Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I could write a whole new post about Sarah Palin's ridiculous tweet that Dr. Laura's 1st amendment rights are being violated because people complained she used the N-word 11 times on a show last week...but why bother? I already wrote the exact same post last year when she made the same ridiculously inaccurate claim about Carrie Prejean. So, lather, rinse, repeat...here's last year's post in its entirety:

There are many things that make me crazy, but today's crazy-maker is a legal issue:

People who cite "free speech" or the 1st Amendment as justification for expressing unpopular political or social opinions make me crazy.

For starters, the 1st Amendment only prohibits restrictions on the freedom of speech that are imposed by the government. Let's read the text of the First Amendment, shall we? It's pretty short, so it should be easy to understand:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The "Congress shall make no law" part of the amendment is pretty clear. (The Constitution originally only restricted federal government action, but was been held applicable to state and local government action through the fourteenth amendment's equal protection provisions.)

So, pursuant to the First Amendment, your federal, state or local government is not allowed to tell you that you can't espouse the view that Barack Obama is inferior because he is black. But a private individual can throw you out of their home or shout at you in the street for saying that. A company can fire you for saying that at work, or a store manager can ask you to leave and ban you from their property. A private organization like Kiwanis can expel you from the membership. "Free speech" and the first amendment have no force of law anywhere other than in government.

(Even in government, "content-neutral" restrictions on speech are often upheld, such as when a government prohibits protesting in the middle of a busy street because it could cause a traffic jam that creates a safety hazard. Such a restriction would generally be permissible regardless of whether it prohibited a Nazi protest or people who want you to honk for more breast cancer research funding.)

Now everyone's favorite Constitutional scholar, Sarah Palin, has claimed that Carrie Prejean (Miss California), was just trying to assert her protected First Amendment rights when she answered in the Miss USA pageant that she believes gay marriage is wrong according to the bible.

“I respect Carrie for standing strong and staying true to herself, and for not letting those who disagree with her deny her protection under the nation’s First Amendment Rights,” Palin said.

“Our Constitution protects us all — not just those who agree with the far left.”

Governor Palin apparently does not understand that despite being called "Miss USA," the pageant organization has no government affiliation and is in fact owned by Donald Trump's corporate empire. Thus, the pageant is not governed by the Constitution and can punish Prejean for her views however they chose to do so, including not awarding her the crown because she wasn't apparently smart enough to give a more diplomatic answer. The television, print and online media entities that excoriated Prejean were also not Constitutionally bound not to criticize Prejean. The Miss California USA organization could have fired her if they wanted to, without any Constitutional impediment. The First Amendment does not protect anything that Carrie Prejean said during the pageant competition or at any time since, unless she said it in a government building or on government property and I just missed it. Last time I checked, nobody is claiming that Prejean was prevented by any governmental entity from speaking about her views.

It figures that a bubbleheaded beauty queen known for her intolerance would feel the need to speak out in support of someone whose attributes must have seemed mighty familiar. It would have been nice if a sitting Governor who considered herself qualified to be Vice President had bothered to actually read and understand the Constitution she has been charged with upholding and defending, before she claimed that it protected Prejean in the Miss USA pageant.

Quote of the Day, doomed to repeat it edition

Giving up on the idea that’s been your primary preoccupation for the last year-- and, by the way, a primary focus of the last presidential campaign--is not exactly a way to challenge these conclusions.

You'll have less political capital, making it hard to deliver progress on the economy or anything else. As for reelection, well, ask the congressional Democrats running in 1994 how failing to deliver health care reform worked for them.

--TNR's Jonathan Cohn in an open letter to House Democrats.

Serious Question of the Day

Would Sarah Palin be such a political or cultural hot commodity today if she wasn't hot (i.e., more physically attractive than average)?

I consider her to be the Anna Kournikova of politics, and I find that to be a sad and potentially dangerous thing. But I want to know if my 12 readers agree, and if so what you think it says about our culture that a hefty chunk of our population has elevated a nincompoop to politically iconic status simply because she's hot.

I love the internet

Earlier this week, the birther folks who believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya thought they had a humdinger of a smoking gun. They received a birth certificate showing that Obama was born in Mombassa, Kenya. It took less than two days for the internet to find the source document from which it was generated, an Australian birth certificate posted online at a geneaology website. Internet sleuths are so badass!

But, the only thing I love better than good sleuthing is parody, so you can imagine my joy and cackling when I discovered that someone has already put up a Kenyan Birth Certificate Generator. I love the internet!

Why the birthers lose

Slate finally asks the question that we should have been posing to the birthers all along: suppose Barack Obama was really born outside the U.S....legally, would it really matter? Among the not very complicated legal reasons why there would be virtually no way the birthers would prevail in a challenge to the legitimacy of Obama's presidency even if they finally found the smoking gun of Kenya birth:

1. No citizen in the U.S. would have standing to sue to challenge his presidency, because every citizen would be impacted equivalently and courts routinely interpret such situations as not conferring standing.

2. The people who ran against Obama in 2008 also wouldn't have standing because there is no legal relief available that would address their injury. Basically, if Hillary Clinton sued and won, it still wouldn't make her the winner of the Democratic primary or President. Instead it would just make Joe Biden President.

3. Even if someone established standing, courts would probably decide it was a political question not appropriate for adjudication. Courts would be very wary of forcing a Constitutional crisis that would oust a sitting President, particularly when there is a procedure specifically spelled out in the Constitution for that. Which brings us to...

4. Congress could impeach him, but it would be difficult to prove he committed a high crime or misdemeanor unless he actually knew he had been born in Kenya and conspired to hide it, thereby committing a fraud. If he didn't know, he wouldn't have done anything criminal that would qualify. Also, there's no way in hell this Congress votes to impeach him.

Of course this article doesn't go into the other big reason why it might not even matter: Obama was born to an American citizen, Stanley Ann Dunham, so much like John McCain he would have been a natural born citizen of the U.S. even though not born on American soil. (There is some question of whether she had been a citizen for 5 years beyond her 14th birthday, a requirement under some statutes to be considered a full citizen, but it's not even clear that applies.) Being a natural born citizen is all the constitution requires, and does not necessarily require birth on U.S. soil despite the ravings of people who have obviously never read said Constitution. Being born on U.S. soil is the easiest, but not the ONLY, way to be a legally natural born citizen.

(The Constitution also does not require that both biological or legal parents be American citizens, but that won't stop some of the whackjobbier birthers from claiming it anyway.)

So there you have it, even if you assume the crazy things they would have you assume, it still won't change anything. Can we move on to more important matters now?

Kenya smell the crazy?

Slowly but steadily over the past few weeks, the so-called "birthers" (people who believe Barack Obama was not actually born on U.S. soil and is therefore ineligible for the presidency) have picked up recruits to their cause. Just this week, both CNN's Lou Dobbs and right wing fire breathing radio host Rush Limbaugh signed on to the rumbling hordes demanding proof of citizenship.

But Gawker has a damn good point: even if you believe that the birth certificate that Obama's campaign produced last year was faked or created after the fact, how do you explain the birth announcement in the Honolulu paper that's been available on microfiche for decades?

Regardless, I agree with what Marc Ambinder wrote yesterday. The rise of this movement is more problematic for Republicans than Democrats:

Republicans have to be extra careful. If they give credence to the birthers, they're (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.

Bleh

For weeks now I have been writing and then euthanizing blog posts on a variety of topics, mostly political, that turn me on about as much as a sex scene on primetime network television. I get it half written but I just can't seem to muster the enthusiasm to care enough to edit the thing, let alone linking to the source and all the other stuff that I feel like I need to do to make a post publish-worthy. So, my blogger control panel is littered with half-written morsels that will never see the light of day, while the front page languishes with maybe one actual post per week. I am a bad blog mommy.

Today's partially digested post was about the Georgia Senate's decision to add a little poison pill to the so-called "Octomom" legislation intended to limit the number of embryos implanted during in vitro fertilization procedures. Today, the Senate amended the legislation to include a provision declaring an embryo to be a human being from the moment of fertilization (not even implantation into the uterus), and prohibiting the destruction of such embryos even upon the request of the would-be parents. Despite the obvious ramifications of forbidding the people who created the embryos to decide whether they will be destroyed, donated to stem cell research, or frozen in perpetuity, the real kicker here (as is usually the case when you see legislation that contains the word embryo) is as it pertains to abortion. While the bill purports to not affect existing laws in Georgia on abortion, were it to pass and become law the groundwork would be laid for certain legal challenges to anything that risks the harm or destruction of embryos, including procedures intended to expel or remove embryos from a host uterus. Goodbye, morning after pill. Goodbye, chemical or surgical abortion. Hello, test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Anyhow, I wrote this long angry screed about our dumb and duplicitous legislature that is still clearly controlled by the backwards ways of the Georgia Christian Coalition. But my heart wasn't in it, perhaps because I know that this bill will probably pass and there's not much I can do about it. The Democratic opposition is a toothless plaything to the Republican leadership right now, and the people of Georgia simply don't get fired up when it comes to preventing eradication of the right to choose. If we couldn't get constitutents to speak out against a Georgia Power bill that will significantly impact our wallets, how can we get them to speak out about this complicated and tricky issue? If people DID speak out about wanting Sunday sales pretty overwhelmingly, but the legislature still killed the bill with little if any repurcussions, why wouldn't they vote the Christian Coalition's way on this bill too? It is all very frustrating and demoralizing.

There are smart people with great ideas working to advance progressive and moderate principles in Georgia, but they are not the people in the legislature right now...or if they are, then they are being ignored. Unless and until the Georgia Democratic party can get its shit together, we will see more and more bad law come about while good people continue to do nothing. And that is depressing as hell.

So, if you really REALLY care about protecting the right of individuals to decide what happens with their embryos, and you don't mind pissing into the wind, give your legislator a call and ask them to defeat this bill. But if you can't muster the enthusiasm to follow through on the fight, I for one certainly am in no position to blame you.

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Take THAT, Bobby Jindal

Last night Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal delivered the Republican response to President Obama's big speech announcing his agenda for economic recovery and other major tasks he wants our country to take on during his term. As part of his response, Jindal mocked the stimulus package for including $140 million for volcano monitoring, wondering why the hell we needed a silly little thing like that. This was probably an easy question for the governor of a swamp state to ask, being that he is thousands of miles from the nearest active volcano.

But, as this article deftly points out, volcanic monitoring not only saves lives, but can save and has saved our country hundreds of millions of dollars by allowing the government to pull people and government equipment out of the danger zone when an eruption is imminent. In the Phillipines alone, $1.5 million spent on monitoring allowed our government to get $250 million worth of military vehicles and aircraft safely away from the eruption site. How would they accomplish that if nobody was monitoring the seismic activity and chemical changes that foretell an eruption?

You would think that the usefulness of this monitoring would be crystal clear to the governor of a state that took a huge hit from a natural disaster because officials did not appreciate the warning signs that should have caused them to get everyone out. I guess not. Shame on you, Bobby Jindal, for only giving a shit about the kind of natural disasters that can affect your state. How very narrow-minded of you. But I'll bet Sarah Palin, whose state has multiple active volcanoes that have erupted recently and might do so again, would beg to differ.