“Did he mean this as a joke?”
Some back story: A few election cycles ago, conservatives formed Take Back Vermont in response to the then-new law that established civil unions for same-sex couples.
Take Back Vermont wanted to do more than repeal civil unions. It was wanted to shackle the affluent, liberal, Democratic flatlanders who were changing both the laws and the values of the state.
Looking back more than decade later we see the movement was a flop. Liberal Vermont still flirts with socialized medicine (bad) and has done what it should have done in the first place by passing a marriage law that allows any loving, unrelated couple to marry (good).
The Take Our State Back folks have scattered.
A Georgetown Professor of Constitutional Law told the CBS Sunday Morning audience that it’s time to “Take our country back, from the Constitution.”
Didn’t he learn anything from Vermont?
Professor Louis Seidman wants all of us (and presumably all of the lawyers he trains) to stop paying attention to the Constitution and instead consider what process and policies we need to move the country forward.
“To be clear, I don’t think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago.” Professor Seidman said.
Oh. This could be good. We’ll keep the all parts I like and dump the ones I don’t?
Cool.
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That’s not very inspiring. Congress has an approval rating of about minus 362 percent. Let ’em get real jobs and leave the rest of us alone.
“The Congress shall have Power … To borrow money on the credit of the United States.” I’m thinking the purse snatcher who charged the big screen TV on Anne’s credit card is Congress’ stupid younger brother. Let’s jettison that one, too.
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Oh, no. In these Patriot Days, we need to deep-six that. Treason against the United States must, must consist of whatever the President says it is. I can dig it.
Except. Except as dead white guy John Adams wrote in his letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Zealots often use that quote for religious purposes but I see the rest of the words. Mr. Adams believed that the U.S. Constitution was inadequate to govern the immoral.
The world is full of politicians like Professor Seidman who seduce us with promises of loose morals and anarchy.
The danger was summed up by an Egyptian protester yesterday: “the president must resign and a new constitution must be written” to replace the Morsi sham. Egypt’s current Sharia-based document replaced the 1971 Mubarek charter.
If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document,” Professor Seidman said.
Alrighty then. No more irrelevant dead white guys.
All you Muslims, listen up. The Koran is no longer your law. All you Englishmen, listen up. The Magna Carta is null and void. All you African Americans, listen up. Professor Seidman has retracted the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Democracy depends upon its people not acting out of blatant self interest,” Glenn Peacock wrote on the Internoodle recently.
“We are doomed,” Rufus said.
Perhaps not. Maybe Professor Seidman’s talk was simply a Saturday Night Live skit that got to the wrong network.
That surcharge is tied to a lawsuit settled last July. Visa, MasterCard and a group of other large financial firms agreed Friday to forfeit a total of $7.25 billion to settle a colossal anti-trust action. The defendants will offer cash payments worth $6.05 billion in total; Visa and Mastercard agreed to reduce their “swipe fees.” That’s the other $1.2 billion. As part of the agreement, retailers will soon be able impose a surcharge of up to 4% for credit card transactions in all but 9 or 10 states. Such surcharges will also apply to cardholders from other networks, like Discover and American Express.
CBS has scheduled 60 Minutes not even to start until 8 p.m. here in the eastern time zones tonight. The Texans and the Patriots started duking it out in Boston at 4 and no one figures that game will end early.
I further predict I will not get a smartphone in 2013.