Seattle P-I Wrong on Pappy

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an editorial excusing the UW Student Senate on the whole COL Boyington memorial flap. Bizarrely, they condescendingly and incorrectly claim that the memorial was shot down because it wasn't honorific enough of enough different veterans. But this is exactly the opposite of what the minutes of that meeting made clear was at issue. Sloppy journalism at best.

Hilariously, the paper also gives credit to these students for a more "inclusive" memorial that is now being supported, as if that would have happened without the entire nation shaming them into it.

Shameful. The statue was opposed not because the students wanted more, but because they wanted less. The P-I snidely looks down their nose at the bloggers while giving these students a pass for making overtly insulting comments to military members. Typically, they excuse the comments saying "asking a question is always fair."

This is as untrue as "There are no such thing as stupid questions." Because the P-I shares an ideology with the anti-memorial, anti-military students, they took the "senators" backpedaling explanations on pure faith without ANY skepticism or question.

The P-I does no favors to these students' civics education by implying that legitimate criticism for their public comments is somehow out of bounds, or by reinforcing their re-write of what was actually said at the meeting. They also do no favors to their own credibility.

Hamas Spokesman Jimmy Carter...

...once again embarrasses his country and sticks up for oppression and evil in the name of "peace," this time in this Washington Post Op/Ed begging the world and the United States, "Don't Punish the Palestinians."

The same logic, willful ignorance, and unique "grasp" of the issues of the day that brought us late 70's economic and social malaise, reinvigorated the Soviet Union, and taught the Middle East that we were weak, ineffectual, and would do no more than write strong letters when attacked is now put into play to convince us that we should follow his advice with regards to Hamas.

My favorite part (remember - this is Jimmy Carter's own words):

Abbas has announced that he will not choose a prime minister who does not recognize Israel or adhere to the basic principles of the "road map." This could result in a stalemated process, but my conversations with representatives of both sides indicate that they wish to avoid such an imbroglio. The spokesman for Hamas claimed, "We want a peaceful unity government."

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, wait. He was being serious. But Hamas isn't going to take Jimmy Carter any more seriously than we are. The fact that he honestly believes Hamas is willing to renounce their founding principle of eliminating Israel and slaughtering Jews is exactly the reason Americans didn't trust Jimmy Carter to handle world affairs in 1980, and still don't trust him now. I would say that he should know better, but I guess he never new in the first place.

Ankle Biting Pundits has a fantastic response, stopping along the way to point out his many examples of collusion with oppression.

Whatever moral credibility Carter may have once had is gone. Wherever he goes, oppression smiles because it knows it will be excused and forgiven, and the forces of freedom will be chided for not being more understanding. He happily skips down the proverbial road to hell paved with the best of intentions, and makes the world a more dangerous place as he goes. He is no longer this nation's "Best Ex-President". He is a menace to freedom, and exemplifies the reason Americans do not - and cannot - trust the current Democratic Party with the nation's National Security.

The Orwell Silliness

Every once in awhile, you come across the silly Bush Administration = 1984 references, and they just make you laugh. This one was in the Seattle times the other day, and I found it linked to some left wing blogs that were all e-nodding in solemn agreement.

It's funny that they don't recognize that 1984 was written in 1948 in response to communist oppression, which was starting to make itself known to the rest of the world in 1948. The media wasn't owned by "big corporations" that had to answer to their advertising demographics (aka, "The People"), it was owned by the government which answered to nothing. You couldn't own a business, because the government owned the means of production. You couldn't pick your job. You couldn't save up and buy a nicer house. The government was not going to step down voluntarily just because a 200 year old piece of paper said so. And you certainly couldn't vote against the guy you didn't like, or jump on the internet and inform yourself of actual happenings overseas. 1984 is about the ultimate Big Government.

That was Orwell's vision. But it was more than a vision. It was also descriptive of ACTUAL happenings in real places, like in Iraq and Afghanistan before we went in. And it still is in places like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia - just not in the USA.

I also note that the author ignores that we really are at war against people who really do want to kill us. That's not a GOP fantasy. That's reality. And that's why these people aren't taken seriously by people who understand the world has real problems in it.

If we actually lived in the world Ryan Blethan or any of the rest of the "Orwellian Scholars" think we do, they would have been disappeared before their article came out, and the Seattle Times office would mysteriously have been burned for endorsing John Kerry. The Daily Kos would be shut down. The internet would be censored, as it is in China. The entire staff of the NYT would be in jail for leaking national security secrets. We would not have a 2008 election. Or any elections.

I understand their feelings, though. People want to be validated for their ideas. And when it becomes abundantly clear that people reject your ideas election after election after election, all you have left is to say, "They WOULD have agreed with me if only we didn't live in Big Brother land and were too dumb/scared/ignorant/hickish/Southern to bow to my wisdom."

In fact, it's almost as if the liberal author is misleading the reader about the current state of affairs to scare people into supporting his position. Hmmmm...

Why, it's almost like George Orwell wrote the script.

Non Fidelis at UW

I'm so ashamed of my school right now. The student senate has voted not to support even the idea of honoring WWII Congressional Medal of Honor winner Gregory "Pappy" Boyington because we shouldn't honor people who kill. Apparently, even if those people killed were literally fascists who were attempting actual global imperialism.

The award for the Most Asinine Hippy Statement of the Month goes to "Senator" Jill Edwards, representing the Honors Croquet League, who said that she didn't think "a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce." This profoundly disrespectful statement for military people in general is disgusting. Are we really going to go back to spitting on the troops? Does Miss Edwards really think the world would be a better place had we not had US Marines in WWII? Certainly this goes beyond disagreement about the Iraq War.

The University itself brags about the distinguished Marine on their official alumni page. I wonder how proud the author of that article is about his alma mater now. More importantly, I wonder how much money they'll be willing to give to the school in the future. I hope President Emmert is taking notice.

Of course, this whole hoopla may wind up helping the school recognize COL Boyington. I wouldn't have known about the effort. If I find a way to donate to the effort, I'll post it here.

Read the full minutes of the Student Senate session here. Contact Miss Edwards here.

Chuztpah, Thy Name is Hillary

Here's Hillary Clinton's take on the Dick Cheney non-story:

"The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing, because it goes counter to the way our constitutional democracy ... is supposed to work."

Holy friggin' cow.

This coming from the wife of a man suspended from the bar for perjury, from a woman who failed to report Vince Foster's suicide note to the media until 30 hours after the fact and his house had been sanitized, and from someone who has still failed to explain how Rose Law Firm documents she swore were destroyed ended up in her White House bedroom.

Unbelievable. Or not.

This, of course, despite the fact that Cheney immediately ensured his victim had emergency medical care, that he immediately notified the local sherrif, and immediately told the rancher on whose land they were hunting that he could tell the local media.

Ideological Diversity in the Classroom

The Yale Fed Soc is launching a program to lobby for a more balanced faculty at their law school. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.

General Meeting Thursday, 12:30

Don't forget about this quarter's general membership meeting this Thursday in room 115A at 12:30. Pizza will be served. We'll be announcing upcoming events for the year. Bring those quiet conservative friends who aren't wearing black post-confirmation, and we'll see you there!

Hamas' Victory - A Positive Development?

A good discussion on just that over at Yale's Federalist Society Blog, now linked on our blogroll.

On Race and Affirmative Action

In response to some of my more vocal and strident views in my Equal Protection class Monday as we were discussing Affirmative Action, a student said this in an E-mail to the professor:

I cannot help but feel that the resistance to affirmative action is to ensure the historical dominance of whites in every facet of society (education, employment, etc.). It seems to me a very basic issue of supremacy and ensuring that it is maintained for the historically dominant group.

How this can be reconciled with the fact that Clarence Thomas vehemently opposes Affirmative Action is beyond me. The only answer is that he's an "Uncle Tom", a traitor to his race because he had the temerity to think for himself and not vote in lock step with "his people". More personally, this is nothing more than a fancy way of saying that those who oppose Affirmative Action, people who are almost universally conservative or libertarian, are therefore racist at best, and probably have white robes in their closets to boot. This would be offensive if it wasn't so silly. But since I don't particularly like being called a white supremacist, and since I initially intended to blog on this when Hillary came out with her plantation comments, I'll respond. Publicly.

The only way to seriously hold such a view is to not actually know any conservatives, or at least to adamantly refuse to ever consider for a moment that their ideas have been arrived at in good faith. While I would never support it, you can see why people make the argument to have an "ideological affirmative action" program in colleges. Those who believe all conservatives are Jerry Falwell clones who "we all know sit around in a back room and talk about how you can keep the brown people down" (something I was told in earnest at a pub debate last year) would be in for a rude awakening.

The student said that she considered the idea of a meritocracy "illusory." I couldn't disagree more. I believe that every single person born in America, no matter their race, gender, economic circumstance, level of school funding, etc. Can do whatever they want with their lives. Are some of them starting (a lot) further behind than others? Sure. Will life be unfair to some? Without question. Can there ever be a "pure" meritocracy? Never. Does that mean American minorities are "helpless" or that they "cannot help themselves"? Not on your life. Don't believe it. Many have more obstacles to overcome than say, John Kerry or George Bush did. (Ronald Reagan comes to mind, as does Clarence Thomas himself.) Some will not be able to recover easily from bad choices early in life, like Ted Kennedy did when he escaped serious jail time after Chappaquiddick. But they can make it. They can improve their circumstances. And they can go the distance.

Jim Crow laws change that equation, because the obstacles they created were particularly high and so publicly sanctioned. But even as odious and powerful as they were, those obstacles could be overcome, and were in many cases (such as the parents and grandparents of our current Secretary of State and darling of '08-looking Republicans). Those laws are now in our past, and things have improved. We should continue to be vigilant against state sponsored and/or endorsed racism, and I believe we are.

There is still racism in this country, and we are right to condemn it. But I disagree that racism is still so widespread and endemic to our culture that it can account for the racial disparities that still exist. I don't believe Affirmative Action works because it does not address the underlying cause of the problem in the year 2006. Instead, it addresses the underlying cause of the problem as it was in 1968. Maybe it was the right thing to do back then. But it cannot now be said that nothing has changed, or that it is any longer a viable solution.

The reason for the initial racial disparity was without question racism. But the reason for its perpetuation into the 21st Century has been a culture that is afraid to condemn black entertainers from using "nigger" in every other sentence. It's a very liberal educational structure that fears standards and refuses to insist that all Americans learn to speak and use English correctly, and those who would tell Bill Cosby to "chill out" when he notes "ebonics" for the insipid evil it is. It's a 70% illegitimacy rate among blacks (Sen Moynihan noted was a "crisis" when it was only 30%). It's overwhelming black-on-black violence. It's an NAACP who has become a faithful ATM to a single political party, one which takes black voters for granted. It's the lack of condemnation of the likes of Louis Ferakkan for his anti-Semitic and inflammatory rhetoric. It is also an overreaching government, where administrative law is used to keep out competition or to ensure union dominance.

But the worst enemy of true integration is that there are large and powerful political forces in this country which have a vested interest in convincing us that (a) we are still a profoundly racist society, and (b) that unless we continue to elect them, that the problem will never be solved. The problem is that they don't actually WANT the problem to be solved, because then they would lose their morally compelling crusade and near monopoly on black votes. It's kind of like the state relationship with tobacco taxes, where they want people to stop smoking, but not really.

Republicans are guilty too. Blacks are of secondary concern, because they know those votes will never go to them, so why address their concerns? (Or more accurately, bother talking to them more to sell them on the belief that minorities will in fact benefit greatly from conservative policies?) They tried a little harder this time, but not enough. A black vote more "up for grabs" politically would do more for black interests than all the racial quotas in the world.

That's why black conservatives are attacked so viciously. Too many examples that don't fit the "victim" paradigm of black people who "need our help, and ONLY our help" threaten their already fading power. And if it's a white conservative? Well, then we must just be trying to maintain our superiority. Talk about ad hominem!

Affirmative Action may help a racial balance in the short term, but it does nothing to actually solve the problems underlying racial disparities. And there are second, third, and fourth order consequences, as Justice Thomas noted so eloquently in his dissent, that make the programs a net loss for racial minorities. And voting for feel-good legislation that makes one feel less racist, despite negative consequences to the racial group one purports to help is not something to be proud of. Results matter.

The USA will never be not-racist enough for liberals. We will never have a society that it perfectly fair. When we charge government with actively enforcing fairness at all levels of life, instead of getting out of everyone's way, they have to keep adjusting, continuously intruding, and always creating both innocent victims and new excuses for failure from both whites and blacks.

One of the things that galls me the most is this concept that blacks in this country must be "taken care of". We "take care" of animals, children, and property. How arrogant and insulting to apply that to adult citizens! Let's give all Americans of every color enough credit as full grown human beings and citizens to finally give all of us full credit for our accomplishments, our failures, and our actions. Because Affirmative Action is antithetical to that goal, I reject it. Without even having to put on a white robe.

LaRouche on Us "Feddies"

Before you use the latest litter strewn about the law school by the "LaRouchePAC" people for its primary purpose of bathroom backup or bird cage lining, check out their take on the Federalist Society on page 14. Now I know how the Freemasons feel when they read a Dan Brown novel. At least Dan Brown acknowledges he's writing fiction...

My Hero Ted Kennedy

I'd just like to thank Senator Kennedy for his ridiculous attacks on Judge Alito, guaranteeing him his confirmation.

The Dems on the judiciary committee have now delayed the vote one week (as is their right, but something they apparently told Sen. Spectre they would not do). The only possible reason is to (a) buy more time to twist arms into supporting a filibuster, and/or (b) buy more time for liberal activist groups to smear Judge Alito. I honestly want to know - what do they seriously think they'll gain? Some say they're trying to delay it so President Bush can't take credit for the confirmation at the State of the Union Address. But all that would do is let Bush highlight their obstructionism. And the smear tactics have been going on for months now with the only result being an increase in Alito's public support. Is one week really going to make a difference?

These tactics make me think of a basketball team losing by 12 points in the final two minutes purposely fouling the winning team in the faint hope of them missing free throws and losing the rebound. Once in a blue moon, that might work. More often, it makes the losing team look desperate, confirming that they deserve to lose the game, and lets the winning team put up a whole bunch more points.

And I have to ask - whose idea was it to have Ted Kennedy there to grill Judge Alito on morality, respect for women, and/or empathy for the underprivileged?

Once again, the Democrats have displayed a tremendous talent for self destruction. Any assertions that they could regain Congress are, in light of their leadership, simply laughable.

Law Students for Alito

Issac Fong, a Federalist at Berkeley, has a Law Students for Alito blog that's well worth reading. He's tracking it all, and has information on what YOU can do to help ensure this man becomes Justice Alito.

How to Leak Classified Info Like a Man

The debate that's raging about President Bush's NSA wiretaps I think misses a larger, more important point. I can understand the fervor on both sides, although I lean towards the legitimacy of the program.

But consider again the source of the information in the first place. US News and World Report, the New York Times, and the Washington Post all used unnamed "insider" sources. These people who spoke to the press surely have security clearances that are so high and so compartmentalized that they don't even have names for the level they're at - far higher than the Top Secret clearance I held when I was in the Navy. From experience, I can say for certain that all of the clearance holders had extensive and continuing training on what they could and could not say, and to whom they could and could not say it to. None of them were under any illusion that they had a legal right to anonymously leak covert information to the press under ANY circumstances, even if they felt the program was wrong, and none of them were empowered to make Constitutional legal interpretations on their own.

admittedly there are legitimate questions on the programs' legality. But they had been vetted by both Administration lawyers, FISA judges, and Democrats in Congressional Intelligence committees. Once those decisions were made by the political and judicial process, executive agency officers had no standing to circumvent them for any reason.

But say you think that listening in to international phone conversations between Americans with known terror ties and countries known to harbor terrorists amounts to a violation of rights tantamount to American fascism. Or, pretend for a minute that Bush was wiretapping his political enemies like Clinton and Nixon did. Or say that we had secret prisons in Alaska where we kept naturalized Arab citizens in bases and waterboarded them once a day whether they needed it or not. What do you do?

They had many options, none of which they took. They could have complained to their supervisors. Maybe they did and were correctly ignored. They could have reported it to Democrats on the intelligence committee with the same or similar security clearances. This they clearly did NOT do, or we would be hearing about it. They could have quit their jobs in protest, and encouraged their colleagues to do the same.

But even if all that didn't work, and their conscience was so torn that they could no longer stay silent, then they should have stood up. Publicly. By name. And then been willing to face the consequences proudly, even if that included going to jail. Had they done that, they would have deserved the accolades liberals now heap upon them as whistleblowing heroes, martyrs, and defenders of liberty and an open democracy.

But because they did not, one can only conclude that they were moral cowards and traitors to their country, likely driven more by political or personal motives than anything else. I don't use those words lightly. Their actions were no different than if a leaker would have told the papers that we had broken German and Japanese codes in WWII, without the secrecy of which we could not have stopped U-boat attacks in the Atlantic or won the Battle of Midway. They told the enemy of our methods, warned them away from previously fruitful fountains of information that unquestionably had saved lives. Worse, it gave hope to bin Laden's followers who have been told for years that Americans would do exactly this to themselves, and new hope that they could count on the irrational political left in this country and a press hostile to the President to provide them with safe haven and counter-intelligence about our methods.

The people who leaked this information, because of the WAY they did it, are traitors, and they make me so mad I could spit. The press who printed and distributed the stories have done a great service to the forces of Jihad, the enemy of America and of freedom, liberty, and democracy world wide. All Americans should condemn them unequivocally, no matter what one thinks of the merits of the programs they leaked. Anyone who does not so condemn them must be seriously asked - which side are you on?

Fire the Transit Workers

I hope Mayor Bloomberg has what it takes to do the right thing and fire the NYC transit workers a la Ronald Reagan's canning of air traffic controllers.

Even aside from all the obvious arguments about why this is wrong, including their stability in a government mandated monopolistic job and the fact that they are no less essential to the city functioning than the police department, what do the unions think they'll get out of this? They've been slapped with a contempt fine of $1,000,000 a day, which will cost the average Ralph Cramden who has to pay for it with his fees. They're not getting any sympathy from New Yorkers, or won't if this goes on much longer. And the fact that they already agreed not to strike when they took their jobs in the first place means that they can no longer be trusted at the bargaining table to keep their word about anything. This is a suicide move by out of touch union leadership who think the "rightness" of their cause is more important than the inevitable and disastrous consequences that will result from it.

Public unions have to force people to join them by law. Private unions haven't prevented layoffs at Boeing, AT&T, GM, or anywhere else. The only good thing about this strike is that it will continue to weaken the labor movement which passed the point of usefulness sometime back in the 50s.

Bork on Original Intent

In a letter to the WSJ.

Its about time that a voice of authority came out against the hideous abomination that is the chocolate martini. Also reassuring that he draws a bright line between drinks and vegetable snacks ...

"Journalist Privilege" Harms Free Speech

This New York Post editorial sums up nicely why the media has lost our trust. In short, it points to Woodward and Bernstein as harming the country beyond measure by inspiring generations of young journalists to make it their mission to take down (or at the very least to challenge) The Man.

In fact, you could use All the President's Men to teach a course in journalistic ethics, using it as an example of what NOT to do - using anonymous sources without corroboration, revealing high level, sensitive information without considering their consequences, and making a mission out of taking down a politician. I'm not excusing Nixon, but his bad acts cannot justify theirs.

Now, journalists want to legally protect this type of bad behavior by creating a "journalist-source" privilege that would protect them from revealing such communications in a legal proceeding. They sanctimoniously note that they "have a duty to tell the public everything they learn, which is The Truth", while omitting or downplaying information that may not comport with their pre-established world view. (Case in point, the reporting on the US Economy.) The problem is that doing so would necessitate defining the word "journalist", and doing so in such a way that creates a de facto "official, licensed journalist." That would give the industry a larger chokehold, giving them an edge over bloggers, startups, and other ordinary citizens who want to get the word out. And that, as any corporation-phobic hippy will surely tell you, is a threat to a robust free and diverse press.

The First Amendment makes EVERY American citizen a journalist by birthright. The Internet makes that even more of a reality, with easy access to the ability to publish world wide. But we also have responsibilities as citizens, one of which is to cooperate with criminal investigations and to not harm our nation in time of war.

Journalists should remember that they are human beings first, then Americans, and THEN journalists. If their reporting of key facts assists the enemy in an armed conflict, they have an obligation to refrain from publishing those facts. If they are privy to information about a criminal affair, the "Public Right to Know" should not somehow supersede the right of the criminal justice system at a public trial to also know those important facts. If their reporting aids international terrorists by undermining the war against them, and by legitimizing suicide bombers on school busses as "militants" or "freedom fighters", then they have lost their humanity.

This is not to say that they necessarily should be silenced. But they should be condemned by all Americans, and by all people who think saving lives and promoting freedom is worth more than their job.

The SCOTUS Panel

Check the comments below for my comments (whatever they're worth).

SCOTUS Panel on Civil Rights

The ACS and the ACLU are hosting a panel with Professors Junker and Lombardi tomorrow (Thursday) at 12:30 in room 133. I'll be there trying my hand at simul-blogging. Prof. Lombardi clerked for Judge Alito, and will unquestionably have some interesting insight. See you all there!

Senator Lieberman...

...gets it. As soon as the Dems start getting it, too, they'll start winning elections.

On "Judicial Activism"

I hate this phrase. I really do. Use of the phrase usually constitutes some act of faith, meaning that it means whatever the person saying it thinks it does. For many conservatives - especially those without a lot of legal background - it generally means "judges who sit on cases that don't turn out the way we think they should not having looked at the actual case, like when criminals get off on 'technicalities'." For many liberals, it means "judges who strike down laws", or "make decisions", whereby they giddily point out that conservative judges are just as "activist". I think both of them are wrong in their understanding.

To me, a "judicial activist" is one who first makes a policy decision based on what they think the law SHOULD be, and then only after their mind has been made up, justifies it with some case law, statutes, or most egregiously, Constitutional Amendments that may or may not actually apply. This definition encompasses those who make decisions that fall outside the realm of justiciabilty, are manifestly political questions, or are not even within that court's jurisdiction.

Striking down laws is NOT, in my view, judicial activism. Sometimes they need and deserve to be struck down - but only under existing rules of law, not because the judge thinks they're bad policy. Making a decision based on analogy when there simply isn't case law, a statute, or some other source of law directly on point is likewise not offensive - so long as the decision rests within the logical scope of the law as it exists, and doesn't unilaterally expand some conception of rights, then such a decision is exactly WHY we have judges at all.

Every so often someone thinks they've "got me" advocating judicial activism. A few weeks ago, in my smoking thread, I was accused of it when I said I hoped small business owners would use the well developed doctrine of regulatory takings to seek compensation for the wrong that the Seattle City Council did to the owners of those businesses who will suffer for their actions. That's not activism in my mind because the legal doctrine is already well developed. Last week in one of my classes, I was accused of advocating it because I thought a judge who determined that a man who had sex with his ex-wife's minor adoptive daughter didn't need to prove with a Harvard study that his actions were bad for the other kids of the marriage. Again, I think that's within a judges power to decide, because it falls well within the logic and common sense of the existing statutory scheme even if that particular case's facts weren't specifically contemplated.

There is no question that under such a definition, there certainly ARE "conservative activist judges." I happen to think Justice O'Connor was such a justice (and to a lesser extent Kennedy), and that Harriet Miers would have been one as well. And that's why I'm not sorry to see J. O'Connor go, and why I was opposed to Ms. Miers' nomination. Where I see them, I oppose them. Even Justice Scalia, who so vocally opposes such an approach, can fall prey to the problem (the only plausible explanation for his concurrence in the Raich medical marijuana case decided last year). When he does it, I have no problem pointing out my disappointment.

But I think it's clear that liberals are MORE prone to this kind of "decision first, justification after" kind of "reasoning." I say that because most liberals espouse a "living Constitution," kept alive by judicial decision rather than the amendment process. This concept cannot exist without the ability of judges to make policy changes to text unchanged by the people's elected political representatives.

I know I can trust a judge when I occasionally see this in an opinion: "I personally think this law is ridiculous, and even potentially damaging. I would vote against it if I were a legislator. But this is not within my purview to decide, and therefore I decline to address the merits." You will never, ever see that in a Ginsberg or Souter opinion. You WILL see it from those most often attacked as "conservative judicial activists" - Thomas and Scalia. You see it in Alito opinions as well.

Judges - and Supreme Court Justices in particular - have grown far more powerful than the founders envisioned. Their decisions are unreviewable in many cases, and nearly impossible to get "undone". As such, they have the responsibility to ask themselves in every instance, "Just because I have an opinion on this topic, is it for me to make this decision?" When they refuse to do it, the balance of power among the three branches of government is upset, and we're faced with ridiculous efforts to counter it like gay marriage Constitutional amendments, further eroding the power of the document and the foundation of our country.