Tag Archives: Founding Fathers

So, just who really needs an assault rifle?

December 16, 2015 kanelis2012 2 Comments

Let’s talk about guns for a moment or two.

A Rhode Island congressman, Democrat David Cicilline, has pitched the Assault Weapons Ban of 2015 to his colleagues in the House of Representatives.

The ban has drawn the support of a number of Democrats. However, Republicans control Capitol Hill, which likely means the assault weapon ban won’t see the light of day.

Cicilline issued a statement: “Assault weapons are designed for the sole purpose of killing as many people as quickly as possible,” he told The Hill newspaper. “We need to do everything we can to reduce the toll of gun violence by keeping these weapons out of our communities.”

Here’s what I believe will happen to the bill, although I likely am wrong about some of the nitty-gritty details of the debate.

They’re going to tell us that the Second Amendment says categorically that the right to “keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” They’ll look past the first part of the amendment that talks about a “well-regulated Militia.” I’m not going to argue the point here, given that I believe the amendment was written poorly in the first place; it seems to contain a non sequitur … but that perhaps is just me.

The congressman’s bill would allow those who currently possess an assault weapon to keep it, but it could become difficult for someone to sell it.

So, does this proposed legislation water down the Second Amendment to an unacceptable level? I do not believe it does.

Then again, I’m not in Congress and I don’t have to listen to the wishes of constituents who think otherwise. In fact, an ABC News poll says Americans now oppose a ban on assault weapons, believing that authorities are unable to stop “lone wolf” attacks by someone toting an assault weapon.

Despite my concern about the verbiage contained in the Second Amendment, I accept the notion that gun ownership is a protected right. I own a couple of weapons. They’re hidden.

The notion I cannot accept is that assault weapons are part of the package envisioned by the Founders who wrote the Second Amendment — in the late 18th century.

Nice try, Rep. Cicilline.

legal news, political news, State news

Always a political back story

December 10, 2015 kanelis2012

I am a strong believer in what the Founding Fathers intended by creating an independent federal judiciary.

They gave the president the authority to nominate federal judges for lifetime jobs, pending approval by the U.S. Senate. The intent, as I’ve always understood it, was to de-politicize the judicial branch of government.

It works.

Judge blocks order

Then again, politics always seems to be part of the subplot of every federal judicial decision.

U.S. District Judge David Godbey, for example, today struck down Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s ban on Syrian refugees coming to Texas. Paxton cited security concerns in asking for the temporary restraining order. Godbey ruled within hours of the request that Paxton had failed to demonstrate that the refugees posed any kind of threat.

Godbey wrote, according to the Texas Tribune: “The Court finds that the evidence before it is largely speculative hearsay,” the judge wrote. “The [state] has failed to show by competent evidence that any terrorists actually have infiltrated the refugee program, much less that these particular refugees are terrorists intent on causing harm.”

So, it’s fair to ask: Is this judge sitting on the federal bench because a liberal Democratic president, Barack Obama, appointed him? No. He was selected in 2003 by Republican President George W. Bush to serve the Northern District of Texas. Paxton, let’s point out, is a Republican as well.

Does it really matter, then, whether a judge gets picked by a Democrat or a Republican? It shouldn’t. Judges take an oath to uphold the Constitution without regard to political favor. They do, remember, have a lifetime job.

But the politics of this particular issue — the refugee crisis and the political debate swirling all over it — causes one to look carefully at who’s making these decisions.

Judge Godbey appears to have put the law above his political leanings.

International news

We are a nation of refugees

November 23, 2015 kanelis2012

The debate over how — or whether — to welcome refugees to our land is continuing at full throttle.

It is dismaying to hear talk from presidential candidates that we should slam the door shut on Syrians — or Muslims — out of fear that some of them might be terrorists intent on harming Americans.

President Obama has declared several times, “That’s not who we are.”

Well, who are we?

By my reckoning, we are a nation founded and built by refugees.

You’ve learned about these individuals. They sailed to the New World to flee religious and political oppression. They came here in search of a new life. They encountered the indigenous population here and were met with mixed feelings by their new “hosts.”

The refugees persevered throughout most of the 17th century and into the 18th century. They rebelled eventually against the empire from which they had fled. They launched a revolution. The fighting ended in 1781 and a nation was created.

Those refugees then crafted a government built on a document that specified certain things. One of them would be that they would apply no religious test for those seeking political office.

However, some politicians today actually have said in the current climate that people of a certain religion are not “qualified” to seek public office. That’s not who we are, either.

Do we intend to live in fear? Are we doing to forsake the very principles on which those first refugees founded this great nation?

How about we take a break, look inward at just who we are as a people — as a nation?

How might those first refugees think of what has happened to their descendants and their reaction to world events?

national news, political news, religious news

Religion takes center stage

September 26, 2015 kanelis2012 2 Comments

Bobby Jindal says Donald Trump isn’t really a Christian.

Ben Carson said — initially, at least — that a Muslim isn’t fit to be president.

Mike Huckabee says Barack Obama is trying to “criminalize” Christianity and that the president is a “pretend” Christian.

Can we stop — please! — with the religion rhetoric?

Jindal was just the latest to ridicule another Republican presidential candidate’s statement of faith. Trump had spoken to the Values Voter Summit and proclaimed his deep Christian faith. Jindal followed him and said Trump has never read the Bible and that he believes only in himself.

Religion has no place here

I kind of get where Jindal, the Louisiana governor, is going with the Trump jabs. Trump opened himself up to the ridicule by proclaiming to a group of zealous conservatives that he’s one of them. Jindal, I suppose, has the right to challenge one of his rivals’ assertions in that regard.

But this continual back and forth regarding candidates’ faith is getting tiresome and, frankly, it misses a critical point about electing the next president of the United States.

The point is that the president is head of a secular state and government. We can argue until hell freezes over about what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution. But the finished document is as secular as it can possibly be.

The First Amendment spells it out. Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion, it says. Isn’t that enough evidence of what the founders intended when they established the Bill of Rights in the nation’s government document?

So, let’s cut the talk about who’s a real Christian?

It does not matter.

military news, State news

No takeover is imminent

July 14, 2015 kanelis2012

Jade Helm 15 is about to commence in Texas.

Despite what some nut jobs have put out there, the U.S. military is not about to take over the state and hand it over to international spies.

Do not listen to the goofballs who actually persuaded Gov. Greg Abbott to order the Texas State Guard to “monitor” the activities of the Army, Navy and Air Force special forces who’ll be conducting the exercises.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/07/jade-helm-15-no-that-helicopter-is-not-coming-for-you.html/

It’s going to be all right.

The exercise was announced some months back and the Internet then jumped to life with conspiracy theories about what it all meant to some individuals and groups. As the Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell notes, one of the nuttier notions involves the Alamo: the United Nations declared the old mission a Unesco World Heritage Site, which apparently sealed it for some. Anything that involves the U.N. has got to be bad news for Texas, they feared.

The founding fathers didn’t get it perfect when they drafted and then ratified the U.S. Constitution. One thing they got right, though, was to build in a checks-and-balances system that’s designed to prevent one branch of government from getting too powerful.

President Obama knows all of this. So does the Pentagon brass. Even the federal judiciary, which has come under fire lately because of some controversial Supreme Court rulings, understands it. Congress knows its place, too.

Let the troops come to Texas to conduct their exercises.

It’s going to be OK. Honest.

legal news, national news, political news

Change the federal judicial system? Please, no

July 9, 2015 kanelis2012

What is it with some American politicians?

A court ruling or two doesn’t go their way and they want to toss aside one of the basic tenets of our federal government? They want to elect federal judges, make them stand for “retention” if they make a decision that upsets some of us?

That’s the view of a leading so-called “conservative” U.S. senator who’s also running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Take it away, Ted Cruz of Texas.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/ted-cruz-chris-matthews-supreme-court-119891.html

Cruz jousted this week with MSBNC’s Chris Matthews over the setup of the federal judiciary. Cruz doesn’t like the two recent Supreme Court rulings that (a) upheld the Affordable Care Act and (b) legalized gay marriage in the United States.

The junior senator from Texas now thinks Supreme Court justices should stand for retention to enable voters a chance to decide if they want them to keep their jobs.

Matthews, not surprisingly, went semi-ballistic — which is part of his shtick. He brought up the Bush v. Gore decision that settled the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop the Florida recount. Texas Gov. George W. Bush was leading by 537 votes at that moment over Vice President Al Gore. Gov. Bush was awarded Florida’s electoral votes, which were enough to elect him president of the United States by a single electoral vote.

The five Republican-appointed justices’ overruled the four dissents cast by the Democratic-appointed justices. Politics? Gosh, do you think?

Conservatives hailed that decision. And why not? It was all done according to precisely the manner allowed by the U.S. Constitution. Some of us might not have liked the outcome, but that’s how it goes. The justices made the call.

Cruz didn’t object then, Matthews reminded him.

The nation’s founders set up a system in which the federal judiciary is intended to be free of political pressure. The president appoints judges and Supreme Court justices, who then are subject to approval by the Senate. They get lifetime jobs and, therefore, are able to rule according to how they interpret the Constitution.

This idea that we should now subject justices to the political will of the people is simply not in keeping with what the founders intended when they wrote the Constitution.

Political conservatives, such as Sen. Cruz, keep harping on “original intent.” Well, the founders’ “original intent” was to separate the judicial branch of government from the political tug-of-war that exists in the legislative and executive branches.

Cruz said he is “reluctant to call for elections,” and said it “makes him sad.” He added that he has made that call because “a majority of the justices are not honoring their judicial oaths.”

Yes they are, senator.

Let’s leave the judicial system alone.

religious news

A ‘Christian nation’? Never have been one

July 6, 2015 kanelis2012

I heard it said over the weekend that “we aren’t a Christian nation … anymore.”

It took me aback.

We’ve been hearing a lot of that of late, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that state bans on gay marriage violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and the “equal protection clause” contained within it. Therefore, gay marriage should be made legal in all the states, the court said.

Back to the point: Are we a Christian nation? Have we ever been one?

No and no.

I keep reading the U.S. Constitution and so help me, I cannot find the word “Christian” anywhere in it. Some of my friends on the right keep asserting that if the Constitution doesn’t say something specifically, then it’s not germane to a constitutional discussion. A former colleague of mine keeps asserting, for instance, that the Constitution doesn’t even mention “marriage,” but it does mention “the right to keep and bear arms.” That’s his way of affirming that the Second Amendment’s literal verbiage carries weight over the court’s broader interpretation of what’s allowed and what’s prohibited.

I am quite aware of the argument that the founders were driven by religious principles. I remain undecided, though, on the issue of whether they were devout believers in Jesus Christ, as some have asserted, or whether they were deists who believed in a more ecumenical God, or supreme being or “higher power.”

I also am quite aware that after considerable debate at the constitutional convention that produced our governing framework that they produced a document that is devoid of religious references … except for one mention. It says — in Article VI, Paragraph 3 — that there shall be “no religious test” for anyone seeking public office.

The founders’ immediate forebears fled Europe to escape religious persecution and to be free of state-mandated religion. That’s why they wrote a Constitution that spells out quite clearly that this would be a secular nation, governed by laws written by fallible human beings.

A Christian nation? Well, we’re a nation comprising citizens who are mostly Christian. They remain free to worship as they please. So are non-Christians, just as it’s always been since the beginning of this great republic.

God bless America.

legal news

Three cheers for appointed federal judges

June 26, 2015 kanelis2012

Take a good look at this picture. It shows the nine men and women who have upheld the Affordable Care Act’s federal subsidy provision.

The U.S. Supreme Court has protected health insurance for an estimated 6.5 million Americans.

But to hear the criticism from the right in this country, you would think these individuals have just destroyed the U.S. Constitution they took an oath to uphold and to interpret fairly and without bias.

Thank goodness for the constitutional provision that allows these individuals to hold lifetime jobs, free of the kind of political pressure that forces elected judges at times to tilt in favor of interests whose job is to put heat on politicians.

The 6-3 ruling crossed ideological lines. Two conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Associated Justice Anthony Kennedy — ruled with the majority. The three dissenters — Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — held firm in their belief that the ACA violates the Constitution.

Six justices voted for the ACA; three of them voted against it.

Majority rule wins, yes?

Republican presidential candidates went ballistic. Mike Huckabee called the court majority “judicial tyrants.” Ted Cruz threw the “lawless” adjective out there — again.

The founders got it right when they made the federal judiciary an unelected branch of government. They intended for federal judges to be free of the pressure that can overwhelm elected politicians. Presidents feel it. Legislators feel it. They are elected to represent us all. We might not like all the decisions they make, but we have recourse: we can vote them out when the next election rolls around.

Not so with federal judges. They are appointed to lifetime jobs. Yes, they are appointed by politicians with particular biases and philosophies. The judges then are subjected to sometimes grueling hearings before the Senate, which has the authority to approve or reject their appointments.

Once they take their seat on the bench, though, all bets are off.

Occasionally, these appointees evolve into judges that their benefactors — the presidents who appoint them — might not like.

That’s part of the process the founders established.

And the irony of all the outrage being expressed by those who oppose the Supremes’ support of the ACA is that many of those on the right proclaim themselves to be “strict constructionists” of the Constitution. The way I read the Constitution, it states with crystal clarity that federal judges serve for as long as they want — or are able — to do the job.

Uncategorized

Elect federal judges? Oh, please!

April 23, 2014 kanelis2012

Many of those on the right are quite fond of criticizing “unelected federal judges” who issue rulings that go against their world view.

What, then, is their alternative? Do they want to elect those who sit on the federal bench? Do they wish to do away with the federal judiciary?

I mention this because the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a University of Michigan policy that disallows affirmative action practices when considering who the school should admit. Did those on the left issue similar cries against those “unelected judges”? I didn’t hear any.

And yet, when judges keep striking down states’ bans on same-sex marriage, the cries go out from those who think the federal judiciary is overreaching when it declares states cannot write laws that violate U.S. constitutional provisions, such as the one that provides for “equal protection” under the law, regardless of sexual orientation.

Perhaps my favorite criticism of the high court came when it ruled 5-4 to uphold the Affordable Care Act. The ruling was narrowly defined and it was decided by a single vote, when Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority to keep the ACA intact. The criticism — from the right, of course — went something like this: The law should be tossed out because a narrow majority on the Supreme Court voted to keep it, and that the one-vote majority really didn’t mean the law is constitutional.

The founders had it exactly right when they empowered the president with the authority to appoint judges to the bench for life. They sought to de-politicize the federal bench by disallowing the election of federal judges.

States, of course, retain the right to elect judges. Texas even elects judges on partisan ballots, meaning that judicial candidates of one party has a built-in advantage over candidates of the other party. In Texas, that means if you’re a Republican, you’re in; it used to be the other way around, when Democrats were dominant.

Either way, good judges from the “out” party are kicked out simply because they are of the wrong political persuasion.

The federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down, functions precisely as the framers intended for it.

High Plains Blogger