For 28 weeks in late 2008 and 2009 I wrote a series on the Constitution. It grew out of a realization that while I knew a couple of the Amendments I had never really read the whole thing. Worse I had never taken the time to think about it in part and as a whole. If you’re interested you can find the last one here, and there are links to all 27 of the others. The point is not the series but what I learned from doing it.

There seems to be a failure by many of our fellow citizens to understand that the Constitution is not a Chinese Buffet where you can go straight for the sweet and sour chicken but leave off the bean sprouts. Our Constitution is more of a tapestry, where if you pull out one string that offends you the whole thing is weakened.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

If one wants the protections of a particular Amendment, then one has to support the whole thing. There is no getting around that. If you are a big fan of the idea that the State should not be able to view or seize your private papers and files, then it follows that you must support the 2nd Amendment and its provisions for the ownership of guns by private citizens.

The Villagers do not have the basic concept of arriving at a decision, because they are talking about political judgment. Sadly, in the existing political schema, the best interest of the individual politician is composed of individual gain as balanced against the influence of the possibility that a piece of blatantly gain-oriented ting may lose office for the voter/politican.

In the Jeu de la Mort, a game show on French television, contestants were egged on by television hosts to give lethal shocks to their victims. In the case of the French show, the host was a rational-appearing and attractive youngish woman, instead of the ranting pantheon from hell we have on U.S. tv, but the object was the same. With proper urging and a camera involved, a mob psychology sets in that removes boundaries of control and unleashes the criminal element in many of the addled participants in the game.

(Also at Nevada Progressive)

Remember when I warned you last week that serial anti-equality campaigner Richard Ziser is threatening Nevada LGBT families again, this time considering a ballot initiative to strip away our hard fought domestic partner rights won with SB 283? Well, the threat is real. We now know.

However, there’s a way we can stop it before it really starts. We can help our friends and family in Washington state Approve Referendum 71 so that we send a message to the forces of bigotry out West that we won’t allow any more of their H8!

An exposition on the need to re-think action

(Also at Nevada Progressive)

Have you seen the new blatantly false Yes on 1 ad?

Oh OK, that wasn’t really it. But seriously, Jackie Beat would have SO MUCH FUN spoofing the real one! Yes, it’s really that lame.

America’s whacked out radical rightwing has not given up on their agenda to create greater and greater income and wealth inequality, to make the country’s public policy a captive of the bizarre free market ideas of novelist Ayn Rand, and to continue to have our health care determined exclusively by insurance corporations for their own profit while 50 million of us lack healthcare and its cost continues to drag down our economy.

How did the sharpest pol in a generation get hornswoggled by the conservatives?

The Left needs to out-mobilize the Right. The Left’s opinions and solutions, which are a majority, must be more widespread and visible than a small group of fanatical Right-wing extremists using nefarious tactics to disrupt town halls, which are a key medium in the American democratic process.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O Democrats)

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for quite some time. The California Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the lawsuits that will force the judges to decide whether it’s OK to treat millions of people, people like me, as “second-class citizens” simply because of who we love. Can this possibly be allowed? I hope not, and I renew my vow today to work my hardest to ensure it’s not allowed.

So what’s at stake today?