Scaley Has Jon-Bob Spank Terror-Huggers

Antonin Scaley's black-robed possee dealt terrorist-huggers everywhere a major setback.

Ruling 6 good to 3 not-invited-next-time, the Court ruled that if you give a terrorist group advice or training, you are just as bad as they are.

Scaley's nominal Chief Justice, John Roberts ("Jon-Bob" to friends of this blog), was assigned to write down Scaleys' thoughts on the matter.

Justice Stephen Breyer ("the Ice Man", for obvious reasons), was allowed to disagree in public.  The Ice Man read his dissent aloud so FOX Spews would not lose the text completely.

TBO sent some minions to agree with Scaley's view, although it is not clear where he could find any.  Through them, TBO claimed that "material support", under the Be Unkind To Terrorists statute, meant pretty much anything.  TBO now has more power over Americans that Dick Cheney or The Alice of the Tea Party of Wonderland, Sarah Palin.

According to Jon-Bob, here's it works.  TBO scans the globe (Mars starts next term.  And ha ha).  He then points a finger at a bunch of Sihks, say, singing acapella to their favorite candidate on a Charleston, SC street corner.  That is enough to designate them as a terrorist group, even if TBO was just indicating that he liked the hue of the lead singer's raghe... turban.

Now that, the group is a designated terrorist group, they are off limits for any training or advice, because anything that helps the terrorists, ups their morale, makes them happy--or even less miserable--or better informed is now a waterboarding offence.

Examples Jo-Bob probably meant would be:

Showing a terrorist how to inflate his new Nike's on the subway;

Teaching a terrorist how to surrender;

Giving any New York cabbie directions to Yankee Stadium;

Paying any New York cabbie;

Adding terrorists to your nightly prayer list;

Putting a soaking wet towel on your head in 99 degree heat;

Suggesting, just in passing, that a terrorist consider making peace with infidels;

Broadcasting Sean Hannity (no, wait, it said "better informed");

Showing stills of any Megan Fox scene in which she wears a boostier in "Jonus Hex";

Showing stills of Megan and Brian Austin Green with BAG's face photoshopped out and replaced with that or your favorite blogger;

Explaining a Scaley Court decision;

Offering a terrorist five tiny pretzels on a three-hour USAirways flight that will connect through Philadelphia to anywhere useful;

Feel free to add ideas in comments below.  Do not worry, though, no terrorists read this blog, because it seems to be a big damned secret.

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.

Supreme Court: A Cross is Almost Pagan

At the Supreme Court, that's what Tony ("That's-Why-The-Other-Guy's-Scaley") Kennedy basically wrote in his majority opinion.  The cross in question is in Middle of Nowhere, California, erected as part of a memorial to WWI's fallen.

The VFW put it up ages ago, when the US was still a Christian country. At the time, everyone knew what it meant and loved it, not that they ever saw the thing, it being in the Mojave Desert. You had as much chance of seeing that cross as a Wampanoag does a thousand wind turbines off Nantucket on a foggy day.

The cross is only a little taller than Megan Fox who you would miss completely if she were wearing flats...  Okay.  The cross is not even as high as, even if as inert as, Nichole Kidman's forehead.

The problem lay in its desert home being on public land, that is, land owned by The Government.  Now, had the land been owned by Arizona, we would not be talking about it at all, that state being beyond constitutional enforcement.

Some atheist federal judges from WhereElseButt, California, perhaps projecting their own guilt, said that, in the late, late afternoon, when the sun is low, you can make out a shadow that looks like Jesus' big toe way low down on the the cross.

(Oh, don't go planning a pilgrimage already! It's poetic license.)

The upshot is that the judges ordered the cross covered with Chinese Drywall, because no will use the boatloads of it sitting in Long Beach and, come on, like it can hurt Jesus.

It fell to the few remaining Christians in California to come up with a scheme to molify the judges.  The goverment would sell the hillock with the cross impaled on it to a non-government, maybe one of those free-speech loving corporation Justice Tony loves so much.  The rogue circuit judges were not fooled one bit and did everything but nail up the drywall themselves.

The Christians looked at the Supreme Court of the United States and liked their chances at 5 to 4.  A lot.

Justice Tony, perhaps with Scaley's whispering, figured it out.  The cross wasn't about Christianity at all.  The cross was Latin, the Roman culture before Sophia Loren.  This was the culture that crucified malcontents for kicks thirty  years before Christmas Day went wholesale; the culture that put Spartacus, Tony Curtis and so many of their slave army up on crosses they had to use Velcro.

The cross is an ancient, way-pre-Christian symbol evoking all the thousands of miniture pre-Christian crosses planted across Europe where Ameican soldiers were buried in presumably Latin ceremonies after de-empiring the Germans.  Those small Latin crosses were only used to define the uncountable rows and photograph really well.  Nobody's religion, or lack thereof, was involved.

And besides, Tony (the Justice not the Curtis) says, the cross would be someone's private property before anyone actually saw Jesus' shadowy if sacred big toe and built a church around it.

Arizona: Constitution Not Welcome Here, Either

Apologies in advance:  It's the Constitution and some history again.

Not even a little interested?

Arizona so agrees with you.

So does The Scaley Supreme Court, as it is known on this Blog.  Readers of Empty Glass Full (or Scaley's own My Glass Full Yours Just Wrong) have gained, as a result, a special insight into our Supreme Court's take on the US Constitution.

The basic logic of Scaley's definitive Originalistic Constitutional interpretaion is this:  If it wasn't there for the thinking when the Founding Fathers were originally do the thinking in 1787, it isn't covered by the Constitution, or, in the case of the famously dubbed The Top Ten Amendments of 1789.  The 14th Amendment, important in the Arizona discussion, would only apply to stuff around in 1866, 1868 at the latest.

The easy part first:  There was no Arizona in 1787 or 1789.  The United States didn't even own the property then, and didn't even know there was anything worth buying beyond the Mississippi.  Therefore, the original Constitution and The Bill of Rights can not apply directly to Arizona.

Bad as that may sound, it acutally is wonderful news, since there were only a few dozen Mexicans and Indians living thereabouts and this is all about giving them no rights at all.

So what about Arizona by 1866?  Deceptively good question.

In 1848, the US had made a friendly deal with Mexico in which the US got the norther half of Mexico and Mexico got to keep what was left of its army, its capital and a warehouse full of tequilla.  In 1853, the US bought another sliver of Mexico, including Tuscon, Yuma and half the Gila River, and referred to that little purchase as the Territory of Arizona. They picked the a name by joining two Indian words meaning "Last Little Water Before LA".

The final shape of Arizona was set when it developed multiple-personality disorder.  It became two territories during the Civil War (or the War to Promote Gray History Month, depending on your governor), one organized by the Union in 1863 without slaves and the other claimed by the Confederates beginning in 1861 with as many slaves as you could get to grow cotton in the desert.  The Confederacy gave up its claim to Arizona along with its claim to the beautiful city of Richmond, all those valuable slaves and everything else in 1865.

At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted for adoption in 1866, Arizona was a mere territory, putting off statehood until three years after Barry Goldwater was born, probably unnaturally, in 1909.  This being so, the Framers of the 14th Amendment knew about Arizona, vaguely if at all, as a territory but not a real state.

Under the Scaley view, the 14th Amendment can not apply to the State of Arizona, since there was no more a State of Arizona than a Prius, an iPad or a Wonder Bra when the amendment was kicked around and put down in writing.  Don't even try to suggest that the amendment applies just because Arizona The Territory did exist in 1868.  Assuming, arguendo (as Scaley might himself write in the Latin of the cross), that were true, just try and find a Territory named Arizona today.  Go on and good luck.  There isn't one.

Thus, neither the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, nor the 14th Amendment apply to the State of Arizona.  Arizona can do what it damned will pleases.  The State of Arizona could, if it wanted to, outlaw anybody doing anything, including pastry asthmatics swinging clubs at the sand or tall black guys shooting hoops indoors, but it would like to stick to stopping, frisking and, generally, outlawing the beyond-tan walking the streets or riding to off-the-books day jobs in crowded pick-ups.

For now.

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.)