dog but she never grooms him. Like so many cocker spaniels, his hair mats into impenetrable masses, swelling his ears to elephant size and changing his lithe and sinuous body shape to mutton.

Sam Calhoun has told Sarah to clean up the dog every morning and every night for at least a year.

She hasn’t done so and the dog is weighed down by the burden.

Finally Sam and Jehoshaphat led the disobedient Sarah to the wood shed. Mr. Calhoun laid his wife across his best splitting block and beheaded her on the spot.

Mr. Calhoun has a wide-ranging choice of tools. He could have used his Stihl chainsaw with the 30″ bar. He could have used his antique topping axe. He didn’t. He did it the old fashioned way — with a maul.

Then he washed and brushed and combed and dried the darned dog.

Mr. Calhoun told the neighbors that his wife had packed her bags and moved to California. “The land of the fruits and nuts,” he said.

The authorities might have believed Sam’s story had not Jehoshaphat waddled the four miles to the free public library. The librarian noticed there were still flecks of dried blood soaked into the freshly washed fur and called authorities.

“She just would not listen to reason,” Mr. Calhoun told the arresting officers.

The Northeast Kingdom State’s Attorney called it, “The worst form of domestic violence possible”

The story you have read is fiction. I have invented every part of it except the Northeast Kingdom which is indeed, as the National Geographic Society names it, the “most desirable place to visit” in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun exist only in my pepperoni-fueled dreams.Imagine the flack I would have taken if I had linked my story to all the Islamic jihad imagery of swarthy, hooded men with scimitars standing over humbled Westerners. Imagine the flack I would have taken if I had give the doer an ethnic name like Muzzammil Hassan and identified him as the Buffalo, NY, man who founded Bridges TV five years ago to combat the perception of Muslims as cruel promoters of terror abroad and in their own homes. I could even have written that Mr. Hassan has been arrested for beheading Aasiya Hassan, his lovely, 37 year old, disobedient wife.

Oh.

Wait.

That story would be true.