The Bill of Rights - Articles IX and X

Note: Friday's post is going up early because I need to go to work early in the morning, and won't have time to write the post when I usually do. It'll confuse Mike, but the rest of you should be okay.

It's been a while, Dear Readers, since we last looked at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but now it's time to complete our brief foray into history with a discussion of the last two articles of the Bill of Rights - numbers nine and ten (or IX and X, to be numerically Roman about it).

The Ninth Amendment reads,

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

And the Tenth reads,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Taken together, these two amendments say quite a bit. Unfortunately, they don't say quite enough.

The Founders wrote the Ninth Amendment because they realized they couldn't think of everything. They had, as we have seen, recent experience of living under a monarch with nearly limitless power, and wanted to make sure that - just because they'd forgotten to list a particular right in the Constitution - that fact couldn't be used by some future President (or legislature, or court) to take on more power just because the Constitution didn't say "no."

The Tenth Amendment grew out of similar concerns. The greatest problem faced by the Founders in drafting the Constitution was figuring out the correct balance between the relative powers of the central government and the constituent states. That argument was resolved by the Tenth Amendment in the states' favor - if the Constitution didn't specifically grant a power to the central government or specifically deny it to the states, it would go to the states.

Or to "the people," whatever that means.

According to the Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision (are you tired of me harping about that, yet?), "the people" includes corporations, unions, and similar groups ... not just Average Joes and Janes like you and I. Nowadays, "the people" are the "oil people," the "mining people," the "banking people," the "real estate people," and so on...

You might want to remember that the next time you're in a demonstration and shout some mindless slogan like "power to the people!"

But anyhow, the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights are, in my opinion, two of the most important. They don't guarantee specific rights like the First through the Eighth Amendments, but they reflect a farsightedness on the part of the Founders that we don't see in the weasely ass clowns that have taken their place today. The Founders knew they didn't have all the answers, so they built into the Constitution a mechanism to allow for the document to be amended as conditions changed in an unknowable future (Article V). And, knowing that tensions between the central government and the states would certainly arise, they wrote the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to underline their vision of a union in which the powers of the individual states would be protected. Somehow, I don't think we have anyone in Congress today who could write a document this good.

Unfortunately, what we have in Congress (and in the noisy fringes of the left and right) are a lot of people who talk up a storm about the Constitution and what they think it says, but don't really have much of a clue what it actually means.

In the coming weeks, we'll look some more at the body of the Constitution and at some of the other amendments. In an election year, I think that's a very worthwhile thing to do.

Have a good day. See you in this spot for Cartoon Saturday!

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Sounds Your Children Have Probably Never Heard

I ran across this interesting article on Mental Floss last year, and tucked it away for future blog use: 11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard.

This is a fascinating subject that indicates how much things have changed across the relatively short span of my lifetime. The list includes some things that are major background memories of my life growing up in good old Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Things like ...

The sounds of a rotary telephone ... the swish of the turn of the dial and the click-click-click as it returned to the home position has been replaced by the beeps and boops of modern digital technology. And you may remember the sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Dial M for Murder in which we saw the little mechanical switches in the telephone exchange falling into place one by one as evil husband Ray Milland dialed wife Grace Kelly to set her up for the killer lurking in the shadows ...

The chunk!-chunk!-chunk! sound of a channel-changing dial on a television set ...

A record changer. There are fewer and fewer of us who probably remember the sound of a stack of records falling one by one onto the turntable of a record player. An mp3 file doesn't make that satisfying slap-click-skritch-skritch-skritch sound sequence as it cues up to play on your iPod. This goes along with ...

The click and repetitive sound clips of a broken record. Nowadays, many people don't even know what you mean when you tell them they sound like a broken record. After all, mp3's don't usually break.

The ka-chunk!, ka-ching! of the old-style, 500-pound cash register, which has been replaced by the digital beeps and boops of the laser scanner ...

And the happy ding-ding! that rang out when you drove your car over the signal bell hose at the local gas station. No need for such an outmoded thing now that virtually every gas station in the country is self-service.

Times are changing, and so is the background noise. I miss some of those comforting old sounds, even if life may be a bit easier because the technologies and services they represent have been replaced by ones which are newer and (perhaps) better. Sigh.

What are the sounds that you don't hear any more? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. May your background noises be pleasant ones.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Florida Speaks! Yawn.

The Florida GOP primary election is now history, and we move on to ... the next primary election, which will be held somewhere, sometime relatively soon. The big winner, as we now know, was Mitt Romney, with 46% of the vote; Newt Gingrich came in second with 32%, and Rick Santorum in third with 13%. To the extent that there's any good news in all this, it's that people in Florida seemed to recognize the lesser of two evils. There are a few points to be made about the Florida results:

1. Organization and money trump noise and bluster. Newt Gingrich was steamrolled by a well-organized, well-funded Romney campaign that buried him under a huge, steaming pile of negative advertising.

2. Negativity is in. I have long bewailed the emphasis on negative campaigning, and we saw its power in Florida. If you want me to vote for you, tell me why you're the better candidate and deserve my vote. Don't tell me that the other guy is a scum-sucking pederast who hates America - tell me what you are and what you stand for. Read this interesting analysis from NPR.

3. Money talks. The Romney campaign completely swamped the Gingrich campaign with money, outspending it by an estimated five times. If you needed a good example of the real impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that opened the fiscal spigot for political campaigns, here it is.

Republicans and Democrats. A plague on both your houses.

My endorsement still stands:

And I am sooooo not looking forward to the next nine months of political misery.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Great story here about Stephen Colbert's Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Inc.

B.

English Pronunciation

You know, Dear and Long-Suffering Readers, that I am endlessly fascinated by language in all its forms. This is a good thing, because otherwise a degree in Linguistics isn't of much practical day-to-day use. Because I have a few other things I need to do before going back to the salt mines this morning, I thought I'd just take a moment to share this wonderful poem by Gerard Noist Trenite with you. If you've ever tried to explain the intricacies of English pronunciation to someone (as I do often with Agnes), you'll appreciate it. Enjoy!

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

To all my friends who are teachers of English - good on ya'!

Have a good day. Pronounce it correctly. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Memory Lane

One of the things about having photography as a hobby is that you have lots of pictures. I mean, lots of pictures. Agnes spent much of the weekend sorting through box upon box of old, unsorted pictures, looking for older family photos she can use for her latest Photoshop project. She has presented me with a huge pile of old prints, which I am now dutifully scanning so that she can work her digital magic and turn them into archival-quality images suitable for our grandchildren to look at one day and ask, "Who's that?"

This was an interesting stroll (or lurch) down memory lane to the time when we were young, thin, and fit, and my hair was still brown (and all there). Those of you who are my friends on Facebook have seen a great many of my older pictures, but there are uncounted bazillions of others still out there, waiting to rear their faded and speckled heads to remind us of times gone by. Here are just a couple ...

These spiffy young lovers are ready for a formal function, sometime in the early 1990's ...

Of the four of us kids in my family, three served in the military: I in the Air Force, my brother Mark in the Navy, and my brother Paul in the Army (we tried to get our sister Lisa to join the Marines, but she had other ideas). Back around 1995 I officiated at Mark's retirement from the Navy ... back at home after the ceremony we posed with Dad ...

And finally (for the moment), how about this couple of suitably arrogant tango dancers from 1996 ...?

There's a stack of pictures about 18 inches deep waiting for me to scan them, and boxes of pictures that haven't even been sorted out yet. I think I'll be set for months for those days, like today, when I don't feel in the mood to write about anything else.

Have a good day. Enjoy your old pictures, too. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

More Great Moments in Editing

I love these. You sometimes need to wonder whether they're real editorial howlers or someone having fun with Photoshop, but they're still fun ... and I really believe most of them are real. This is why I proofread each one of my posts multiple times before I hit the "Publish Post" button, and still end up having to go back once in a while and fix things that should have been obvious.

Have fun ...

Amazing scientific insights are made every day by dedicated scientists ...

Well, I guess he'd have to, wouldn't he? ...

Sooner or later, an episode of "Law and Order" will probably be based on the story of these terrible evildoers ...

Accidents happen ...

Now, this is real law enforcement ...

Someone once asked the great comedian W. C. Fields whether he liked children; he was said to have answered, "Only if they're properly cooked." He'd have enjoyed this luncheon ...

This is why we have the Darwin Awards ...

And the deer are collecting ... what? ...

Well, I suppose it can't hurt ...

... especially when it comes to improving knowledge of geography ...

And you thought there were no jobs for English majors. There really are ... newspapers just don't seem to fill them.

Go figure.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Cheer up! It's almost February ... time for a heaping dish of Cartoon Saturday!

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced a series of major cuts to the defense budget this week, including a plan to downsize the Pentagon and rename it the Trapezoid; actress Demi Moore was taken to a Los Angeles hospital after a friend called 911 and said Moore was "convulsing" and "burning up" after "smoking something"; a collector of cars in Colorado (alliterative!!) has purchased the hearse in which President John F. Kennedy's body was carried for $176,000 (leading one to ask whether, if his wife also buys such a vehicle, the license plates would read "His" and "Hearse"); inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are preparing for a new visit to Iran, where they will investigate reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, not known for being very bright, actually glows in the dark; and the remaining GOP presidential wannabees continued to batter each other savagely as they moved their accusatory roadshow from South Carolina to Florida.

Cheer up ... one way or another, in less than ten months, the campaign will all be just a bad - and very expensive - memory.

For now, on with the cartoons!

Let's lead off with the terrible cartoon pun of the week, dedicated to Fiona ...

I've been to parties like this one ...

High-tech moves to the animal kingdom ...

And ...

The Winter 2012 DC Restaurant Week is over, and I enjoyed two nice lunches with Agnes and one with my daughter ... and got a chance to see how wait staffs really operate ...

Agnes bought me a copy of the movie "Cowboys and Aliens" for Christmas, and it was a real hoot ... but modern-day cowboys are dealing with some high-tech dangers as well ...

Which brings up the issue of how much high-tech wizardry has changed the things we've come to know and love over the years ...

And ...

Agnes is getting ready for her trip back to Germany next month to visit her parents, giving us a chance to experience yet again the joys of dealing with the airlines ...

And finally, as the country lurches from crisis to crisis, it's always good to know that we have thoughtful and dedicated public servants in Congress to guide the ship of state through these difficult times ...

And so another week swirls down the drain of history. Sit back, take off your shoes, and relax for a while ... you've earned it. There are still a lot of weeks to survive before the election, but your ol' uncle Bilbo will be here to help you get through them.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

A Sign(ature) of the Times

We're going to take a day off from our tour of the Constitution because I've been distracted by another intellectual shiny object - the disappearance of the signature.

I stumbled on this fascinating article in The Atlantic magazine yesterday: "Signing Off: The Slow Death of the Signature in a PIN-Code World." The bottom line of the article is that something that used to be one of the defining elements of our identity - our signature - is going the way of the dodo, the Edsel, and a useful and functioning Congress.

There was a time not so long ago when signing your name on the proverbial dotted line was a big deal. It meant that you had committed yourself to something, agreed with a position, took on a debt, acknowledged receipt of an item. The ink you put on paper was a visible and indelible (well, pretty much) symbol of your honor and commitment.

It's different now.

Today, when the UPS or FedEx guy shows up at the door and needs a signature, he hands you an electronic pad, on which you make a few odd marks with a stylus. When you use your credit card in most stores, you "sign" an electronic capture window ... and your "signature" usually looks absolutely nothing at all like your real signature. In many cases, you don't even need an electronic signature - you "sign" by entering a PIN (personal identification number) that transfers your digital credentials to the correct spot on a computer-generated form.

Somehow, I just don't think this is right. Call me a luddite, but I think there's something vital and important about a real, as opposed to a digital signature. Would the Declaration of Independence have been as impressive and meaningful without the bold statement made by John Hancock?

Indeed, even today we speak of "putting your John Hancock" on a document. "Putting my PIN on the line" doesn't have the same ring to it.

I have other problems with the spread of digital signing technology, too. I have a problem with the fact that my signature has been digitally captured (if poorly) and stored in zillions of different places. The possibility exists that someone could steal that digital copy and use it to sign other things in my name. Not everyone agrees with me, though. Consider this excerpt from the Atlantic article:

"Fraud rates on credit or debit cards that are signature-based are much higher than on cards with PIN protection," notes Chris Hawkins in his book A History of Signatures: From Cave Paintings to Robo-Signings. In 2005, a consulting firm found that signature-based debit card fraud rates were 15 times higher than PIN-based fraud rates.

You'll pardon me if I don't find that comforting.

Electronic signatures may be the way of the future, but I still prefer my beloved dipping pens ...

and the beautiful turned-wood pen and pencil set Agnes made for me a few years ago ...

To me, ink on paper is just more ... real. And in a time when things that are real are few and far between, that's a comforting thing.

Have a good day. Be here tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Constitution: The State of the Union

One of the annual high points of political theater here in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac is the President's State of the Union address (the SOTU, delivered by the POTUS, as insiders call it) to a joint session of Congress.

As I discussed in my post on Article II of the Constitution, which enumerates the powers of the Executive Branch of the government, the Constitution really doesn't give the President the authority to do much of anything without the "advice and consent" of Congress. One of the few actually enumerated duties of the President is this one, spelled out in Section 3 of Article II:

"He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient..."

For many years, the President communicated this information to Congress in writing. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson didn't want to appear before Congress in person because he believed it was too much like the British king's addresses to opening sessions of Parliament in which he (the king) delivered instructions and mandates, rather than providing information and seeking support for his measures. It's only in the fairly recent era that presidents have appeared in person to deliver a live address (not like they'd deliver dead ones). You can read a brief history of the State of the Union address here, and read every single State of the Union address ever presented here.

State of the Union speeches tend to be more political theater than informative discourse. In an era of non-stop, 24/7 news delivery, leaks of information to the press (either deliberately by the administration or maliciously by various insiders), and an unbridled and raucous free press, there's no element of surprise ... no news, as it were ... in a SOTU. The draft of the SOTU is circulated widely throughout the government for review and comment weeks ahead of time, and so - by the time the President stands at the rostrum to start talking - everyone already knows what he is going to say, and whether they'll jump up and applaud wildly at the right places (this year, like the Democrats) or sit on their hands and glower angrily (this year, like the Republicans). Indeed, well before President Obama delivered his SOTU this past Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner had already described it as "pathetic."

Has the SOTU outlived its usefulness in the all-information-all-the-time era? I believe it has, at least as we've grown used to it. All it does is give Presidents a chance to look presidential, opposition parties to growl out their "response" to the president's message with bile and false sincerity, and piss off television audiences who see their favorite shows displaced. I think that regular communication between the President and the Congress, perhaps in the form of something like a written monthly or quarterly activity report, would accomplish more and reduce the level of useless theatricality.

It won't happen, though, because there's too much opportunity for all that political theater. Presidents love to be on television, Congress loves the opportunity to mug for the cameras, and we've all come to expect the annual ritual.

But I still like my idea better.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Bill of Rights: Articles VII and VIII

Before we get started on our discussion of the Seventh and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution, we should note a recent US district court decision that has great interest to our discussion of the Fourth (no unreasonable searches) and Fifth (no self-incrimination) Amendments.

In his decision in the case of US v. Fricosu (Criminal Case No. 10-cr-00509-REB-02), a Colorado District Court judge ordered defendant Ramona Fricosu to provide the government an unencrypted copy of the hard drive of her laptop computer as part of an investigation of a financial fraud case. The case, summarized in this article, is interesting because it concerns several of the rights we've been talking about over the past few days. Take a few minutes to read the article and the decision (particularly part 2, "Conclusions of Law," beginning on page 5), and we'll come back and revisit the story in a few days.

Today, we look at the Seventh and Eighth Amendments:

Amendment VII: In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

and,

Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The Seventh Amendment amplifies the Sixth, guaranteeing the right to a jury trial in ordinary lawsuits involving sums above $20 - which isn't much now, but was quite a respectable sum in the Founders' day. It also provides some basic insurance against nuisance lawsuits being filed repeatedly, other than in accordance with prevailing law.

The Eighth Amendment is more interesting, and is much in the news lately. The issues often raised in conjunction with this amendment are usually based on its use of modifiers: how much bail or how large a fine is excessive? And, more important, what makes a punishment cruel and unusual (as opposed to kind and usual)?

When the Founders wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they'd had recent experience of a government that was able arbitrarily to impose cruel punishments of various kinds ... the sorts of things we today, in a more enlightened era, would consider under the general heading of torture. They wanted to ensure that the rights of the citizens of the United States to be free of such punishments (but not from legitimate, legally-imposed punishment per se) was maintained.

Today, of course, we have a more liberal view of what constitutes cruel and unusual in the imposition of punishments. Is waterboarding considered torture and, therefore, cruel and unusual? How about solitary confinement? Is it considered cruel and unusual to fail to provide a prisoner with meals consistent with the requirements of his (or her) religious faith?

Is the death penalty cruel and unusual? It wasn't in the Founders' time, unless it was applied in a particularly cruel method (such as the practice of drawing and quartering). According to many people today, though, it is ... no matter how it's applied.

So ...

The Seventh and Eighth Amendments, particularly the Eighth, provide key rights that we as citizens enjoy and need to understand and protect. Read them, think about them, and remember that there are those out there who would restrict them in the interest of an imagined greater good.

Don't let them.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo