Tag Archives: Constitution

Equal Justice Under the Law – Unless You’re Gay

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Our Governor is not the worst homophobe in America but he is a contender.

Our Commonwealth is not the worst in its intolerance of gays but it’s got nothing to be proud of either.

In Loudoun County, we have a Board of Supervisors indifferent to the fact that one of its members, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, is a gay bashing demagogue.

I wrote each member of the Board of Supervisors to ask them to disavow this bigotry.  Our Board has no shame in its silence. As that old 60s tune went, “Hello Darkness my old friend.”  Janet Clarke wrote she felt no obligation to respond at all.  And she didn’t.  By their silence, may we know them. Continue reading →

Today

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Today, realistic Republicans are secretly praying that the Supreme Court will respond to the arguments presented in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases before it with a broad ruling finding a constitutional right for all Americans to marry the person they love.

That is the only way of avoiding a foreseeable future in which Republicans will be forced to either repeatedly alienate the rapidly growing supermajority of Americans who support equality, or repeatedly betray their own aging base, that angry 36% demanding the “right” to forcibly shove society into still the coat which fitted him when a boy.

If the Court announces a sweeping ruling in June that makes marriage for all the law of the land, GOP strategists can breathe a sigh of relief – they will then be able to deflect the rage of their base toward those nine rogue “unelected judges.”

The alternative future will be a punishing series of state battles over the next four, eight, twelve years and beyond, in which they will not have the luxury of avoiding the issue, however much they might wish they could do so.

In either case, marriage equality is inevitable.

If you want your party to live, pray hard.

Young “Strangers” in a hostile land?

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My Aunt married an immigrant from Peru who became a US Citizen by volunteering as a young man to fight for this nation in World War II.

Uncle Jack was a hard-working, tall, athletic, and distinguished looking man but his Latino accented English and facial features invited discrimination from Nativist Americans.

Jefferson wrote that “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

About ten years later, the promise of this declaration shrunk in the context of our nation’s constitution, hollowed out by excluding coverage of “these rights” to slaves, to women and, basically, to persons without property. Continue reading →

Theists and Atheists – an overheard Dialogue

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Pastor Don Prange, St. James UCC, Lovettsville

Pastor Don Prange, St. James UCC, Lovettsville

Recently, Pastor Don Prange hosted atheists at St. James Church in Lovettsville for a dialogue with his congregation on “evolution weekend.”

You may fairly ask how one can reconcile an atheist who does not believe in God attending a church where the congregation does believe in God.

Pastor Don explained where he thought there was common ground.

He preached, “Jesus and his followers were among the first A-Theists, challenging the Theistic claims of Caesar and religious collaborators … affirming a way of life built around the principles of compassion, justice mercy and peace.”

“Collusions,” Pastor Don said, “between religious and political forces have too often created oppressive realities that abound in the world of today … sometimes contributing to a contemporary spirit of Atheism we acknowledge today.” Continue reading →

Live fire on the range

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On the firing range at Mount Weather

The FEMA facility, Mount Weather in Northern Virginia off Route 601, is where Vice President Cheney sat out 9-11 underground. Above ground, there is a shooting range and I went there to shoot an AK-47 Assault Rifle – now some time ago.

This name, AK47, comes from the second version of an assault weapon designed by Soviet Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947. When fired in full-automatic mode, this AR fires continuously for every trigger pull. There have of course been design improvements and model changes since its origin.  The magazine’s capacity is 30 rounds. It can shoot 100 rounds a minute over an effective range of 400 meters.

You no doubt have seen movie stars shoving fully loaded magazines in cinematic fight scenes. But loading the magazine beforehand is something that has to be done carefully. You place a round between the feed lips until it locks inside the magazine, and you repeat this until the magazine is full. Like I said, 30 rounds. At the range, several of us loaded magazines for each other before we shot. Continue reading →

“Militia” is not one of the branches of government

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The fundamental misunderstanding on the part of some Second Amendment absolutists, explained.

Editor, Purcellville Gazette:

Jim Schatz, Nick Donnangelo and their like-minded allies do their cause no favors when they characterize the right to own firearms as the right to armed insurrection against a duly elected government.

Continue reading →

Worst argument ever

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Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

In their opening briefs, this was the reasoning offered by both Clement in defense of Section 3 of the “Defense of Marriage” Act and Charles Cooper in defense of Prop 8: Because opposite sex couples are burdened with the “unique social difficulty” of frequently producing children by accident, and same sex couples “don’t present a threat of irresponsible procreation,” same sex couples and their children should be excluded from the security and benefits of marriage. This is what anti-equality American taxpayers are getting for $3 million in public funds?

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THE PRIVATE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS – NONSENSE

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Citizen with an M60

“The notion that registering gun purchases somehow violates the Constitution is unmitigated nonsense,”

so said former Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger. He also said that

“[n]othing outrages me more than the conduct of the National Rifle Association (‘NRA’).”

Former NRA Vice President Neal Knox once said that the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were possibly “part of a conspiracy to enact gun control” and “could have been created for the purpose of disarming the people of the free world.” This past week, the NRA has eclipsed its ordinary standard for bad taste by attacking the President’s children, asking why the federal government provides them Secret Service protection but not other children in our public schools. Anyone want to suggest a distinction that the NRA might understand? Continue reading →

What it says, what they’d like it to say

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The constitution revised (ht: Daily Kos)

Many local letters to the editor, many of them a reaction to the Newtown gun massacre, provide evidence of a coordinated campaign of terror directed at advocates of common sense gun regulation. They also point towards a broad-based constitutional miseducation campaign. For example, Nick Donnangelo writes in the Jan 11 Purcellville Gazette:

The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting or target shooting, it is the cornerstone of the system of checks and balances found in the Constitution. In it is the right and even the duty to defend liberty – by all means possible at the ballot box but by force if necessary; not from ducks or deer or from common criminals, but from “uncommon criminals,” armed bureaucrats who abuse their power and usurp economic and political freedom. The Founders saw security in arming people with the same weapons as the military had…

Mr. Donnangelo must not have read the whole thing, including Article III Section. 3.

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How “gun control” got its start

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He was a large man, wearing a combat-style uniform, beret, and heavy boots. He stood outside the door, watching people entering and exiting. One witness, who had summoned the police, said that the man’s presence made him feel intimidated, a feeling echoed by others in the building. When asked by a reporter what he was doing there, the man replied that he didn’t understand why they were trying to make it look like he was doing something wrong. He was just standing there, he said, serving his community.

Now, when considering that these witnesses felt “intimidated” by a man in a combat-style uniform standing outside their workplace and holding a nightstick, one might wonder what sorts of things other people might have going on in their lives to make them stand outside a building watching people like that?

Continue reading →