Newt Invents Ottoman For His Feet

Newt Gingrich is a man with two left feet stuck permanently...

[don't go up there!]

Newt Gingrich is an historian. Of all the Republican presidential aspirants in 2011-2040 campaigns, only Newt knows history. All other Republicans except maybe Mitt, know history through the best of all Republican historian known as Moses. Newt, alone, makes up his own.

Lately, Newt has disturbed Proximanians with his scholarly declaration that someone else  made up the Palestinian People (now known as the Proximanian "Laterians"). Now, he is himself disturbed, probably because these Invented People were not a concoction of one of his books, which you can have him sign.  Pretty much anywhere near an early primary.

Still, thanks to Newt, everyone knows that the outmoded term “Palestine” (ingeniously supplanted by the historically better Proximania^tm) never really existed. Palestine was never a state, like, say, Rhode Island, just a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Newt, being an historian, did not bother to define the Ottoman Empire, but it is probably a furniture chain in Georgia accenting the accent pieces that are big footstools. It is hard to establish the origin of the padded footstool, but the chain seems to have started in Eastern Turkey in the 1300's. By 1517, Ottomans were in every master bedroom in Jerusalem and probably the suburbs, like Tel Aviv, and any pubs named Beer-Something-Or-Other.

But it seems Newt dozed off with his feet stuck up on an Ottoman before finishing his Levant 101 syllabus.

Newt makes no reference to what came before the shepherds around the Jordan River began relaxing with their Birkenstock Gizehs up on those cushy stools. Perhaps, Newt believes that the Earth, or at least, the Mideast, was created in 1517, but, as a historian, he knows Irish Archbishop Jimmy Ussher proved that Creation predates Newt's implied date by 5521 years, squarely on a pre-NFL Sunday in October, with that famous bye after the ensuing and busy week.

This kind of confusion can spell doom for any presidential campaign. This is not like guillotining the overcrowded Supreme Court down to eight; or mixing up Iran and Iraq, which will happen in a few years anyway; or abolishing the Department of Oops, which everyone favors no matter what it means.

This is the most fundamental of stuff, especially to Republicans who need to know just how far to turn back the clock.

So, for the next debate, maybe, the Donald can ask Newt to clarify the defining foreign policy issue of the Republican Presidential campaign of December 2011: Did Ottomans, or even feet, exist prior to 1517 AD in Proximania? And who the hell owned them?

Scaley Deals Miranda Out. Defendants to get Deck of Rights Cards

It has taken him a long time, but Scaley has finally and forever finessed Miranda.

Once upon a time, criminal defendants in America were guaranteed certain Constitutional rights by the Founding Fathers.  The best one--and, admittedly, the hardest one to use--was the Right to Remain Silent.  If you're a criminal, you are probably so damned proud of how smart you are, you'll want to taunt David Caruso to his sideways, half-cocked, sun-glassed face.  If you're an innocent, you want to provide all the details of your not-guilt. Stay silent? Very hard. Talk a blue streak? You bet.

The 1966 Miranda case, along with some others Scaley didn't like, required the police to tell a suspect that he or she had Constitutional rights and to summarize what they were.  After a few fraked up cases, police started carrying cards with lawyer-approved sentences printed on them.  The whole card was shorter than your last tweet, but really helped those who dozed through Constitutional Law in their first year of law school.

The police would spank their suspect against their cruiser, read the card to their suspect and invite him or her to flush all those Founding Father assured rights down a nearby port-a-potty.  This was not called a "flushing", which would have made sense, but the better known, lawyer-word "waiver." This "waiver" became the most sought after thing in all of law enforcement.  Next to health insurance.

Generally, when you waived your rights, the police could understand that.  Your suspect might say, "Waive my rights? Sure. Them Founding Fathers didn't know shinola about crime, so phooey on them and their wigs."  Or something very close to that. After that it was, "Hey, call Dick Cheney!" and off to jail.

Not always, however, were suspects so clear about waivers.  Some got into the habit of looking skyward, scratching their chins and saying, "Hmm.  I think I maybe want a lawyer."  Or, "Perhaps not talking to you fellas would be more advisable than not."  How is a cop to know if that's serious waiver talk?

So, Scaley directed his usual mouthpiece, Tony Kennedy, clear all that up.  As of Tuesday, June 1, 2010 (mark it down and don't whine about it from behind bars if you forget), suspects are the beneficiaries of the Supreme Scaley Court's clarification of Miranda, called Berghuis v. Thompkins, which shall be referred to forever, here, as Thompkins v. Miranda.

Scaley, generous as ever, has actually enlarged upon Constitutional rights.  From now on, a suspect gets a terrific new right:  You have the right to waive the right to remain silent by neglecting to remain absolutely silent for however long you can be interrogated.

You are surely pondering this.  Does Scaley mean that if you say, "yes" to the wrong question in day two of UN-approved waterboarding, you will have to no longer remain silent?  Is that fair to the cops, who will now be getting the endless ear-beatings, not Scaley?

In the case of the soon-to-be-convicted Mr. Thompkins, he had a really good chance to waive his rights, by saying, "Of course, sirs, I waive all of my sacred rights", but he did not take that chance.  He also had a good chance to speak up, proudly and say, "I invoke my right to remain silent..."  

The Thompkins v. Miranda case, simply stated for any non-lawyers out there, stands for this proposition:  If you do not remain silent, you waive your right to remain silent.  Easy?

In a way, Thompkins, the perp, didn't miss out on much.  Under Scaley's Thompkins v. Miranda Rule, Mr. Thompkins would have waived his right to remain silent by uttering the single word "I".

What if the bewildered suspect says, "I invoke my right to counsel, mister officer"? There goes the right to remain silent.  And what good's a counsel then?

Damn, Scaley, are you sure about this?  Isn't everything even more confusing?

Well, this blog is here mostly to help Scaley out of predicaments like this one.  As of tomorrow, this blog may very well mail out to every potential criminal suspect a deck of cards that state "I choose to invoke" such-and-such sacred Constitutional right.  The cards will likely have colorful graphics; maybe a caricature of Scaley in a wig indicating, with one finger, the right being invoked; and, by the way, a fast acting poison that robs one of the power of speech upon a single touch.  For at least three hours.

Thes cards might be written in English and whatever other languages Google Translate can handle, except Spanish, since this blog supports Arizona so much.

Oh. And Joan Crawford Was Right.

This Blog rarely takes on anything controversial unless it has a solution.  The Proximania(tm) post, with its trademarked solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem, is a recent example.

So, abortion.

This admittedly old topic breached its meddling head during the healthcare debate.  Pro-abortion types wanted abortion funding included in the law, while the anti-abortion types didn't' want abortion defined as healthcare at all.  The bill past after some last minute abortion deal was made a couple Democrats happy enough to put the bill over the top.

But you know, the healthcare-abortion thing is not over.

First of all, take a breath.  (You'll need it.  This is a longish, if essential, post.)

The healthcare bill was really an insurance bill.  We are still stuck with health care firmly in the trustworthy and efficient hands of big financial services companies who dabble in health insurance, mega-profit making non-profits with licensed blue crucifixes on their chests and the governments mascaraing as insurance companies.  The term reform has never been put to such effective comic use.

Assuming that health care in the country is all about insurance, why do we mention abortion at all?  Just because we can?  Probably.

My health insurance, when I had some, did not cover any number of procedures, like curing crows' feet with botox or zapping cancer using nano-sized black holes.  We were approaching the time when obstetrics itself will no longer be covered, because lawyers made it too expensive to underwrite for any sane insurance company, let alone the ones we have in this country. 

So, how doe we solve this problem?

When the Constitution and its johnny-come-lately Bill of Rights were ratified, fetuses had few, if any, rights.  They could not vote in elections; own property on their own, including people; serve in the armed forces (Don't Ask Don't Tell being totally unnecessary in such cases); drive cars, which we didn't have anyway; take jobs away from illegal aliens; or much of anything.  Women didn't really have any more rights than that, except that they counted five fifths when it came to counting for gerrymandering purposes.  And men were the ones who said how many rights women and fetuses had, or, let's face it, didn't have.

Not much guidance there, as Scaley and his Goths would tell you.

If women had been child-bearing men, instead of just women, this would be easy.  No man would allow any government anywhere near his Privates, or at least wouldn't tell.  And no real man would vote to allow governmental interference in something that important.  But women, like it or not NOW, are not men.  And men have said that child-bearing is so important to running a country and raising a decent army that society's men should decide how to run child-bearing, since they have done so well at country-running.  (Child-rearing is being handled adequately these days if you don't cotton to evolution.)

After the Civil War (or The Glorious if Aborted War of Liberation, depending on where you are from), men passed a Constitutional amendment giving equal protection of the laws to...  "Any Person".  So who's a person?  Slaves, for sure, not that it mattered for decades; women, mostly, not that it mattered for decades; cows, dogs, cats, horses, fish, no; really smart dolphins, maybe.  Really rich Corporations, yes, and it matters.  Fetuses?  Hmm.  It doesn't say.

The Supreme Court, when it used to actually think about such things, pulled a Solomon and figuratively split the fetus into three parts.  One part had more rights than a woman, one had fewer and the final part had about the same as a woman, meaning men could dictate the handling of the bodies of both. 

Pretty fair, you'd say, but why do female-sexed fetuses get to have more rights than female-sexed human beings?  Don't get all up in a logical tizzy.  All will be settled in the end.

So, there were still those, then and now, who were horrified at this fetus tri-sectioning.  We are morally offended when a dog or cat is sectioned and served in a Chinese restaurant.  These folks seemed to think that the fetus from the instant God, personally, spliced a couple cells together, had way more rights than the woman around it.  Section the women, instead! they cried.  Cooler heads prevailed and women largely got to remain in one piece, except for the uterus, which men can reach for society's purposes.

What a mess.  Especially if you are a woman, fetus or a mass of pre-existing conditions in need of health insurance coverage this week.

The solution is to follow Scaley to his logical conclusion.  For the all-male Founders, women and fetuses really had no rights to begin with and neither should be considered as real a "person" as a corporation, say, except for counting heads, in whomever located, for the census.  So, the government gets the women.

Well, that's just not a good idea.  That's like herding cats across the Yellow River.  The government doesn't really need all of the women.  No, I don't mean 35% of them, from puberty to 40 and especially Megan Fox.  Just section out the uterus and ship it to a big government complex, like Fort Knox or the CDC, since it so vital.  Do the sectioning of the women a day or two after birth when you have control of the whole body.  Surely, men are smart enough now to figure out how to use the damned things, if they have a few million decent sized beakers in which to hold them.

But maybe not.  If the beakers don't work, just take the whole body, declare it a Uterine Holding Device, UPS it to Fort Knox, or, better yet, Blue Cross or United or Aetna since they can run things twice as well as any government.  That's good:  We get to privatize the whole operation.  Once, the Uterine Holding Devices (UHD's) arrive at the Insurance Company Uterus Storage and Utilization Faculty, they can be stored there until they are needed by the government for fetus fabrication. 

Mind you, the UHD's will be fed really well--corn meal would be an excellent choice except it goes into gasahol, so soybean is next best--and clothed in plaid skirts and white blouses from re-tasked Victoria Secret.  (Presumably, silk negligees, rope and accessories will carry seriously diminished profit margins.)  The UHD's will be supplied with mental soothing via Lifetime and "Twilight" movies.  Luckily, they need never worry about the fate of printed books or evolution.

What if the governmental conception leads to a life-threatening pregnancy?  Oh, hell, there are plenty more UHD's where that one came from. We're not China, after all.

No system is perfect and some of these UHD may escape.  To be safe ban those metal hangers, as Joan Crawford so presciently demanded years before she even ran Pepsi.  We are banning the more harmful incandescent light bulbs, so hangers should be no big deal.

(And, guys, pray every night that UHD's don't start thinking and voting for themselves.)

The Constitution is Frozen in Time. Unless It Isn't.

My previous post may have glossed over the real issue decided by Justice Tony and the Scalia Court, as it is now called, on January 21, 2010.  Not intentionally... Okay, intentionally, but only because it would be complicated and, worse, sillier than a Newt Gingrich essay on Family Values.  And I hadn't figured it out.  But this is too important a ruling to leave unexplained.

Does the Constitution protect all forms of speech?  If I am a Scaliaist, I'd have to say, "It did last Thursday."

The Constitution is not an organic document, except that it was printed on organic matter, but it was dead organic matter.  And the Constitution is like that.  It only incorporated ideas, modes, mechanical devices and the very law of the late 18th century, as well as all manner of different spelling of any given word.

Simply put, the First Amendment is from that time.  It protects freedom of speech, the Gutenberg press and religion, as long as God is a Christian.  We are only interested in speech for the moment.

Scaliaists, such as I, have long held that the Constitution and its first batch of Amendments only restrict the Federal government in restricting rights as they were in 1787 through, 1791.  That is when Virginia got around to ratifying the bedrock Bill of Some Limited Rights. Of course, the Constitution and the various Rights were discussed ad nauseam (the use of Latin is protected, of course, if not desirable) even before being officially adopted.

Cars were not invented until after 1791, so hiding something in your car should not be protected by the Fourth Amendment, unless it is crystal meth, which did not exist then either.  Hence, the Fourth Amendment does not protect you from a police search of your car because your tail light was broken.  Tail lights did exist in 1791, even if they burned whale oil and were often cracked, so they are acceptable rationale for avoiding the Fourth Amendment.

But speech is the key to democracy.  Everybody talked in 1791.  So talking is protected, unless you yell fire in a crowded theater, unless there really is a fire, fires having existed in 1791, too.  Everybody who could talk or write with a quill pen bitched about the government, so those modes are protected. Using a hand-operated printing press is protected and so is shouting like a town-crier.  But what about on-demand movies showing up on your TV with an honest appraisal of the demon Hillary Clinton.

Well, demons did exist, so that part is fine by the First Amendment.  Hillary herself didn't, so she's not protected.  Many people would speak on-demand, so on-demand is protected.  But TV?  Including, those really nice 55" LCD or Plasma sets at Best Buy?  That is not so obvious, is it?  They are sort of like really clear billboards, but billboards only existed to tell you how few people lived in your town in 1791 and never counted the local demons.

Here you see the Scalia Court dilemma.  This stuff is complex.  TV's weren't around in 1791, so anything appearing on them can't be protected by the First Amendment, unless the screen shows only a wood plank with the population of your town on it.  That means Congress can regulate speech, including corporations' (they having existed in 1791), that shows up on TV or even the Internet, the invention of which I can remember myself and thank you Al Gore.

But that is not the point.  We need more money for political campaigns, especially since that guy, who shall remain nameless to us Scaliaists, except maybe as code-named The Big O, came along raising scads of millions on Al Gore's invention.  So never mind what we Scaliaists have said in the past.  Things change.  TV is the town crier of the day.  That Web thing is like a printing press only in the clouds

So.  Let the corporations speak or, since they don't actual have voices or quill pens, let them pay unlimited amounts of money to have politicians and, one hopes, bloggers speak for them.

I guess it wasn't so complicated after all.  Just silly.

Hurry! This Blog for Sale

Now that the Supreme Court has said that corporations can contribute as much as they want to exercise their free speech, I am offering this Blog for sale to any corporation, but especially AIG, Goldman Sachs, Exxon-Mobile, Walmart and any American-based Chinese Red Army subsidiary.  (I'd include Amazon and Google, too, but I've kind of sold the right side of the blog to them  already).

What free speech is more free than a blog?  And its influence can be virtually unlimited.  (I said "can" be.)

In freeing heretofore politically mute corporations, Justice Anthony ("Tony" to his corporate friends) Kennedy mentioned this blog--though not by name, I'm still sure it was this one--as a reason to give corporations unbridled right to free speech, but especially political speech. 

So, come on, Corporations.  Don't waste it all on politicians who won't stay bought longer than Conan O'Brian.  My blog, you can keep.

Maybe a consortium can buy my blog.  Realizing that free speech is going to be very expensive, I invite all health insurance companies can get together and buy this blog, and I, at least, might waive all preconditions.

With freedom, too, comes competition.  Justice Tony has removed the shackles that have kept corporations powerless to influence political campaigns for ages and they will be eager to exercise their most basic of human rights.  Corporations can now pour unlimited money into speech, especially since Tiger Woods doesn't get any.  With the decision itself is barely cold, does it seem I am acting inappropriately quickly?  You bet.  I am worried sick that some of their billions will be siphoned off in the usual and less enriching ways before it finds its way to me and this blog. For example:

• Congressman will take a leaf from NASCAR and wear hundreds of logo-laden badges on their jackets, ties and slacks.  Some may only wear one, but exclusivity is very expensive.
• Checks to Presidential campaigns for $100,000,000 or so can say "Please don't regulate banks" on the memo line.
• Corporations can now supply free campaign Jets to Senatorial candidates, but, in the name of disclosure, must carry corporate brands on their tails.  Not the planes, the candidates.
  
• Corporations can pay blog writers (hint) to write speeches for Vice Presidential candidates.

I had better stop with the suggestions already.  I want the sell this damned blog first.