George Rebane
The Nevada County Republican Women Federated should feel justifiably proud for putting on one of the best organized and attended public speaking events in recent memory. More than 600 people showed up last night in the Grass Valley Veterans Hall to hear Sheriff Richard Mack deliver a rousing defense of local governance against the established overreach of the federal leviathan.
Former county supervisor Ms Fran Freedle (pictured lower right) chaired the small committee of women who worked months to plan, organize, and bring about this occasion that was attended by a broad spectrum of political interests and perspectives from Nevada County and environs. My Jo Ann was a long and hard working member of that committee, so I was privy to the bumps and progress as the sheriff’s visit drew nigh.
(I was also one of the husbands conscripted to assist, serving as the projector guy and Nevada County chauffer for Sheriff Mack. Friends Russ Steele and Norm Sauer handled the lights, and friends Jim and Mary Booth next door contributed their guest house for the sheriff to decompress and freshen up before the night’s reception and talk. Earlier in the day Sheriff Mack attended a luncheon at the National Hotel with Sheriff Keith Royal and other local law enforcement officers. Needless to say, I also had ample opportunity to talk privately with Sheriff Mack.)
As corroborated by other attendees, Sheriff Mack is not the most polished of public speakers, but that makes his heartfelt monologue come across more genuine and peer-to-peer to his audiences. He dwelled on his successful case against the ‘Brady Bill’ that reached SCOTUS from which it received a favorable landmark ruling that further corroborated the Founders’ intents as to the rights and powers of the several states when confronting the federal government.
I will not attempt to recount the details of his talk; it was recorded by the NCRWF and will be made available online in due course. Other accounts of it will be appearing in the comments hereto. But I do report that I found Sheriff Mack’s vision of the Constitution and its prerogatives for local governance to be very similar to mine, and the expressions of it on these pages. From the stats presented by his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (www.cspoa.org and www.sheriffmack.com) and the national tea parties, it appears that this little trumpet gives voice to values and attitudes shared by millions of Americans – contrary to the collectivists’ indictments, I am not alone. Onward –
1. Let’s first dispose of the naïve, yet still prevalent in some circles, view that ‘enforcing the law’ is a crisp and unambiguous enterprise that can be carried out with unquestionable uniformity, and has been done so by all ethical public executors sworn to uphold such laws. In my memory, the first (and last?) to believe in and characterize such deportment was television’s Marshall Matt Dillon in ‘Gunsmoke’. And even his own episodes contained exceptions galore which put a human heart into one tough hombre.
Well-read adults soon come to realize that laws are and have been enforced arbitrarily, sometimes gratuitously, and always according to the whims and judgment of the law enforcing executive or officer. There is nothing uniform or absolute about the way codified laws are enforced at any level of government – it is ever up to the legally installed executor as to how he will honor his oath to uphold the laws of the land, which in America stem from the various interpretations of the Constitution. If there is any lingering doubt as to this eternal truth, then just review the decisions and actions of our current President and his administrative minions.
2. ‘Just Say No!’ That has been a consistent theme that I have been trying to promote with our local governments, especially the Board of Supervisors. In other words start a campaign of resisting federal dollars that arrive with a large ‘users manual’ of diktats of how we should spend those monies plus be obligated to vacuum more dollars from local residents to fulfill another socialist wet dream from Washington (the same would apply in a different manner to Sacramento dollars). If we do it right, it could well start a national movement of counties responding similarly. (The response to date has been one of sniffed indignation from the castrato chorus in the Rood Center. They are not even interested in exploring the possibility of regaining and increasing local autonomy, instead filing such pleadings under the heading of “rural myths”. Sheriff Royal and Congressman LaMalfa were our only elected officials to to accept their invitations and grace the event.)
Sheriff Mack preached the same message last night, and he has a similar vision of such resistance going viral across the country. As the slowly parboiled frog, we have grown accustomed over the recent decades of forfeiting our hard earned dollars to the IRS in excess of what any Constitutional government needs. And then we strap on our knee pads and beg for a fraction of it to be returned so that we can fulfill higher up mandates that may also be of some benefit to us locally. Sadly, the experience from many of such federal and state programs has been exactly the opposite, with the enduring result that the boot heel of the big guy with the gun is ground ever more firmly onto our collective necks. Even government schools have had a hard time teaching youngsters to not make a pretend pistol out of their hand and comply quietly to higher authority, no matter how idiotic the required behavior may be.
3. Cherry picking the Constitution is a charge from many collectivists when they don’t hear their favorite clause/amendment cited in the currently politically correct interpretation. Sheriff Mack focused heavily on the Second Amendment (see below), and didn’t cover the others enough to satisfy a broader discussion of the Constitution. Special umbrage is visited when the 14th Amendment is unacknowledged in such instances, for many on the Left see that amendment as some sort of a cleansing agent that abrogates much of the foregoing in the Constitution that they find inconvenient for their brave new world.
As one of three Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th was written for a time and a purpose now widely dilated. Its equal protection clause (#4) has been used for everything from righting obvious national wrongs to telling us how to tie our shoes (well, almost). The bugaoo is how to interpret ‘equal’, because as we know, one person’s equal is another’s greater/less than or just plain different (orthogonal to the purists). But if you’re bent on fundamentally transforming the country, and want to use the Constitution as a crutch, then the 14th is just what the doctor ordered.
I can see a time when the state might order the burning of books (a la ‘Fahrenheit 451’) and ban the publishing of others, arguing that under the equal protection clause not all citizens can learn to read equally well and therefore some would be more privileged as they gain knowledge from books not equally available to everyone. Yes, clearly the 14th is a well-funded central planner’s playpen.
4. The Second Amendment. Much has been written and argued in these pages about “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Let me just focus here on my belief that the widespread ownership and bearing of arms in America is a fundamental and needed aspect of this democratic republic that has kept it stable, allowed it to persist, and continues to make the United States the world’s exceptional sovereign nation-state.
Given our freedom to move and associate, the 2nd amendment right does not come without cost. Those read in statistics will recognize that the population in the extremes (tails) of any distribution of mental stability grows as the overall population grows. And the ‘free ranging’ part of that tail population can be abetted by public policies that grant literally everyone the right to roam the streets and countrysides, no matter their mental condition. Our considered response to the damage these people can do to society is limited to attempts to deny the opportunity to inflict such damage by the wholesale denial of the same means to the entire and overwhelmingly sane population. We do this in the name of security and safety.
While Sheriff Mack believes that we can peacefully resolve the problems of a country historically polarized in its views, values, and politics, many others believe that the federal government will, in its hubris, relentlessly continue to deprive us of our rights and freedoms to the point of Civil War #2. (The appellation, while erroneous, does communicate.) As part of its preparation for such complete control and compliance, the entire population must first be disarmed. This also prepares us for succumbing to the initiatives and objectives first presented in the UN’s Agenda 21 plan for earth’s future (q.v.).
So according to Sheriff Mack’s lights, which I share, the horrible price we must occasionally pay to let the insane have access to guns is part of the cost of maintaining liberty and our freedoms. Letting government be the only owner of deadly force will create a world of untold suffering, orders of magnitude worse than the occasional mass shootings that we suffer (for which there are other plausible remedies). And pointing out that this has yet to happen and that some quiet little gun-banning country like Denmark is still OK misses history and represents a stasist and incorrect view of how the world works – a much circled barn in these pages.
Summarizing the takeaway from last night, a friend put succinctly what many people today believe – ‘I would feel so much safer living in a county with a constitutional sheriff who I know would not only protect my rights, but the rights of all county residents.’
Exit question for Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal – If word comes down from Washington to confiscate the guns of Nevada County residents, how will you respond?
1. Let’s first dispose of the naïve, yet still prevalent in some circles, view that ‘enforcing the law’ is a crisp and unambiguous enterprise that can be carried out with unquestionable uniformity, and has been done so by all ethical public executors sworn to uphold such laws. In my memory, the first (and last?) to believe in and characterize such deportment was television’s Marshall Matt Dillon in ‘Gunsmoke’. And even his own episodes contained exceptions galore which put a human heart into one tough hombre.
Well-read adults soon come to realize that laws are and have been enforced arbitrarily, sometimes gratuitously, and always according to the whims and judgment of the law enforcing executive or officer. There is nothing uniform or absolute about the way codified laws are enforced at any level of government – it is ever up to the legally installed executor as to how he will honor his oath to uphold the laws of the land, which in America stem from the various interpretations of the Constitution. If there is any lingering doubt as to this eternal truth, then just review the decisions and actions of our current President and his administrative minions.
2. ‘Just Say No!’ That has been a consistent theme that I have been trying to promote with our local governments, especially the Board of Supervisors. In other words start a campaign of resisting federal dollars that arrive with a large ‘users manual’ of diktats of how we should spend those monies plus be obligated to vacuum more dollars from local residents to fulfill another socialist wet dream from Washington (the same would apply in a different manner to Sacramento dollars). If we do it right, it could well start a national movement of counties responding similarly. (The response to date has been one of sniffed indignation from the castrato chorus in the Rood Center. They are not even interested in exploring the possibility of regaining and increasing local autonomy, instead filing such pleadings under the heading of “rural myths”. Sheriff Royal and Congressman LaMalfa were our only elected officials to to accept their invitations and grace the event.)
Sheriff Mack preached the same message last night, and he has a similar vision of such resistance going viral across the country. As the slowly parboiled frog, we have grown accustomed over the recent decades of forfeiting our hard earned dollars to the IRS in excess of what any Constitutional government needs. And then we strap on our knee pads and beg for a fraction of it to be returned so that we can fulfill higher up mandates that may also be of some benefit to us locally. Sadly, the experience from many of such federal and state programs has been exactly the opposite, with the enduring result that the boot heel of the big guy with the gun is ground ever more firmly onto our collective necks. Even government schools have had a hard time teaching youngsters to not make a pretend pistol out of their hand and comply quietly to higher authority, no matter how idiotic the required behavior may be.
3. Cherry picking the Constitution is a charge from many collectivists when they don’t hear their favorite clause/amendment cited in the currently politically correct interpretation. Sheriff Mack focused heavily on the Second Amendment (see below), and didn’t cover the others enough to satisfy a broader discussion of the Constitution. Special umbrage is visited when the 14th Amendment is unacknowledged in such instances, for many on the Left see that amendment as some sort of a cleansing agent that abrogates much of the foregoing in the Constitution that they find inconvenient for their brave new world.
As one of three Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th was written for a time and a purpose now widely dilated. Its equal protection clause (#4) has been used for everything from righting obvious national wrongs to telling us how to tie our shoes (well, almost). The bugaoo is how to interpret ‘equal’, because as we know, one person’s equal is another’s greater/less than or just plain different (orthogonal to the purists). But if you’re bent on fundamentally transforming the country, and want to use the Constitution as a crutch, then the 14th is just what the doctor ordered.
I can see a time when the state might order the burning of books (a la ‘Fahrenheit 451’) and ban the publishing of others, arguing that under the equal protection clause not all citizens can learn to read equally well and therefore some would be more privileged as they gain knowledge from books not equally available to everyone. Yes, clearly the 14th is a well-funded central planner’s playpen.
4. The Second Amendment. Much has been written and argued in these pages about “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Let me just focus here on my belief that the widespread ownership and bearing of arms in America is a fundamental and needed aspect of this democratic republic that has kept it stable, allowed it to persist, and continues to make the United States the world’s exceptional sovereign nation-state.
Given our freedom to move and associate, the 2nd amendment right does not come without cost. Those read in statistics will recognize that the population in the extremes (tails) of any distribution of mental stability grows as the overall population grows. And the ‘free ranging’ part of that tail population can be abetted by public policies that grant literally everyone the right to roam the streets and countrysides, no matter their mental condition. Our considered response to the damage these people can do to society is limited to attempts to deny the opportunity to inflict such damage by the wholesale denial of the same means to the entire and overwhelmingly sane population. We do this in the name of security and safety.
While Sheriff Mack believes that we can peacefully resolve the problems of a country historically polarized in its views, values, and politics, many others believe that the federal government will, in its hubris, relentlessly continue to deprive us of our rights and freedoms to the point of Civil War #2. (The appellation, while erroneous, does communicate.) As part of its preparation for such complete control and compliance, the entire population must first be disarmed. This also prepares us for succumbing to the initiatives and objectives first presented in the UN’s Agenda 21 plan for earth’s future (q.v.).
So according to Sheriff Mack’s lights, which I share, the horrible price we must occasionally pay to let the insane have access to guns is part of the cost of maintaining liberty and our freedoms. Letting government be the only owner of deadly force will create a world of untold suffering, orders of magnitude worse than the occasional mass shootings that we suffer (for which there are other plausible remedies). And pointing out that this has yet to happen and that some quiet little gun-banning country like Denmark is still OK misses history and represents a stasist and incorrect view of how the world works – a much circled barn in these pages.
Summarizing the takeaway from last night, a friend put succinctly what many people today believe – ‘I would feel so much safer living in a county with a constitutional sheriff who I know would not only protect my rights, but the rights of all county residents.’
Exit question for Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal – If word comes down from Washington to confiscate the guns of Nevada County residents, how will you respond?
RR reader and commenter Michael Anderson posted this in a comment under another RR piece, the relevant part of which I promised to replicate here.
I was at the CSPOA presentation this evening at the Vet's Hall with Richard Mack and I enjoyed the event quite a bit. Many thanks to NCRWF for hosting it. I did not have actual bells on my toes, but they were there in spirit.
Here are a few of my take-aways:
1. Mack was very clear that his message is about working within the system, as long as possible (at least until things go catawampus).
2. His version of libertarian politics includes getting rid of the War on Drugs, supporting non-pasteurized milk, as well as celebrating Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement from the 50s and 60s. Noticeably absent was his celebration of DOMA being struck down recently, but us progressive libertarians will take what we can get.
3. I really appreciated his drilling down into some of the guts of the Brady Bill Supreme Court decision, and the Scalia cites were particularly poignant.
4. He needs a newer computer (Windows XP will no longer be updated by Microsoft after April 2014), a new version of Powerpoint, and an IT person to uncheck the screensaver button that kept showing us how to connect his serial port. [Sorry, geek-out moment for those not in the biz.]
5. He mentioned a couple of times that public speaking was not his forte, and I could tell that what he is trying to do is a work in progress, but I can certainly appreciate his situation from my own personal speaking stints and I thought that overall he did pretty well. He does his best work when he lets his passion take the mic.
6. Mack spent a lot of time on the 2nd Amendment, at the expense of the other 10 amendments, in his setup. I was disappointed that he did not balance his fairly extreme opposition to gun control, especially registration requirements, with a proviso for people who are mentally disturbed. I was less than a block away in 2001 when Scott Thorpe went on his second shooting rampage at the Lyon's Restaurant (now Lumberjack's) and spent hours in a lockdown situation, with the Nevada County Sheriff's Department SWAT team running around outside looking like chickens with their heads cut off. The Wilcox family hasn't gotten much traction in trying to fix this huge problem. All of the mass shootings in America are done mostly by males who are mentally compromised in some way. Richard Mack would serve us all hugely with answers regarding how to prevent weapons getting into the hands of people who are somehow mentally incapacitated, including temporarily. Not an easy task, I understand that. But it would certainly make more logical his huge admiration for federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll, the judge who first ruled on his Brady Bill challenge, and who was killed by a mentally ill person, Jared Loughner, in the same shooting that killed five other people and almost killed U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords from Tucson.
As I said, I think overall his message was sound, and it comes from a strong libertarian background which has a lot of traction in Nevada County from both liberals and conservatives who have chosen to live here so that gov't is a lessor factor in their daily lives.
My biggest beef is that he only addressed Amendment 1 through 10, leaving out a really critical one, the 14th Amendment. This is probably my biggest problem with the Tea Party--they choose to selectively review the US Constitution and adamantly oppose the idea that it is supposed to be a living, breathing document. But the framers did allow two ways to revise it: Constitutional Amendments and a Constitutional Convention.
The 14th Amendment is one of the biggies after the original 10, and I will quote below the beginning of a great column by Hendrick Hertzberg from the New Yorker magazine from this coming Monday, October 21, 2013:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
—Amendment XIV, Section 4.
By the time that long-obscure, lately apposite sentence became part of the Constitution, on July 9, 1868, the insurrection that occasioned it had been thoroughly, and bloodily, suppressed. Throughout the Civil War and afterward, Republicans in Congress had enacted some of the most forward-looking legislation in American history: a national currency, the Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, support for higher education, the definitive abolition of slavery—all thanks to the extended absence of delegations from the self-styled Confederate states. Now that era was about to end.
The party of Lincoln, grand but not yet old, feared the mischief that Southern senators and representatives might get up to when their states were readmitted to the Union. The Republicans’ foremost worry was that Congress might somehow be induced to cut funds for Union pensioners or pay off lenders who had gambled on a Confederate victory. But the language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s framers went further. Benjamin Wade, the president pro tem of the Senate, explained that the national debt would be safer once it was 'withdrawn from the power of Congress to repudiate it.' He and his colleagues didn’t say just that the debt could not be put off, or left unpaid. They said that it couldn’t even be questioned.
The new insurrection is different from the old one, and not only because this time it’s the Republicans who are the insurrectionaries. The old insurrectionaries wanted to destroy the government; the new ones wish merely to decimate it. The old ones’ weapons of choice were muskets and bayonets; the new ones confine themselves to mendacity, demagoguery, and obstructionism. The old ones were exclusively white and Southern; the new ones, while overwhelmingly white, are more widely distributed. The old ones no longer wished to be citizens of the United States; the new ones, some of them, profess to wonder if the President is a citizen at all."
(Read the rest at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/10/21/131021taco_talk_hertzberg)
Sound familiar?
Sorry guys, you don't get to selectively choose which parts of the US Constitution you admire, and then implement at the local level. It just doesn't work that way. Richard Mack talked a lot about the "rule of law" tonight. I suggest he get a much tighter grip on what that actually means.
MichealA's entire comment is available here where responses to it can also be seen -
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2013/10/can-kicked-crisis-calmed.html?cid=6a00e54f86f2ad8833019b00228100970c#comment-6a00e54f86f2ad8833019b00228100970c
Posted by: George Rebane | 19 October 2013 at 03:56 PM
I am sorry I missed the event but a turnout of 600 in our little community is amazing. I once got 750 to a Republican BBQ (I was the Chairman) in 1996 and I know how tough that is to do.
Here is a link to one site dealing with "crazy " laws across our country.
http://crazytopics.blogspot.com/2007/01/craziest-laws-in-america.html
The reason I posted this is in response to any liberal who thinks dumb and stupid laws can be passed by smart and bright gaggles of elected people. If they can pass these stupid laws then why not one to take away our rights?
California just passed numerous laws last week that were signed by the Governor. Now how is it the got to do that? Our citizens, all contained in gerrymandered districts controlled by the democrats, gave them a "super-majority" in both legislative house. Who is to say it could not happen in DC? I think it actually did during the reign of FDR. Then with a Senate super-majority, a treaty binding our country to confiscated arms could be signed or some other mechanism.
People are fallible. Law enforcement is picky too. Why do some people driving 80 in a 55 get a ticket and some don't?
I just listened to the audio from the hearing at SCOTUS on Proposition 2 passed in Michigan a few years ago. I did the same as Prop 209 did here. I think Ward Connerly sponsored it. It was fascinating to listen to the liberal lawyers say that a measure to stop favoritism for all people was in itself a prejudice measure. Black is white, up is down. My hope is the SCOTUS will allow the measure to be left alone.
So it all depends on how one sees tings through their own eyes most of the time. The only thing that has kept us together as Americans up until Obama is we have a Constitution we swear to uphold and that we believe in. It is our contract with each other. Mack appears to "get it" and MichaelA does not.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 19 October 2013 at 04:35 PM
Dr. Rebane the projectionist? Add A/V dude to his many titles. Whose that pic of the goat roper in the Hopalong Cassidy vest? Takes all kinds I suppose. Goat ropers need love too.
Too many good points to digest tonight. Yes, I can envision a time of book burning (web site blocking if you prefer) as we already NOW have Big Brother's boot on our necks, but instead of "You have the right to remain silent" we have "You must remain silent cause we will silence you." The nail that stands up will be pounded down.
The point I liked from Dr. Rebane's summary is "Even government schools have had a hard time teaching youngsters to not make a pretend pistol out of their hand and comply quietly to higher authority, no matter how idiotic the required behavior may be."
Yep, tell it like it is. I have mentioned before my sister who graduated from Long Beach State years ago with a degree in Feminist Literature. The word God was fingernails on the blackboard to her cause it was a sexist term. She was determined to have a politically correct household. Her little boy never watched TV or was allowed to play with water pistols or toys that were "army toys" until one day the little sprout was running through the house with his toothbrush pointing at her in glee spouting "Bang, bang" and running off, full of playfulness. At that moment she threw up her hands and realized in was in his male DNA. She bought him army toys and I bought him a submarine that actually worked quite nice in the bathtub.
Having kids expelled from school from penciling an image of a revolver or pointing their index fingers to replicate the outline of Nevada County is asinine. It would be like barring little school girls from having a doll or stuffed animal in their backpacks. Might offend adult little people or animal rights folk. What a crock of ca ca. Common sense is not tolerated nor allowed. Government run schools' major fault is they are Government run schools.
Years ago I heard that someday man will walk on the moon, only little girls will wear dresses, and good will be called evil and evil will be called good.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 19 October 2013 at 10:19 PM
I appreciate the musings, but it's a tad overstated for my brain. We do have more specific (and recent) examples of this in the Language Arts curriculum however. Like removing Steinbeck's Johnny Bear from the canon due to one of the character's racism toward Chinese immigrants. So we lose the teachable moment, which ironically will lead to even more racism. Bastiat strikes again!
Regarding the 14th Amendment, Mr. Rebane, what would be your prescription to overcome this "Constitution as a crutch" issue? By defining equality?
Posted by: Ryan Mount | 20 October 2013 at 06:43 AM
RyanM 643am - I did mean to make a thoughtful point with the bolded statement, and I do believe that with numerous examples (yours included) bolstering the case, we are headed exactly to that destination. Ultimate control starts with the mind of the controlled, and to feel that a socially engineered state has a natural stopping point short of ultimate control is not only an expression of stasism, but also beyond hopeful.
On defining 'equality' in a Constitutional sense, let's circle that barn a bit. It's a hard notion to define using English in its current evolution. But I invite all of us to take a cut at it. Gotta go, but will come back to it.
Posted by: George Rebane | 20 October 2013 at 08:39 AM
Dr. Rebane, I will not take a fairness stab but will mention one general point of my limited observations of human nature concerning control freaks:
Those who have to insatiable urge to control are actually controlled by their need to control. Guess it is a "what you sow is what you reap" karma thing. They can't ever get enough of controlling others. Controlling fairness? If everybody was like me, this would be an even more messed up state of affairs.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 20 October 2013 at 09:20 AM
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. - James Madison
Posted by: Al | 20 October 2013 at 10:44 AM
Well, if the word spreads and millions of people who think and feel as I do about our overreaching overbearing intrusive government, then something wonderful will happen. It only takes a spark to get a fire going.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHQ-w-IByrc
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 20 October 2013 at 11:56 AM
I see the portly one's blog is now trashing our Sheriff and the COP of GV. I think he is a real lonely guy. He likes no one and no one likes him. His view of the differences between Truckee and the Western County are truly funny. But he and the Frisch can enjoy their solitude in the portly one's second vacation home. Too funny!
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 20 October 2013 at 12:32 PM
Re the 14th Amendment and equality (see GeorgeR 839am and referents) – Equality in the social sense is not the objective measure certain factions (e.g. progressives) make it out to be. Humans are superficially ‘equal’ in their physiological sense, and even there we are each unique by about every imaginable measure. It takes only the smallest fragment of your body to identify you uniquely from among the 7B+ other humans on earth. And that’s only for starters.
When we step into the realm that includes our psychological, social, experiential, and cognitive dimensions, then our differences become huge. That has been an enormous benefit for our survival as a species. As individuals and small subgroups we are constantly trying our different ways to live, move, eat, raise our young, trade, …, and generally interact with each other.
Novel concepts of equality have been introduced to keep the peace when many of us want to live together. But these concepts have all been heavily conditional (contextual if you will). We are pronounced equal before the law, equal before God or gods, equal owners in commercial ventures, and so on. But no productive thought process will conclude that we are in any sense equal in our potential or equal in what we can and do achieve, even if launched from scrupulously equal (equivalent) starting points.
However, these truths are not shared across ideologies. Natural inequalities leading to diverse outcomes are branded as prima facie evidence of social inequities that are not only ‘unfair’, but also unjustly imposed. Such initiatives are almost always used for political purposes to rally the support of the under-achieved, especially when used for promoting the clever elites who promise equal and/or equitable outcomes when they assume power. And, of course, assessing the equality of outcomes is just as dicey and subjective as classifying equals at the starting line.
In light of this framework, the 14th Amendment easily serves as America’s legitimate and legal umbrella for passing literally any kind of legislation dictating behavioral norms that appeal to notions of equality, equity, fairness, and ‘social justice’. The definitions of each is the sole property of the faction with the biggest/most guns. Thoughts?
Posted by: George Rebane | 20 October 2013 at 12:41 PM
The Great Divide Dr. Rebane in a nutshell: Natural Law vs. Positive Law. If I were teaching a class on this contemporary Great Divide, that would be the first unit.
That's what's going on. I do not see us ever returning to Natural Law notions. The 14th Amendment, despite whatever its Reconstruction intentions are/were, is now the foundation of Positive Rights in the United States.
On a side academic note, it's interesting that the we even have Section 1 of the 14th, given that we seem to have those protections implied in the 5th. Granted the 5th is about incarceration, and not, well, African-Americans. But it's *not* a stretch to conflate the 5th and the 14th Sec 1 together. Obviously 19th Century Republicans thought it was necessary to clarify that.
For the uninitiated, this is actually a good intro to this Great Divide issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_law
Posted by: Ryan Mount | 21 October 2013 at 06:42 AM
Mr. Mount wrote:
"The Great Divide Dr. Rebane in a nutshell: Natural Law vs. Positive Law."
Excellent food for thought, Mr. Mount. Sheds a new light on things.
I was taught in 3rd grade that there are no two things exactly alike in size, shape, or dimension. I think of that each and every time I see snow flakes falling gently in the still quiet night. But, Positive Law is a horse of a different color. Man made laws. Hmmm. Thanks for nutshelling the Great Divide
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 08:57 AM
RyanM 642am - An excellent and needed distinction to bring into this conversation; my apologies for the oversight. (My only disagreement with the distinction is the unfortunate choice of labels to reflect positing - positive infers the dual of negative and miscommunicates. For semantic clarity, that body of law should have been called 'posited law', and its attendant rights labeled 'Posited Rights'.)
Posted by: George Rebane | 21 October 2013 at 09:00 AM
I think it appropriate to introduce something into this lab experiment, in the hopes of drawing in some Progressive thinkers: The 19th Amendment.
As a point of discussion, is the 19th Amendment anymore "positive" than say the 2nd one?
Follow up (these are genuine, not rhetorical) questions:
- Did we need the 19th Amendment? Why when we had the 14th?
- Were pre-19th Amendment women allow to bear arms? I'm assuming yes. Then why not vote? (Yes, in some jurisdictions. But at the Federal level?)
- Is bearing arms a Natural right? (it seems to me to Positive(posited) Right, ironically)
Posted by: Ryan Mount | 21 October 2013 at 11:32 AM
George, I know you believe that President Obama's term in office is really all about running for an even higher office, but as long as we're getting rid of amendments like the 14th, don't you thing that the 22nd is due for a purge as well?
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 21 October 2013 at 01:12 PM
RyanM 1132am - According to my lights, bearing arms is one of the most ancient of natural rights; probably since some homo erectus sought to arm himself against others like him or to hunt an animal as he picked up his first cudgel. Only when man segregated into elite classes did subjugation begin to deny arms to those whose labor needed to be controlled and wealth pruned to sustain the governing elites in structured societies. For free men in free societies bearing arms is definitely not a posited right.
MichaelA 112pm - Didn't know we were getting rid of the 14th (great concept though), only hoping to return its scope to a semblance of its original intent. As to the 22nd, I'm in favor of term limits for all elected public offices, as I'm in favor of a universal draft for military service (and alternative temporary public service for those who don't qualify for the military).
Posted by: George Rebane | 21 October 2013 at 01:31 PM
> Acording to my lights, bearing arms is one of the most ancient of natural rights; probably since some homo erectus sought to arm himself against others like him or to hunt an animal as he picked up his first cudgel.
Right. Now what about the 19th then?
Posted by: Ryan Mount | 21 October 2013 at 01:36 PM
I don't recall one woman voting for the 19th Amendment. Guess it was unpopular with the women folk back then. I am for the fair treatment of women and all people, be they rich or poor, in sickness or in health, until death do us part. Lord only knows the terrible suffrage the women folk have been through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLo8zSB-GM
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 02:45 PM
After further research, it was a travesty of justice that we also denied women the right to consume adult beverages. Inexplicable. Shame on you Palefaces.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9S6tahYAM_Y/UFc62r_vS7I/AAAAAAAAABw/e06OCeDWSAY/s1600/Consitutiondayposter.jpg
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 02:55 PM
RyanM 136pm - The Constitution arrived at a time when the elites were already well established for millenia. Into almost all cultures certain beliefs had been chiseled in stone for centuries - among them women's second class status and that bearing arms was a privilege granted by the ruling class (see my piece on rights and privileges). When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they started removing such posited constraints on citizens, but even they could not see the complete landscape of freedom for all. What they could see, they wrote into the Constitution and its amendments as specific rights that heralded a new age of governance - left unsaid guaranteed reversion. Since then and until recently the landscape of freedoms has expanded and so noted in our Constitution.
Therefore it is in this sense that both the 2nd and 19th amendments, among others, need to remain in place. (We all know how even the written word is being destructively dissected - "A well regulated militia ..." and all that.)
But the ruling minions and their local lackeys are on the rise. A sorely needed amendment is one that prescribes no more or less than the identical rights and privileges to members and staffs of Congress as those the rest of us have to live under. However the penultimate tool of the elites today is pandering to our ignorance, starting with the broadly unexamined truth that equality and liberty are the obverse of one another - you cannot increase the dimensions of equality without proscribing liberties, and vice versa. Here the proper balance points for the Left and Right are widely separated. (The perennial ultimate tool? Guns, more and bigger ones for them, fewer and smaller ones for us.)
Posted by: George Rebane | 21 October 2013 at 03:12 PM
Mr. Mount. Is this link an example of Positive Laws colliding? I'm trying to catch up with those who know more than I about such matters. Natural Laws, Positive Laws, Posit Laws or Murphy's Law. Too much for me to wrap my head around this fine lovely day off.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/21/feds-try-to-eliminate-housing-for-deaf-at-complex-built-for-hearing-impaired/
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 03:14 PM
Ya' gotta love our 1ST Amendment. Especially when certain gestures have been ruled "protected". Other counties as we know frown on the idea of "free speech".
GOD help the guy in the Czech republic who pulled off letting his "view",, known.
It sure would make my day to see this floating down the river in D.C.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24607870
At first the local Progressives would love it, being the symbol of the Left,
then wait to see their faces when the fan was turned on when in view of the Capital building.
Yes,, the "last great act of defiance" is well deserved, and would say it all.
Posted by: Walt | 21 October 2013 at 04:43 PM
Beautiful! Certainly makes more of a statement than golden dog turds.
Posted by: rlcrabb | 21 October 2013 at 06:19 PM
Mr. Walt. I see you put your hardhat back on :) I love the purple color against the golden fall backdrop. Nice touch by the artist. "Only thing that matters is which way it is pointed".
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 06:50 PM
RL, speaking of golden dog turds, Justice Scalia using the 14th in Bush v. Gore was a steaming pile that will go down in the same canon as Dred Scott.
That being said, I still love the 14th. It is the one that keeps the US Constitution alive. All you Natural Law dinosaurs are on the fast track to oblivion. See ya!!, and don't let those saloon doors slap you on the ass on your way out to the muddy road to nowheresville.
The fact of the matter is, we had an extremely contentious and bloody civil war in this country, and we are still working through the details of settlement. Just read this entry from the wiki and say Hallelujah!
"Equal Protection Clause
Main article: Equal Protection Clause
Representative John Bingham of Ohio, principal author of the Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause was created largely in response to the lack of equal protection provided by law in states with Black Codes. Under Black Codes, blacks could not sue, give evidence, or be witnesses, and they received harsher degrees of punishment than whites. The Clause mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law. Although the text of the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Equal Protection Clause only against the states, the Supreme Court, since Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), has applied the Clause against the federal government through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment under a doctrine called reverse incorporation.'
In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the court reporter included a statement by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in the decision's headnote:
'The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.'
This dictum, which established that corporations enjoyed personhood under the Equal Protection Clause, was repeatedly reaffirmed by later courts. It remained the predominant view throughout the twentieth century, though it was challenged in dissents by justices such as Hugo Black and William O. Douglas.
In the decades following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court overturned laws barring blacks from juries (Strauder v. West Virginia, 1880) or discriminating against Chinese Americans in the regulation of laundry businesses (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1886), as violations of the Equal Protection Clause. However, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court held that the states could impose segregation so long as they provided similar facilities—the formation of the "separate but equal" doctrine.
The Court went even further in restricting the Equal Protection Clause in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), holding that the states could force private actors to discriminate by prohibiting colleges from having both black and white students. By the early 20th century, the Equal Protection Clause had been eclipsed to the point that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. dismissed it as 'the usual last resort of constitutional arguments.'
Thurgood Marshall served as chief counsel in the landmark Fourteenth Amendment decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
The Court held to the 'separate but equal' doctrine for more than fifty years, despite numerous cases in which the Court itself had found that the segregated facilities provided by the states were almost never equal, until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) reached the Court. In Brown the Court ruled that even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and so was unconstitutional. Brown met with a campaign of resistance from white Southerners, and for decades the federal courts attempted to enforce Brown's mandate against repeated attempts at circumvention. This resulted in the controversial desegregation busing decrees handed down by federal courts in various parts of the nation. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), the Court ruled that race could not be the determinative factor in determining to which public schools parents may transfer their children.
In Hernandez v. Texas (1954), the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or 'Negro' and extends to other racial and ethnic groups, such as Mexican Americans in this case. In the half-century following Brown, the Court extended the reach of the Equal Protection Clause to other historically disadvantaged groups, such as women and illegitimate children, although it has applied a somewhat less stringent standard than it has applied to governmental discrimination on the basis of race (United States v. Virginia, 1996; Levy v. Louisiana, 1968).
The Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) that affirmative action in the form of racial quotas in public university admissions was a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, race could be used as one of several factors without violating of the Equal Protection Clause or Title VI. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Court considered two race-conscious admissions systems at the University of Michigan. The university claimed that its goal in its admissions systems was to achieve racial diversity. In Gratz, the Court struck down a points-based undergraduate admissions system that added points for minority status, finding that its rigidity violated the Equal Protection Clause; in Grutter, the Court upheld a race-conscious admissions process for the university's law school that used race as one of many factors to determine admission. In Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), the Court ruled that before race can be used in a public university's admission policy, there must be no workable race-neutral alternative.
Reed v. Reed (1971), which struck down an Idaho probate law favoring men, was the first decision in which the Court ruled that arbitrary gender discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause. In Craig v. Boren (1976), the Court ruled that statutory or administrative sex classifications had to be subjected to an intermediate standard of judicial review. Reed and Craig later served as precedents to strike down a number of state laws discriminating by gender.
Since Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as requiring the states to apportion their congressional districts and state legislative seats according to 'one man, one vote.' The Court has also struck down redistricting plans in which race was a key consideration. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court prohibited a North Carolina plan aimed at creating majority-black districts to balance historic under-representation in the state's congressional delegations.
The Equal Protection Clause served as the basis for the decision in Bush v. Gore (2000), in which the Court ruled that no constitutionally valid recount of Florida's votes in the 2000 presidential election could be held within the needed deadline; the decision effectively secured Bush's victory in the disputed election."
Michael A.
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 21 October 2013 at 09:24 PM
Good Lord.. You actually write all that?
Posted by: Walt | 21 October 2013 at 10:10 PM
Dirtmover, I do not wish to go down this road.
As Queen once so ecumenically wrote..."Get on Your Bikes and Ride!!!!"
Or this: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=398819070194924
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 21 October 2013 at 10:19 PM
Mr. Anderson, you wrote a fine run of the mill piece except the first opening salvos. What makes you think we on the hillbilly side of the tracks are agin equal protection, or equal rights? Equality has the word equal in it and we be all for equality of rights.
You make it sound like we want to let the blacks out of the stockades ONLY to pick cotton for us white faced plantation owners. You make it appear that we all wear wife beater tee shirts and chain up the women folk and take their shoes and leave nails on the porch so that stay barefoot and pregnant and ignorant. I DID notice several pictures of our own President wearing wife beater tee shirts under his fine white silk shirts, but I digress again.
Interesting you mentioned the University of Michigan case. Its still working its way through the court and the Supreme Court will hear it this session! That will tell us all if we Natural Law dinosaurs are on the fast track to oblivion. If not, then don't let the saloon doors hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.
The Michigan case is interesting because it will not challenge the Constitutionality of Affirmative Action per se. Nay, my free spirited friend. It does not even go after Affirmative Action.
This case will be defined in a much narrower or broader sense. depending upon one's POV. The question at hand is: does preferential treatment in government hiring/protocols create a violation of equal protection?
Interesting case. Quotas are outlawed, basically, but not in practice. Diversity goals may in fact violate the 14th Amendment.
As a footnote, I always wondered how we know if a workplace or government run institution is diversified without going out there and counting heads. Counting heads is quotas. Complex issue. Guess everybody won't get their 40 acres and a mule, just two chickens in every pot.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 10:26 PM
Sheriff Mack and Sheriff Royal are on different sides on this one for sure.
Police Groups Furiously Protest Eric Holder's Marijuana Policy Announcement
"The missive was signed by the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association,
the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Narcotic Officers Associations’ Coalition, the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association and the Police Executive Research Forum..............
Local law enforcement agencies rely heavily on the drug war for funding. Police departments are often able to keep a large portion of the assets they seize during drug raids, even if charges are never brought. And federal grants for drug war operations make up a sizable portion of local law enforcement funding. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/police-eric-holder-marijuana-_n_3846518.html
Cops Association President Uses Eric Holder Introduction To Attack DOJ's Stance On Marijuana
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/eric-holder-marijuana_n_4138579.html
Posted by: Paul Emery | 21 October 2013 at 10:52 PM
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/232046290/supreme-court-returns-to-affirmative-action-in-michigan-case
Interesting quotes: As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in a 2007 opinion, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's stressed that affirmative action programs are supposed to be temporary, and that "25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."
"Those other cases," Schuette says, "removed a provision with respect to equal treatment under the law. We adopted something that requires equal treatment."
Quotes included for those that don't bother reading links :)
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 10:52 PM
Final question of the night from me. Does equal treatment violate equal protection??
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 21 October 2013 at 11:17 PM
Good grief!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0he0cqHH20&list=PLa8S4GilqogQILnrvxLgZREFkebrMfJ3f
Posted by: Al | 22 October 2013 at 05:13 AM
George,
This is a bit off topic but I think your forum would be a good place to spread the word regarding AB1266. This is the law that our Gov signed that allows boys to use the girls bathrooms in our schools. There currently is a petition being circulated to place a referendum on the Nov 2014 election to allow the voters to have a say in this matter.
Please see gender insanity.com or privacyforallstudents.com ...both of these site are by the Pacific Legal Foundation and have links to the petition. The petitions need to be returned by the 12th of Nov.
Please note that the petition was written by Kamila Harris and is worded to make the signer think that they support discrimination. The wording of the law is included on the petition in fine print and one must read the last paragraph to find the part that allows boys to use the girls bathroom.
Posted by: MikeL | 22 October 2013 at 05:46 AM
Good grief indeed. First question of the day: Does equal protection violate equal treatment under the law?
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 22 October 2013 at 07:36 AM
BillT 736am - Mr Tozer, that law enforcement is an arbitrary and sometimes capricious endeavor, your question is unanswerable in the existential sense. Starting with widely varying definitions/assessments of equality, it goes down from there. Sometimes we attempt equal treatment by administering what we consider equal protection, but it is never that plain and requires thousands of billable lawyer hours to just consider one aspect of it. High minded words, that's all.
MichaelA 924pm - Sure wish you'd just link to those long copy/paste comments, and instead provide us with a short motivational to go read the piece. Thanks.
MikeL 546am - Please consider the word spread. It will be a law that little boys will consider more than titillating. Don't know about the girls.
Posted by: George Rebane | 22 October 2013 at 08:31 AM
I think the point is we're not attending to the Constitution anymore, unless one gets pulled over by the Cops. Suddenly everyone is a strict originalist then and has the 4th and 5th Amendments committed to memory. Or is it a dated rag written by dead old White guys? It's sometimes hard to follow the whimsy of the post-moderns. Speaking of whimsy...
I think it interesting that we're more in the business of adding to the tomes of legislation now, and less interested in modifying the Constitution. I'm certain there are reasons for this, none of them good in my opinion. Passing laws at the arguable whims of the electorate and special interests is a hell of a lot easier than attending to the Constitution. Maybe another white towel thrown in by the Republic: we'll never be able to get Amendments passed during the Great Divide. So let's just pass a bunch of laws, to the point where anyone, at any time are gonna be criminals to some degree, and hope no one challenges them against the Constitution.
Whatever you do, don't get pulled over for running a Stop Sign and be Bill of Rights dumb.
So "Positive" Law making is better suited for the Legislation, than the Constitution.
Posted by: Ryan Mount | 22 October 2013 at 09:01 AM
BillT, you say it so well. Just an update. The SCOTUS took oral arguments last week on the Michigan case (my friend Ward Connerly is responsible for Prop 2 there). It will be another 5-4 and I think the forces of good, (our side) will prevail. Hard to argue the 14th when jurisdictions are giving preferences to some.
MichaelA, I would suspect that you moved to this area to protect your family from the urban lifestyle that includes crime and violence and poor schools. I would say, that if so, the saloon door hit your hypocritical arse as you left Compton.
Just like the Frish in Truckee who wails against conservatives on the issue of race relations, I would probably guess right there are no races except the Caucasian one in your employ? If you care to list the race of your employees I would humbly accept a slap upside the head if I am wrong that you are a whites only employer (as is the Frisch).
The video of the man getting signatures to toss out the BOR's is telling as to the state of the public education (government schools) of America. We are only one generation away from destruction as a free people if we allow the system in place to prevail.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 22 October 2013 at 09:09 AM
Looks like mandersonation, like Keach before him, has decided to resort to pasting huge chunks from the wiki, tacking on a taunt that he thinks is somewhat related, as a substitute for critical thought.
The Roberts court hid an historic repudiation of Interstate Commerce clause excesses in the Obamacare decision; I'll not quake in my boots worrying about them going in the opposite direction over misapplications of the equal protection clause. Perhaps Mike can rationally speak to that Steaming Pile of Scalia in Bush v Gore having gotten 7 of 9 justices agreeing to the Equal Protection argument. Perhaps not.
Posted by: Gregory | 22 October 2013 at 09:17 AM
"As a footnote, I always wondered how we know if a workplace or government run institution is diversified without going out there and counting heads." -Tozer
Question for the mathematically challenged masses... if an organization, government or private, hires without any discrimination regarding race, creed, national origin or sexuality, will they pass the counting heads test?
Posted by: Gregory | 22 October 2013 at 09:26 AM
Question....
I have read where certain government agencies have "used" google Earth
to aid in the "enforcement" of dope grows. That may be all well and good,
but the last photo of my compound is about 2 years old. So how are cops
obtaining search warrants on such dated "evidence"?
Is the latest and greatest SAT. images available for public consumption?
Or does law enforcement have special access?
It's not just the dopers who may be getting spied on. The building dept.
and "code enforcement" may vary well use this too.
In my opinion, the use of "google earth" falls into the "unreasonable search"
section of the Constitution.
And to think the radio controlled "drone" go someone's knickers in a knot.
Posted by: Walt | 22 October 2013 at 09:28 AM
Looks like the squirming sack of retarded puppies needs some attention...kick!, kick!!
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 22 October 2013 at 10:59 AM
We all expect the retarded answers from you MA. Nothing new here, move along please.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 22 October 2013 at 11:24 AM
Good comments all. Atta boys all around.
Dr. Rebane, my question was serious as a heart attack and you answered it quite nicely. Thank you.
Todd, the Prop 2 case may end up as a 5-3 decision. That Supreme Court Justice who never won a single case (can you say habitual loser?) before the Court as our Solicitor General has recused herself cause she worked against Prop 2 while being the jester in King Eric Holder's court. The real issue might get down to "can a state electorate passed proposition override the appeals process of the Regents? Where will minority students go to address grievances as to why they were denied enrollment?" I bet this case boils down to solely the legal rights of the Regents of Michigan's higher education system (oversight process) vs. the rights of state proportions passed by a majority of the voters. The Court has already dodged the previous bullet by sending the U of Texas case back down to the lower courts. That is why I told a close personal friend Mr. Hit-and-Run Anderson that it will not be about Affirmative Action per se. Shakespeare was right. Kill all the lawyers first. :)
Walt. Countless counties have used fly-overs for decades to caught non-permitted add ons and storage buildings and such. Heck, in LA County you have to get a license for a horse, just like a dog or cat. They busted a friend down there over 24 years ago when the fly over revealed a horse in her backyard. 100 clams for the horse license, plus fines. They used clear layovers on top of maps to see any changes in structures and whatz going on in the backyard. Hmmm, they see a new bar-b-que pit or new back steps. Its all about the money...er....shaking more money out of yer coin purse for chump change and shaking dollars out of us for property taxes. A win-win for them.
Finally, Mr. Mount takes it to the house again. Yep, I have been told that none of us can leave our homes and drive to town and purchase a bag of groceries without violating some law on the books. It's been proven. Hard to keep up with thousands of laws burying us each and every year.
But what I enjoyed the most from Mr. Mount was his observation of our jail house lawyers. They drive around with expired tags, smoke dope like a chimney or get so cranked up they can thread a sewing machine while it is running, work under the table and pay no taxes, take dirt bikes out and do wheelies on residential streets and then...and then...and then they cry foul and scream about rights when Big Bad Sheriff John hauls them into the slammer for a day. Like, the search warrant said my home was brown, but its really beige! And the police report says I am 5'10" when I am really 5'11 1/4." "I have been framed!!! My rights have been violated! This is like Russia!!!" Too much.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 22 October 2013 at 11:53 AM
Now, now Todd. That was not very Nevada City friendly to Mr. Anderson. I agree that kicking retarded puppies in a sack is cold as a stone and mean as a snake. Cold. So cold you can see gravel at the bottom of the thermometer. But, then again, I can't knock it if I haven't tried it.
Mr. Anderson should be made aware that the term "retarded" is a antiquated term nowadays. Not to be used in civil discourse. I supposed it is better that kicking midget amputees in a sack, so it could be worse
We all have our shortcomings, but I personally pet puppies and I wave to the mail carrier so even I have redeeming qualities. Its not like we are all going to stand on the overpass and protest Mr. Anderson's treatment of innocent defenseless and cute puppies. We need to take the high road here because that is what we conservatives do.
Its not always rewarding, but it sure beats joining Mr. Anderson (a dear close personal acquaintance)in the rubber room. Wonder what crafts he will be making for Christmas this year at the asylum. I hope he makes me Christmas ornaments made from walnuts, all colored nicely with red paint and black dots so they look like strawberries. Not too much green felt on top is the key to success Mr. Anderson. We conservatives like to be helpful.
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 22 October 2013 at 01:48 PM
Tozer, thanks for the helpful advice. You are an officer and a gentleman, as always.
See what happens when you talk pretty Todd? You get pretty back.
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 22 October 2013 at 03:41 PM
So how many races work in your company MA?
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 22 October 2013 at 06:45 PM
My Dear Friend Todd,
You are such a wondrous human being. Sometimes I try to imagine your day: getting up just before the sun starts filtering through the douglas firs, applying a little liquid Dentrol to the ol' choppers, heading out to the garage to rub one out to one of these pics pinned next to your pegboard tool rack http://imageshack.us/a/img849/9775/8tyh.jpg , heading back to the kitchen for some Kellogg's Cocoa Hoots http://imageshack.us/a/img585/3649/wcri.jpg , and then plopping down on your avocado-colored couch http://imageshack.us/a/img571/9453/i78i.jpg to watch Megyn Kelly distort yet another couple of hours of morning news.
To answer your question, only people of the white race currently work in my company. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I hire from the local labor pool and Nevada County is 92% white? No, that can't be it. I must be a racist. I will have to admit to being completely fascinated that my response to Richard Mack's embrace of only Amendments 1-10 by citing the 14th sent RR down a completely unrelated rabbit hole about race relations, from which there doesn't seem to be any hope of rescue.
Todd, let's find a day where we can sit down somewhere and share some lovely cups of Sanka together. You can show me your collection of unredeemed books of S&H Green Stamps, and if we really hit it off I might offer to fix your Sanyo transistor radio so you can finally listen to Rush while on those snipe hunts with your pals over in Gas Canyon.
All the Best,
Your Loving Buddy Michael
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 22 October 2013 at 08:43 PM
Thanks MA, just what I figured. Now you can go rub one out looking at my picture. Too funny.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 22 October 2013 at 10:09 PM
Todd, how could I possibly do that? I don't have your picture. Can you send me a link? Make it racy, please. TSA-style, doncha know.
What a hoot!
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 22 October 2013 at 10:34 PM
GregG 917 am - Yes, the famous Bush v. Gore 7-out-of-9 Equal Protection Clause decision. And of course the suggested remedy was also 7-out-of-9, yes?
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 22 October 2013 at 10:44 PM
George I don't know if you use Twitter but I signed up two weeks ago and started using it. I post my blog comments on it and I have doubled my viewers. It is another way to get you message out.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 23 October 2013 at 07:57 AM
I had previously written "Perhaps Mike can rationally speak to that Steaming Pile of Scalia in Bush v Gore having gotten 7 of 9 justices agreeing to the Equal Protection argument. Perhaps not."
By mandersonation's 10:44PM, it's clear the "Perhaps not" was prescient.
A second chance, Mike. Do you have nothing rational (look it up) to say regarding the 7 of 9 SCOTUS Equal Protection opinion in Bush v Gore, or did you just relish writing "steaming pile" in relation to Scalia?
Posted by: Gregory | 23 October 2013 at 08:17 AM
RE Todd: 22 October 2013 at 06:45 PM
I wasn't there but does anyone want to speculate on the racial mix at Sheriff Macks lecture?
Posted by: Paul Emery | 23 October 2013 at 10:29 AM
Why?
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 23 October 2013 at 10:35 AM
Because I'm curious. Why did you find it important to question MA on the racial balance of his business?
Posted by: Paul Emery | 23 October 2013 at 10:46 AM
You have been on this and other blogs for years. If you do not know, then you are not reading what they say.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 23 October 2013 at 10:53 AM
Well folks, there you have it from the Sierra Lizzard himself.
Posted by: Paul Emery | 23 October 2013 at 11:01 AM
I was there, Paul. Here's my thumbnail demographics report:
* 98% white
* 70% male, 30% female
* 60% over the age of 50, 20% from 30 to 49 yrs. old, 20% 29 yrs. old and under
Posted by: Michael Anderson | 23 October 2013 at 11:01 AM
No affirmative action there eh. Where is the 14th when you need it. Too funny.
Paul, I like that lizard comment, made me laugh.
Posted by: Todd Juvinall | 23 October 2013 at 04:52 PM
Todd, I'm pretty fond of it myself.
Posted by: Paul Emery | 23 October 2013 at 06:52 PM
Hey, where are all the white women??
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 23 October 2013 at 09:20 PM
Bill
30% of 98% according to MA
Posted by: Paul Emery | 23 October 2013 at 10:27 PM
Did anyone bother to ask him to comment on, "why is the Sparks police dept so tight lipped about the math teacher killing?" Could it be that some member of the thin blue line lost control of his/her weapon to their 12 year old? They started off saying it was out of respect for the family during mourning, and now they are saying they will likely never release the details.
Posted by: Douglas Keachie | 24 October 2013 at 09:21 AM
Walt, you can use Google Earth to get an approximation of likely spots, and then gather the evidence you actually use with fresh drone, helicopter, aircraft, data, and I suspect that it will hold up in court very nicely. But then, I am not an attorney, nor do I have any need to have one.
Posted by: Douglas Keachie | 24 October 2013 at 09:29 AM
"Did anyone bother to ask him to comment on, "why is the Sparks police dept so tight lipped about the math teacher killing?" Could it be that some member of the thin blue line lost control of his/her weapon to their 12 year old?"
Could it be that he wasn't asked about the Sparks school shooting because the shooting was days after Mack was here? Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.
The news from Sparks now is that the kid was bullied often, and the school showed a anti-bullying video a week or so earlier that featured a bullied student retaliating with a gun.
Posted by: Gregory | 24 October 2013 at 10:59 AM
I only drop in to visit this blog every now and then, so the date mismatch wasn't in the frontal lobe, or even back down under in the temporal lobe, where it's supposed to be, as the Mack Attack was not my idea of a Happy Meal. The school's instructional video has nothing to do with shielding the parents, the logical source for the weapon. Dear former potential math teacher who never made the grade, can you find ANY other cases where the PD kept such info secret forever?
Posted by: Douglas Keachie | 24 October 2013 at 05:19 PM
Keach, what you needed there was a calendar and a sense of time.
"can you find ANY other cases where the PD kept such info secret forever?"
A three year old may feel that a whole four days is "forever" to wait for some bright shiny object they've decided they must have, but an old fart like you has no excuse.
Posted by: Gregory | 25 October 2013 at 09:58 AM
Well, since we have gone from Sheriff Mack the unpolished speaker to his actual words and passions to the racial makeup of the crowd in the 4th whitest county in California to Equal Protection to Equal Treatment, to Equal Treatment vs Equal Protection (my emphasis), to Rip Van Keachie waking up from his slumber, I would like to add some more to this post racial stuff in the mix:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/20/obamacare-seeks-to-segregate-patients-doctors-by-race/
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 25 October 2013 at 09:53 PM
George, the constitution is no longer relevant in the state of California. We're on our own...
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/11/04/2766123/california-election-code-unconstitutional.html
Posted by: rlcrabb | 05 November 2013 at 07:30 AM
rlcrabb 730am - Thanks Bob, the basis of our remaining a sovereign nation-state becomes more curious with the passing of each week.
Posted by: George Rebane | 05 November 2013 at 09:39 AM