An Open Letter to President Obama : The Problem With Accepting Syrian Refugees.

Dear Mr. President,

Don't you EVER call me bigoted or frightened or xenophobic because I will not support your half baked plan to admit Syrian refugees into America. Its not b/c of them that I object, its because of YOU!

You have proven yourself to either be the dumbest President since Harding, or the biggest liar since Clinton. You may be both, but I fear more the latter than the former.

You see, in order to engender trust in your work and that of those that work in your administration, you have to be RESPONSIBLE. You are not.  You never take responsibility. Any problem you encounter is always someone else's fault. You claim to never know anything when there is a MAJOR screwup in your administration. You find out when you read it in the newspapers. This does not engender trust.

You also say things you cannot prove or back up! You see Mr. President, ISIS was not the JV team; you do not have Isis contained; Your former Secretary of State knew a lot more than she allegedly told you, and she used private e-mails which she later destroyed without your approval, and  your staff (ie Ms. Jarrett) planned lies about most if not all of it.
By the way When the President of the United States of America draws a "line in the sand" and then has to let the Europeans pull your foot out of your mouth, that does not engender trust in you or your word.

You promised transparency, but yours has been the least transparent administration since Nixon. You promised to not spy on us, LOL! Nixon is in the clouds saying "Whoa, this guy is good". Hell even J Edgar Hoover would be impressed. You spied on our allies and lied to them about it. Your IRS targeted your "enemies" but you take NO responsibility for their actions. Instead your administration has covered its wrong doing up. Cover ups do not engender trust.

Personally,  I don't think you or anyone working for you, could spot an Islamic or for that matter ANY Terrorist if he was standing in front of them with a lit bomb screaming "JIIIIHADDDDD!" and wearing an Allahu Akbar!!! Pin. Hence I do not think your administration can be trusted to properly vet incoming refugees to determine which of them may be the one to blow something up in the USA.

No Mr. President, I am neither a bigot nor a xenophobe, I am just an ordinary American citizen who has lost faith in his government's, and more importantly his President's ability to preserve his freedom OR his safety. That is why so many Americans are against taking in Syrian Refugees right now. If you would step out of your Rose Garden for a few minutes and talk to the part of your constituency that you do not like, you might learn a thing or two. Who knows, you might even apologize correctly for your past behavior and that of your staff and start to get back the trust of the public that you had three short years ago but squandered since.

Yours truly
Anthony Colleluori

AKA That Lawyer Dude.

Judge Scalia: The Constitution Permits Sexual Discrimination

In an interview with the California Lawyer Magazine US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declares that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution does not prohibit discrimination based on one's sex or sexual orientation.

Scalia is an "Originalist" is one who adheres to the words of the law and what the framers of the law meant when they wrote the words and the document was passed (by the electorate.

A fairly simple guide to Originalism and non-Originalist thinking can be found here

As a general fan of Scalia's I was asked if I agreed with his statement that the 14th does not encompass equal rights for women. I do not. That is because within the Originalist camp, there are two distinct branches. Scalia is an Intentionalist- Someone who interprets the Constitution according to the way he thinks the people who wrote it meant for it to be passed. This style of interpretation is popular among Neo-conservatives but a number of Classical liberals (libertarians) also hold the view.

I am a textualist. I believe the text means what the text says. I would probably be closer in vision to the late Justice Hugo Black who would decide 1st Amendment issues by reminding his colleagues that "Congress shall pass no law" meant NO. LAW. Textualists look at the words and give to them the meaning that they have. We do not believe that one can go back and decide what the collective voice of the people was except by using the words themselves.

Getting back to Scalia if he is correct that the people who framed the 14th amendment as well as the people who voted for it were not concerned with sexual equality or the equal treatment of those with non-traditional views of sexual orientation then in his view such discrimination would be as legally legislated as the banning of such discrimination.

I do not believe however, that the Constitution is limited by what the majority of people thought at the time of passage. I doubt we can truly discern that. I fall on the side that says read the statute literally as it is the only document we know was voted on. So in this case the 14th Amendment at least for me as a classical liberal means what it says:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Broken down: All persons (Male female black white other etc)born or naturalized in the United States (meaning born here not born here of documented or non documented aliens, BORN. IN THE USA. or given citizenship by us after birth somewhere other than IN THE USA),are Citizens of the US and the state where they reside (So the states do not have a choice in who they may bestow rights upon.)
No State (NO. STATE.)shall make or enforce any law (ANY LAW) which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person (ANY. PERSON)of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I think Justice Scalia needs to rethink even his sense of Originalist thought. I do not believe that voters (who were mostly male at the time of the adoption of the amendment) did not think their wives or daughters were not persons or citizens. Whether they could conceive the law would someday be applied to women they could have understood it would. After all they failed to exclude them and they could have done so if they never wanted the amendment to apply to these women. I think that trying to apply what they would have decided to do had they issue been debated is just not possible. The original words speak for themselves Women were citizens. The end.

I expect to see Tea Party people try to limit the scope of the 14th amendment and claim to other conservatives that the original intent requires that the amendment not apply to citizenship of the American born children of undocumented aliens. THAT IS NOT WHAT THE AMENDMENT SAYS. Further I can guarantee none of those types of people are smart enough to discern what Americans of 1865 thought. They have no idea what Americans today think I don't want them straining to go back 150 years.

Hattip: Huffington Post

Of Regan, Kennedy, and Rockwell: TIme To Reflect On Being An American Not a Republicat or Demorican

A very interesting exhibit opened at the Smithsonian Art Museum In Washington DC. this Fourth of July weekend. It is a retrospective of the works of Norman Rockwell, as seen through the eyes of two of America's greatest living movie directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Each has lent parts of their extensive Rockwell collections to the exhibit.

Rockwell is remembered as a artist who captured America and Americans at their best in worst times. Central to his work were the pieces that became known as the "Four Freedoms."

Rockwell told our story, the American story of the 1930's through the 1960's. His paintings captured the fear and strength of an emerging superpower. He captured our sense of wonder and our sense of determination. He was oft criticized for only capturing our "good times", but anyone who has ever really looked at his body of work, especially at "Southern Justice", and "The Problem We All Live With" knows that Rockwell understood both the American ability to do absolutely the right thing and the most horrible things. He just chose to most often show us, and remind us, of our best moments. His work reinforces that we proceed the farthest the fastest by working together.

In a like way, John F. Kennedy asked us to do the same thing. No one since Lincoln had been more divisive than the Boston Brahmin-like , Harvard educated yet Roman Catholic JFK. Our first WWII vet President and War Hero he was from an old line political machine yet like Theodore Roosevelt spoke like a populist.

He won a contested election. The nation was 50/50 for and against him, and yet Kennedy is revered by most Americans not only because he was killed by an assassin's bullet, but because he called on us to serve each other, to do not what was best or expedient for oneself but to do what was best for our nation. He ushered us in with a feeling that we could do ANYTHING. Land on the moon. Sure! Make the world safe for democracy. Absolutely! Equalize race relations. Without a doubt! We believed because he did. We believed because, our leaders, split as they were against each other, made it their job to do a job.

Ronald Regan. An Actor. A liberal labor leader turned Goldwater Republican. Was gonna lead us into war with the Soviets. Was going to destroy the poor and trample on the rights of everyone he didn't agree with.

Nope. He too saw the shining light on the hilltop as our nation. He engineered the fall of the Soviet Empire, and the rebirth of our nation as a superpower of import without firing a single shot. He stabilized our economy and made us proud of ourselves. Not by focusing on the things that kept us apart, but rather focusing on what brought us together. He fought with leaders of the left, and they with him, but the name calling we were now? The garbage that passes for political debate today? Non existent under his watch.

Regan Kennedy and Rockwell all understood the limits of America, but they called on us to remember not who we weren't but who we were and more importantly whom we could be.

To my Tea Party and Liberal friends, CUT IT OUT! Please don't send me another piece of E-mail that attacks President Obama or Senator McConnell. I don't care at this point where the hell Obama was born. I don't care that Michael Steele took some conservative yuppies to a burlesque show. Please never say "Rush Limbaugh" or "Rachel Maddow"to me, even in a joke.

I care that I want health care. I want my employees covered and I want to be covered. I know you want that too.

I want to be able to afford a vacation and still be able to retire some day. I know you want that too.

I want to give less money to the government and I want to make more money than I do. Who doesn't want this??

I want then poor to have shelter, and education. I want there to be no poverty in our nation. Republicans and Democrats want this too.

I want to live free. I don't want to have to be screened to get into my local library. Don't we all want this?

I want to save the environment and to know that our earth will feed my great great grandchildren someday. It isn't just my dream is it??

I would like you, as my elected officials to only tell me how you will do this. I do not want to hear your critique of the other guy's idea. (I am smart enough to do that critique myself, thank you.)

If I like your ideas better than the others that I hear, I will vote for you, donate to your campaigns and respect you.

If you shout down your opponent, call him or his ideas names mis-characterize his programs and act like a spoiled child if he wins the election, I will not vote for you, I will not support you and I WILL NOT RESPECT YOU!!

I ask, no I beg, the Sergeants at Arms of the United States House and Senate to post a print of Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" at the door of each chamber. Maybe that will remind you those guys of what this is really all supposed to be about.

Hattip: NY Times

It's D-Day and That Lawyer Dude Returns... Again.

I may revive this blog more often than Pop Tart Britney Spears revives her career, but I am back. It has been a while. I know that most of you who stop by here come to see me rant on something or just to see if I am alive (thanks for those of you who stop by to see if I am alive). I am. I am also ready to take on a few people places and things.

Where to start?

Hmmm. Let's see it is June 6th, a foreign nut job is trying to rub out the free world, our troops are dying oversees, Our Democrat president is trying to bring us out of a depression by spending more and more money, and the NY Yankees are over .500 It must be the year.... 1944. That's right it is D-day. Imagine how history repeats itself?

To our Veterans of that war and that day, I salute you. I also thank you for a service well done.

To our Veterans of today, I salute you as well. I celebrate your return from war, I pray for those of you who are still there, and I thank you for agreeing to take on the task of keeping us free.

I also do not want to let today go by without remembering, Robert F. Kennedy who was killed by an assasins bullets on June 5th 1968 some 41 years ago. He was a man who whether I would agree with his politics, asked the question "Why can we not be better than we are?"
It is an important question to ask of ourselves everyday.

Tomorrow's post: The Case of the Chess Club Urinalysis and other stories about governments over-reaching.

The Start of a New World, The Week The Dream Comes True : Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Hussein Obama

I have so little to add to all that is being said on the air, in the main stream media and in all the blogs. This is the start of a new world. A world that I am sure many in my lifetime feared, and many more doubted. A world, where finally the promise that any man woman or child can be President of the United States is fulfilled.

From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, possibly the most revered land in the nation (other than a National Cemetery) Martin Luther King Jr. stood up to the powers that would liked never to see this week come and said:

"And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

Tuesday is another huge step in achieving the MLK Dream. But it is not just his dream that is fulfilled this week. With the Inauguration of Barack Obama, we also fulfill the dreams of Ganhdi, and Lincoln, and Jesus Christ. King said in his speech:

"In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

On Tuesday, we have an opportunity to show the world, that the concepts of peaceful protest, advocacy, education, and persistence can change the way the world works. War and killing doesn't have to be the way. In fact, war and killing usually just leads to more war and killing. Peaceful respectful disagreement will bring about permanent change. Discipline and Dignity... If that isn't a good description of our President-elect, nothing is. I don't know what he will do, or if it will work, or even if I will agree with him, but I already see he is a man, who exudes dignity and discipline.

There is a different feel in Washington DC. It is one of hope and renewal. There is a return of class to the city. People even speak of trust. I haven't heard the word trust in the city since 1969.

Obama is reaching out to the Republicans. He is seeking to work with the men in the middle. He may be saving the Republican party from itself by doing so. Brave Republicans like McCain and Graham understand that working in a genial environment is the only way to accomplish anything. Failure to do so will reign down anger from the people on the main streets of every city and town in the country. We cannot have 4 more years of nothing being accomplished in Washington DC.

Of course, such bi-partisanship will bring about rage from the neo-con right (or are they really left?) because, they will claim they cannot take pot shots at the President and the Democratic leadership if the moderate Republicans give them cover. Too bad. Rush and the idiotic blond bimbo who wishes she were he, will have to just shoot at each other for a change. They have been shooting the Republicans in the foot long enough. Liberals of the far out persuasion will have the same difficulties. If they want to accomplish anything in Washington DC without making their re-elections impossible, they will have to come to the middle with their social agenda, and maybe their economic agenda as well.

On the other hand, we all could go to a tax program allowing Americans to keep 90% of what they earn. I bet that stimulates the economy right away.

Finally, maybe the dreams of the man we honor on Monday, become fulfilled with the Inauguration he made possible of the man we entrust with our nation's well being on Tuesday. With great challenge, comes great opportunity. But with great opportunity, comes great responsibility not to squander that opportunity. The last eight years have been squandered opportunity. As a nation we have tired of that waste.

It will be an historic week. I will pray, it is an historic Presidency.Congratulations Dr. King, and welcome Mr. Obama, Mr. President. Welcome, and good luck.

Revisionist History Lesson: Mauro on the Nixon Library Releases Tape of Nixon-Burger Phone Call

When I was in College, I had a Professor named Parkman. He was a phenomenal teacher. Right out of central casting. He could just as well have been at the Louisiana Purchase as written about it. He had to be 115 years old (or so it seemed to me as an 18 year old Freshman).

Anyway Professor Parkman wasn't one to get excited about much. The one thing he was excited about however were the "Revisionists". A "Revisionist" was someone who looked at history but through the light of how he wanted it to be and not report it in the light it was created. (check out Wikipedia's links for a more complete look at "revisionism" both positive and negative)

I can hear Parkman "railing" as I read this post on the release of a taped conversation between President Richard Nixon and then SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burger (who Nixon appointed to the high court as CJ.) It seems that Tony Mauro could not help but to express that Nixon and Burger were engaged in a conversation that would be "frowned upon". They were discussing the Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973) case which set up the "community standards test" for obscenity.

In fact, not until after Watergate would it be frowned upon. At the time of the phone call, both men led separate branches of our government. It was not even "frowned" upon for POTUS prior to President Ford to speak to SCOTUS Justices, especially the Chief Judge, for opinions about how certain initiatives would fair if brought before the court.

Listen to the conversation, it doesn't seek to nail Burger down on the issue although Burger himself opines that he is "coming down hard on it". It is a general conversation about the work that the judicial branch is involved in. Nixon being a lawyer, and a bit of a gossip, wanted to talk shop with a colleague. He had worked with Burger during the campaign in 1952 and was there when he was appointed by President Eisenhower to the bench. Nixon elevated him to the Chief Judge's spot. Is it hard to believe that they had a professional friendship? Nixon had argued a first Amendment case in 1966 before the SCOTUS. It was an area of law both men felt was important from an academic as well as a political point.

After Watergate, the court took on a more important role in everyday politics, hitting what I hope was its zenith in Bush v. Gore. Until then the Court generally stayed above the political fray though individual justices were always political beings. I agree that for better or worse, this type of conversation would be frowned upon. I am of the opinion it is for the worse. Nevertheless, to place 21st century mores on a 20th century conversation and suggest something nefarious where such conversation was de rigeur strikes me as not only unfair, but dare I say..."Revisionist".

By the way I think it is interesting that Ron Howard's Frost Nixon(link is for the trailer) is coming out this month. I have no idea what to expect, but I cannot wait to see it.

Hattip: Law.Com

PS Thanks to the Nixon Library for a link to the tape and to Findlaw for the Miller case, and LII for the link to Bush v. Gore.