Cartoon Saturday

Two weeks of 2012 down, 50 more to go. Good luck ...

Reports from North Korea indicate that the authorities are punishing citizens who exhibited insufficient or insincere grief at the death of homicidal gnome Kim Jong Il; at least three people were killed when a cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Italy; a man suspected of being "Corta Nalgas," the notorious butt slasher who mutilated the backsides of 13 young women in Northern Virginia, has been arrested in Peru; Dutch national Joren van der Sloot has been convicted of murder in a Peruvian court, but not for the suspected murder of vanished American teenager Natalee Holloway, who was declared legally dead this week, and for which van der Sloot was the prime suspect; and a suicide bomber targeting religious pilgrims in Iraq killed 30 people and wounded more than 80.

And we still have the elections to look forward to ... aren't you glad you have Cartoon Saturday to help you along?

Two things you don't normally think of in the same context are clowns and funerals ... but somehow they just seem to work together sometimes, as we see in this pair of cartoons ...

... and,

And while we're milking the cartoon potential of funerals, why not this one, too? ...

The cartoon potential of common tools is seldom realized, although there are some very obvious ya-ha's waiting in the toolbox ...

... and,

Another topic not frequently addressed in cartoons is the common slug, although one might expect more slug-related humor to appear as we approach the elections. Here are a few to start with ...

... and,

... and this rather obvious one ...

By the time November rolls around, we'll all need a couch session like this one ...

And I couldn't have wrapped up this week's Cartoon Saturday any better myself ...

Agnes and I are looking forward to a relaxing weekend of visiting friends and getting run ragged by our local grandchildren. It's gotten pretty chilly here in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac, so outdoor activities might be a bit circumscribed, but that's just a good excuse to sit by the fire and watch our way through our movie collection.

Hope you all have a great weekend ... be sure to come back tomorrow for more ruminations from the ever-slightly-askew mind of your old pal.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The Degree of Gasp

Today, Dear Readers, we are taking a break from our discussion of the Constitution to deal with an issue which is less momentous but, perhaps, a good deal more interesting.

I refer to the G-String ...

According to this article, women in France - who are among the world's largest buyers of lingerie - are eschewing the G-String in favor of other forms of lingerie they find more comfortable to wear and more sexy in appearance. This, of course, calls for the sort of detailed discussion that you have come to expect from ol' Bilbo.

Lingerie is one of the topics on which men and women are seldom likely to agree. Anything a man purchases for a woman from Victoria's Secret or Frederick's of Hollywood is unlikely to be worn more than once (if at all), because the woman for whom it is purchased will probably think it is (1) uncomfortable and (2) embarrassing. I could probably comfortably retire if I could recover the money I spent over the years on lingerie for my Very Best Beloved, most of which was never worn.

Generally speaking, ladies' underthings (and swimwear) are priced according to a factor I call the Degree of Gasp. The Degree of Gasp, or G_d), can be calculated using the formula:

G_d = a^-2 x a_v x c

where a is the area of flesh actually covered by the garment, a_v is the volume of air (in cubic meters) expelled by the observing male, and c is the cost of the garment as expressed by the formula c = 1/a, representing the inverse proportional relationship between cost and area of flesh actually covered.

I developed the theory of the Degree of Gasp many years ago while helping my daughter choose prom dresses and bathing suits (my "help," of course, consisting of sitting in a rickety chair outside the fitting room, helplessly fondling my checkbook while my wife and daughter worked their way through huge numbers of potential candidates). My daughter's dress or bathing suit selection was largely influenced by my reaction when she appeared in it; if my intake of air was of sufficient size to pull ragged, outdated fashion magazines off the waiting room table, the dress was a potential keeper.

I subscribe to the Picket Fence Theory of lingerie, formal dresses, and bathing suits: they should protect the property, but not obstruct the view. Generally speaking, the sexiness of a garment doesn't lie in what it shows, but in what it suggests ... which brings us back to the G-String.

The G-String doesn't leave much to the imagination, which makes it - in my humble opinion - less sexy than garments which cover more, leaving more to the imagination. This is not to say that we need to return to a more prudish era ...

... but to an appreciation of the value of suggestion. The only thing a G-String suggests to me is discomfort.

Well, I could write a great deal more on the subject of lingerie and bathing suits, but it's time to go to work ... which is much less fun, but makes more money. Sad, isn't it?

Have a good day. Enjoy the view. And come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

The Constitution: The Bill of Rights - Amendment II

Yesterday we started our discussion of the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - with Article I, which guarantees our freedoms of worship, speech, free press, and peaceable assembly. Those are probably the most important and most fundamental freedoms guaranteed to us as Americans, but if you really want to get people hysterical about infringement of their rights, start a discussion of Article II.

The Second Amendment reads as follows:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are exactly 27 words in the Second Amendment, and over time, an estimated 737,219.873³ words have been written about it in the Federalist Papers, newspaper editorials, court decisions, and impassioned op-ed articles. One of the largest and most powerful lobbies in the country - the National Rifle Association - exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that rights under the Second Amendment remain supreme and untouched. Almost nothing will incense the average American more than the dreaded spectre of loss of his beloved guns.

Why do we have this national love affair with firearms?

If we go back to the time of the writing of the Constitution and the drafting of the Bill of Rights, we see that the Founders lived in a difficult time, and had their opinions shaped by a dangerous world. They'd just finished fighting for their independence against one of the world's largest professional armies, and the American forces were composed largely of individuals and local militias armed with the weapons they used for defense (against wild animals, "Indians," and other threats in the days before police departments) and for putting food on the table (this being a time before you could drive to the local Safeway and pick up a shrink-wrapped package of pork chops for your supper). At that time, it was important to own a firearm, because you might have to defend your home against attack (from "Indians," or from ... yes ... the government), and you needed to be able to feed your family.

At that time also, the cutting edge of personal weapons technology was the muzzle-loaded, single-shot musket, which a trained marksman could load, aim, and fire about three times per minute.

Fast forward to the year 2012. Cutting-edge personal firearms technology is now represented by the assault rifle and the 9mm pistol with high-capacity magazine. Where a trained marksman in 1787 could fire about three rounds per minute, an untrained shooter today can accurately fire dozens of rounds per minute and reload in seconds.

That's a lot of bullets flying around, and you don't need to be a trained marksman to set them flying.

Let me just say this about the Second Amendment: it's the law of the land. For all its grammatical and punctuational (?) shortcomings (did they really need all those commas?), it guarantees you and I the right to own deadly weapons, and I don't have a problem with that.

But, as I noted in yesterday's discussion of the First Amendment, we have lost sight of the difference between freedom and responsibility, between what we have the right to do and what's right to do. Do we have the right to keep and bear arms? You bet. Is it the right thing to do in all instances? Probably not.

Defenders of the absolute right to keep and bear arms maintain that we are safer when we have the ability to defend ourselves against threats. This may be true. There may not be a policeman available at hand to protect you against a mugger, or to arrest the burglar or rapist trying to break into your home. I understand all that. But somehow I'm more afraid of getting caught in the crossfire between a bunch of heavily-armed thugs.

Should we have the right to keep and bear arms? Absolutely. Should we open a rational discussion about what that means in a time of high-powered weapons and irrational beliefs? Absolutely.

Because, as I often say, freedom - whether of speech, religion, or firearms ownership - doesn't equal freedom of smart. And we're not showing a lot of smart lately.

Besides, I'd rather see bare arms on beautiful ladies any day.

Have a good day. Don't shoot anybody. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Constitution: The Bill of Rights - Amendment I

I'm going to assume, Dear Readers, that you are not yet sick unto death of my ongoing ruminations on the Constitution. On that possibly weak assumption, I'm going to begin a discussion of the first ten amendments to the Constitution ... what we call The Bill of Rights.

The Founders had no sooner finished their work on the Constitution when they realized that while they had created a good working framework for a government, they hadn't done quite enough to clearly define the rights of the citizens under that government. They'd had the experience of living under a monarch with unlimited powers, and wanted to make sure that the rights of the citizens of the newly united states were protected. And so it was that they drafted and ensured ratification of the first ten amendments to the brand-new Constitution.

I could write multiple posts on each of the first ten amendments and, indeed multiple posts about each one of those amendments. To simplify things, let's take the Bill of Rights one amendment at a time, starting today with the First Amendment, which reads ...

"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 First Amendment codifies most of the fundamental rights we value as American citizens: the rights of free worship, free speech, a free press, and free assembly. Whole libraries of commentary and analysis have been written about each of these rights, and courts at every level have generated mountains of rulings that either uphold or limit each of them. My discussion in the next few paragraphs will represent only the very most superficial look at each one ... but a discussion that I hope will get us all thinking not just about our rights, but our responsibilities as citizens.

Consider the first part of the amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Founders lived in an era when memories of religious oppression and wars were fresh and troubling. The mother country had an established religion (the Church of England), of which the King was the head, and which everyone was expected to observe. The Founders wanted to ensure that citizens of the new country would be free to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, and I don't think it's an accident that freedom of religion, and from government coercion in matters of the spirit, is the very first freedom documented in the very first amendment. Consider that when you listen to far-right presidential wannabes thunder about their religious beliefs and their desire to impose them on you. Oh, and also remember that Article VI of the Constitution clearly states that “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The Founders knew the negative power of extreme religious belief, and wanted to make sure that we could worship as we saw fit, but be protected from those who would enforce a particular belief.

The next right guaranteed in the First Amendment is the freedom of speech. This means, generally speaking, that we can say what we want, without fear of limitation or censure by agents of the government. In practice, though, we accept practical limits on this freedom: it's illegal, of course, to incite riots, to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, and to engage in what we loosely call "hate speech." Cases dealing with abridgement of the freedom of speech are decided in the courts every year, most recently in the case before the Supreme Court which will decide the power of the Federal Communications Commission to limit offensive language on the airwaves. What are the appropriate limits on free speech? I don't know. But what I do know is this: as I've often written about in this space, the Constitution grants us freedom of speech ... not freedom of smart. As a very smart person once said, "What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to."

Freedom of the press comes right after freedom of speech in the First Amendment, and most of the same comments I made in the previous paragraph also apply. The Founders knew that a strong and independent press was important to ensuring an informed population. They also knew that a free press would not always be popular. My personal opinion is that the media (expanding the concept of the press to cover more than print) is often irresponsible and overly in love with itself ... but that's the price we pay for being able to read (and hear) things with which we may not agree.

The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances is the next freedom listed in the First Amendment, and we see the practical effects of it every day. Consider the "Occupy _____" movement, which is attempting - in its own disorganized and clumsy way - to draw attention to social and economic problems. Does the right peaceably to assemble include the right to disrupt traffic, to block entry to government and commercial buildings? Reasonable people (if you can find any nowadays) disagree. I think that the Occupy Whatever movement has an important message to deliver ... but that it needs focus, concepts of practical application, and a willingness to listen to (if not accept) the views of others.

The fundamental problem with the First Amendment is that it guarantees rights, but does not demand equivalent responsibilities. We have freedom of speech, but those who demand that freedom often want to deny it to those with whom they disagree - consider the despicable practice of noisily heckling or shouting down speakers. We have freedom of the press, but it means that we also have to accept that we may be offended by much of what we read ... that much of what's free to be printed may be (in our personal opinions) the most useless or dangerous drivel. We have freedom of peaceful assembly, but when does your freedom to assemble trump my freedom to go where I wish without interference?

The rights guaranteed under the First Amendment are some of the most valuable and fundamental that we enjoy as citizens of this great nation. They need to be protected, exercised with due regard for the rights of others, and considered in the context of the responsibilities they call forth.

Unfortunately, it's easier to demand rights than to behave responsibly. We'll talk more about that when we turn tomorrow to a discussion of the Second Amendment.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Constitution: Electing the President

I got a bit ahead of myself yesterday when I said we'd take up a discussion of the Bill of Rights starting today. We'll start that series tomorrow ... today I want to discuss a topic of some importance this year: the election of the President.

Many Americans and almost all foreign observers are mystified by our electoral process. We begin with nasty and raucous primary elections, in which the presidential wannabes of the various political parties smear and accuse each other, eating their young and providing plenty of negative ammunition about the eventual nominee to the opposing parties. We then move on to expensive, noisy, and useless party conventions in which the bruised, battered survivors of the primary process finally decide who will be the official nominee of the party. And once the parties have selected their candidates, those candidates engage in a final few months of "debates," lies, distortions, ad-hominem attacks, and promises they will have no power to fulfill. The parties and their hidden bankrollers will spend tens of millions of dollars in an attempt to convince Real People to cast their votes for ... who, exactly?

Yes, Dear Readers, who is it that you actually vote for?

The Constitution does not allow for the direct election of the President by the voting population. Voters may mark a paper ballot or push a button on a voting machine next to the name of Joe Candidate, but they're not actually casting their votes for Joe, but for a group of people known as electors, who will eventually decide whether or not Joe becomes the President.

Bizarre, eh?

The system by which the president is elected is established in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, as adjusted by the 12th Amendment. Briefly, each state is allocated a number of electors, selected and appointed according to the laws of that state. The number of electors a state receives is based on its total Congressional representation ... that is, each state gets a minimum of three electors (because each state has two senators and at least one representative) and an unlimited maximum based on its total representation in the House, where representation is based on the state's population. Once the popular vote has been counted, the winner of the popular vote in each state is determined, and the electors from that state cast their votes for that state's popular vote winner ... although they are, in practice, free to vote for whomever they wish.

Thus, presidential candidates spend an inordinate amount of time fighting over electoral powerhouses like California, Texas, and Florida, and considerably less over such smaller electoral prizes as Maine and Vermont.

Why did the founders set up such an odd system? Why not just allow for direct election of the president by popular vote? There are two versions of the history ...

According to one version, the Founders were concerned that power not be concentrated in any single branch of government or in the people ... thus, they contrived a system to limit not just the powers of the three branches of the government, but also the tyranny of a voting majority. I don't think much of this theory, which flies in the face of the idea of a representative democracy.

The other version, which I believe is more accurate, is that the Founders recognized the limits of the people and the time in which they lived. They knew that their new nation had a relatively small population spread over an enormous area, difficult to keep informed about key issues. They also knew that many citizens were not particularly well-educated and able to understand those issues. Thus, they contrived a system in which the leaders of the individual states would select better-educated, better-informed electors to do the actual voting on behalf of the Great Unwashed.

Is this an appropriate system for the 21st century, as opposed to the 18th? I don't think so, although there are passionate arguments made by partisans on both sides of the argument. In the worst case, as in the hotly-contested election of 2000, the actual winner of the popular vote (Al Gore) may lose to the candidate with the larger electoral vote (George W. Bush). There have actually been four presidential elections (1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000) in which the winner of the popular vote lost in the electoral college.

No matter what we think of the Electoral College (and, by the way, that isn't what the Constitution calls it), it's the system that will decide the election of 2012. Because the electoral system is enshrined in the Constitution, it will take a constitutional amendment to change it ... and this is a long, cumbersome process that has defeated many attempts over the years to change the electoral system.

Does your vote count if you are in the minority in a state whose majority causes the electors to vote for the candidate you don't like. Yes, although probably not as much as it would in a direct popular vote election. Remember that the outcome of this year's Iowa caucuses was decided in favor of Mitt Romney by a staggering eight votes.

So do what I do ... hold your nose, and vote for the candidate you like. Or the candidate you find least distasteful. Just vote.

Have a good day. Tomorrow, we'll move on to start discussing the Bill of Rights. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Constitution: Federal vs State Powers

This morning, Dear Readers, we return to our discussion of the Constitution that began back on January 2nd. We've already taken a look at the first three Articles, which establish the overall framework of the federal government (Article I, the Legislative Branch; Article II, the Executive Branch; and Article III, the Judicial Branch); today, we look at how the Constitution divides power between the federal government and the states.

One of the biggest problems for the Founders in writing the Constitution was finding an appropriate balance between the rights and powers of the central government and those of the individual states. The first attempt at a constitution, the Articles of Confederation, had proven to be unworkable because it established a central government too weak to accomplish its responsibilities relative to the states. The constitutional convention thus had the unenviable task of herding the state cats into agreement on a document which would require them to decide which of their powers they would give up in the interest of national unity and which they would retain. Here's how it worked out ...

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution lays out the broad limits on the powers of the states versus the federal government. States can not, for instance, coin their own money, make war independently of the union, or grant titles of nobility.

Article IV of the Constitution makes all states equal within the union, states that the laws of each state apply equally to all other states, grants the citizens of each state equal rights in every other state, and makes the federal government responsible for the overall defense of the states.

But, having written the Constitution, the Founders weren't sure that they'd adequately ensured the rights, powers, and priviliges of the states relative to those of the federal government. They tried to correct this perceived oversight with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, the last article of what we today call The Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment cements the rights of the states when it states that

"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."

This is why we have a patchwork of laws and regulations that differ from state to state, but which are all equally enforceable within the framework of the union as long as they are compatible with the broad guidelines of the Constitution.

The rights of the states relative to those of the federal government remain an issue today, and States' Rights has long been a rallying cry for those who believe the federal government oversteps its authority. An extreme example may be found in the very name of a Confederate Army general of the Civil War: States Rights Gist.

There's much more to say about the tension between the states and the federal government, and in coming posts we'll discuss some of those issues. For now, we'll just leave the discussion with an interesting historical note that illustrates how the balance between the states and the national government has changed. Prior to the Civil War, if you were referring to the nation as a whole, you would have said that "The United States are...", emphasizing that the nation was an agreed-upon union of individual, independent states. Today, you would probably say that "The United States is..." emphasizing the overall union rather than the quasi-independent status of the individual states within that union.

It's an important philosophical distinction that resonates today when we listen to presidential candidates rail against out-of-control government, blaming Washington (insert dripping scorn) for every problem of the nation.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the Bill of Rights. As always, I'm interested in what you think. I don't pretend to be a Constitutional historial or scholar or any sort of expert on the subject (unlike some of the windbags you hear thundering from the far right and far left), so let's keep a civil discussion going. In an election year, especially one as important as this one, that discussion is of critical importance.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Trimming Defense

Disclaimer: I am a veteran of 23 years of military service, and am now employed by a defense contractor to support a set of offices in the Pentagon.

With Congress scrambling to figure out how to keep spending lots of money at the same time it slashes the budget, the search is on for the proverbial low-hanging fruit ... the things that can be cut from the budget with the least amount of political pain. One of the places these cuts are often sought is in the military budget, which is - admittedly - enormous, and which can probably use some judicious trimming.

But where do you trim, and how, and what is the real savings you get when balanced against the risks you take?

When the so-called Supercommittee (the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) last year failed miserably in its mission to trim billions of dollars from the federal budget (because Democrats wouldn't cut social programs and Republicans wouldn't consider raising taxes), it started the clock ticking on a set of mandatory cuts to the budget which would begin in 2013 (safely after the presidential election). The vast majority of those cuts would come from the defense budget, which is always an easy target.

Let's talk about the whole subject of defense, shall we?

The preamble to the Constitution states that one of the purposes of the new government was to provide for the common defense. The Founders knew they were living in a dangerous world, and that an army and a navy were important to protecting the independence of the new nation. But they were, as we are today, conflicted about the desirability of maintaining a large standing army. They'd just fought a war against a king who deployed a huge, professional army against citizens seeking redress of their grievances, and were tired of being forced to care for an army viewed not as a means of protection, but as a means of coercion. A mark of the Founders' concern about the domestic role of the military appears in the Bill of Rights: the third amendment states that "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." And federal law, in the so-called posse commitatus act (18 USC I 67, Section 1385) forbids the government from using the Army "except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress" to enforce domestic law.

In our own recent history, we saw President Hoover deploy the Army to clear the peaceful protesters of the Bonus Army from the streets of Washington in 1932, and today we see armies in places like Syria and Libya used not for defense against external threats, but as instruments of repression.

Yes, we Americans have a love-hate relationship with the military, and it's one of the biggest genes in our national DNA, along with the worship of firearms (but that's a subject for another time).

So, when it comes time to reduce the federal budget, the military is hard-wired into our thinking as a prime target. The question becomes not, do we need an Army (and Navy, and Air Force) but how big ought those services be?

The Department of Defense spends a great deal of time and effort wrestling with this question, and the long and tortured history of Quadrennial Defense Reviews, blue-ribbon panels, study groups, Congressional hearings, and similar things is far too long and complex to summarize here. Suffice it to say that a lot of voices are heard when we try to decide how large our military should be: The President (who is, under the Constitution, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces), the Congress (whose members have a vested interest in protecting military spending in their own districts), the Department of Defense (which has to come up with an affordable strategy to counter the most probable threats), the individual Services (which each have their own priorities for manpower and weaponry based on their warfighting strategies), and ... of course ... the defense industry, the so-called military-industrial complex warned about by President Eisenhower (himself a retired four-star general) in 1961.

No doubt about it ... a strong military is expensive. The money spent on a single tank, aircraft, or naval ship could fund hospitals, schools, or important public services in many places for years. But is that money wasted?

Consider the economic impact: The enormous defense budget and the military-industrial complex it supports provides employment for millions of Americans (yours truly included). With a rate of unemployment remaining stubbornly over eight percent, tossing tens of thousands of military personnel and others employed in defense industries into an economy that can't find jobs for the people already there doesn't seem like a particularly good idea, at least in the short term.

Consider also the fact that we still live in a dangerous world. The threat of a global cataclysm on the order of World War II is pretty remote, as is the threat of nuclear war. We've withdrawn from Iraq and are on the way to disengaging from Afghanistan. But the world is still full of those who would do us ill, and not all of them are rational thinkers. Would you like your future to depend on the whims of a Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or an Hugo Chavez?

So what am I trying to say with all this bloviation?

Just this: we need to trim back our defense spending. But we need to do it rationally and not all at once, which would just make our current economic problems that much worse. If Bilbo were President (God help us!), here are a few things he would recommend (because, as we've seen, Presidents aren't empowered to do much of anything on their own):

1. Close all military facilities in Europe and bring back all forces to bases in the United States. The Europeans can worry about their own defense...there is no particular reason for keeping significant forces in Europe more than 70 years after the end of the Second World War.

2. Close all military facilities in Japan and South Korea and rebase the forces in the United States. It will save money, stop giving North Korea an excuse (however bogus) for its ludicrous and dangerous geopolitical antics, and remove part of China's excuse for the massive expansion of its military.

3. Invest in a strong, homeland-based Navy and Air Force for immediate power projection.

4. Refocus the Army away from large battlefield formations to a structure based on special operations forces. The likelihood of fighting a major ground war against a large land army is pretty remote, compared to the likelihood of having to fight the al Qaedas of the world.

5. Reduce the number of general and flag officers in the armed services by about half. Although the direct savings in pay may be modest, each GO/FO (Pentagon shorthand for general officer/flag officer) has an expensive support tail of secretaries, executive officers, aides, and office real estate that makes his (or her) cost considerably larger than pay alone, and consumes manpower resources that could be more profitably used elsewhere.

Most of my military friends would think I'm nuts for advocating most of these things, but I think they're all reasonable, even though the devil will remain lurking in the details. There's only so much money to spend, and we need to spend it wisely.

We have a responsibility to provide for the common defense, after all.

What are your thoughts?

Have a good day. Thank a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine for being free to have it.

More thoughts tomorrow, when we return to our discussion of the Constitution.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Welcome to 2012 ...

The Iowa caucus political bloodletting is over, and Mitt Romney won in a towering eight-vote landslide over dark-horse challenger Rick "Where the Hell Did He Come From" Santorum; the ever-reasonable and endlessly moderate government of Iran has petulantly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if ... well ... just if; police are seeking the public's help in identifying a woman found dead on the grounds of the British royal family's estate at Sandringham; the government of Syrian strongman Bashar al Asad has vowed to strike its foes with an "iron fist," having decided to forego the whole unworkable velvet glove thing; and 11 people have been killed in a hot-air balloon crash in New Zealand, proving - against all evidence to the contrary - that the world's supply of hot air was not used up in Iowa.

Yes, Dear Readers, it looks as if 2012 is shaping up to be just a wonderful year. Aren't you glad you have Cartoon Saturday to help you get by?

How do you operate on some of the more far-right and far-left wingnuts ...?

Now that I own both an iPhone and an iPad, I've entered the amazing world of apps - short for applications - that allow me to do everything on both but raise the dead (and I've heard the iPad 3 will have an app called iReincarnate for use by Buddhists). Apps are a good source of material for cartoons, as we see in this collection ...

and ...

and ...

and ...

and ...

and finally ...

I thought John would appreciate this one ...

and Angelique, my favorite transplanted Cajun, would enjoy this one ...

And finally for today, if you've ever watched the amazing colossal clown show of any Congressional hearing, you know exactly what this cartoon is getting at ...

And that's your first Cartoon Saturday of 2012. This morning Mike also has a great collection of blogging-related cartoons over at Billions of Versions of Normal (normal being, in his case, relative) ... check them out.

It looks as if this weekend will be unseasonably "warm" and sunny, so I may have to try to do something useful, like rake leaves or something, before going dancing at tonight's First Saturday Party at Forever Dancing ... but I'll wait a bit before I decide. No sense being hasty this early in a new and unproven year.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Constitution: The Judicial Branch

As we've seen, Article I of the Constitution describes the Legislative Branch, and Article II the Executive Branch. Today, Dear Readers, we continue our discussion of The Constitution with a look at Article III, which establishes the third branch of government - the Judicial Branch.

Considering the importance the Founders placed on the importance of the rule of law (as opposed to the whim of a monarch), Article III isn't very long (only three sections) and doesn't say very much. The only court specifically established by the Constitution is the Supreme Court; the rest of the judicial structure that has grown up over the years represents the Constitution's reference to "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish" (Article III, Section 1). You can read a very good explanation of the Federal and State court systems here if you're interested (and you should be).

One of the things on which we Americans pride ourselves is the fact that we live in a country in which the rule of law is supreme. We have rights guaranteed by the Constitution, live according to laws drafted by representatives we've elected, and rely upon an independent judiciary to make sure that those laws are equally enforced and upheld. But how independent is that judiciary, really?

The justices of the Supreme Court are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serve for life. Judges serving on other courts may be nominated and confirmed, or they may be elected for specific terms of service. The Constitution says only that "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour..." (Article III, Section 1). But what constitutes good behaviour, and how does that relate to the concept of an independent court system?

We've recently seen conservative Republican gadfly Newt Gingrich and other hyperconservative wingnuts rail against activist judges who legislate from the bench and should be required to appear before Congress to defend unpopular decisions. This does not augur well for an independent judiciary equal in power to the Legislative and Executive branches. I would argue that to the extent that some activist judges (whatever that means) legislate from the bench, it's because our elected lawmakers are unwilling or unable to legislate from the legislature. And as far as requiring judges to appear before Congress to defend unpopular decisions (unpopular to whom, one might ask), this is just plain silly: judges write and publish lengthy decisions that document exactly how and why they rendered the opinion they did in specific cases. Clearly, Mr Gingrich can't read.

Should judges be elected or appointed? There are arguments both ways. Judges who run for election need money to pay for their campaigns … and the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision means that they can be anonymously bought. On the other hand, judges who are appointed will usually be selected on the basis of their compatibility with the political leanings of the official who appoints them, and not necessarily on their qualifications. Perhaps the answer is to elect judges, but to have their campaigns be publicly funded to a common dollar limit.

When judges must stand for election, they need money to pay for their campaigns. Where does that money come from? Can you and I, as ordinary citizens, really expect that an elected judge can remain totally independent when he owes his election to the money provided by big donors? And beyond that, can you and I afford the same level of Platinum-Plus justice afforded to those who can hire high-powered, ultra-expensive law firms to represent them in disputes?

I've drifted away from a focus on what the Constitution says about the Judicial Branch of government, largely because the Constitution itself doesn't really say very much. In the coming weeks, I'll talk more about the interplay of the three branches of the government and how we, as concerned and involved citizens with a stake in good government, should look at the political linkages that are so important to shaping the country in which we live.

We'll pick up our discussion of the Constitution again next Monday. Tomorrow is Cartoon Saturday, and I have some other things to talk about on Sunday. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on the three branches of government. I want this to be a discussion ... not just me bloviating like a cheap politician. We are, after all, gearing up for a momentous presidential election season which will pit tremendously differing political philosophies against each other in a contest for the right to define the country in which we live. We've all got a big stake in the argument. Let's think it through.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The Constitution: The Executive Branch

Today we continue our tour of the Constitution with a look at the second of the three branches of government it established: the Executive Branch.

When the Founders sat down to design a government for their new nation, they realized someone had to be in charge. However, they had just finished getting rid of a king and were wary of creating a powerful leader who would recreate the conditions they'd just fought the revolutionary war to change. For this reason, they desgined an executive position with greatly circumscribed powers.

The Executive Branch, headed by the President, is described in Article II of the Constitution. There are four sections in this article, only two of which (Sections 2 and 3) describe the powers granted to the president ... which are relatively few, and most of which are subject to the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The other two articles are interesting: Section 1 grants the president his^* title, establishes basic qualifications for the office, and describes how the president will be elected (this brings us to the Electoral College, which we'll examine in a future post); and Section 4 describes the conditions for which a president may be removed from office.

If you read Sections 2 and 3 of Article II carefully, you realize that the president isn't really empowered to do all that much, particularly when you compare his duties to those of the Congress outlined in Article I. This was, of course, by design ... as we noted before, the Founders weren't interested in crowning a new king.

What does that mean for us today? People who run for president try to convince you to vote for them by making all sorts of promises about what they're going to do once they're elected. This is what we call wishful thinking, because what the president can promise and what he can actually deliver are very much different. A new president enters office with a set of ideas and philosophies about the direction in which the country should move. The new president may be politically and socially conservative (like a George W. Bush) or liberal (like a Barack Obama), and will try to set an agenda that reflects that political and social orientation. But because the Constitution makes most of the president's actions subject to the "advice and consent" of Congress, the president's ability to deliver on promises depends on his ability to get Congressional support for them.

As we see every day, this is no minor task.

When the president and the Congress are of the same party, it's generally easier for the president to deliver on promises, because two of the three branches of government are following the same general political philosophy. When they are of different parties, tension results. In the case of the current president, it's relatively tough for Mr Obama to deliver on his promises when half of the Congress is controlled by a party on record as saying its highest priority is to drive him from office.

But that's a discussion for another time. Let's talk for a brief moment about the actual title "President of the United States."

The Constitutional Convention had a committee on titles which worked to decide what the various officers of the new government should be called. The Constitution (Article I, Section 9) forbids the granting of titles of nobility, so the search for appropriate titles for government officials was not an easy task. George Washington's first preference for a job title was "His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties," which didn't last long as it smelled too much of royalty. In the end, it was truncated to the title we know today: President of the United States, and so documented in the Constitution (Article II, Section 1).

So ...

The Constitution created a system of government led by a President whose powers were greatly limited and subject to limits imposed by the Legislative and Judicial branches of the government. The President's real power was limited to his (or her) ability to persuade the electorate and the other branches of the government to follow his lead. Sometimes that's easy. Other times, like the present, it's difficult.

But that's the way the Founders designed it. If you want to be led by a king, a dictator, or an ayatollah, there are plenty of other countries so led where you might be happier. I, for one, like it here ... in spite of the endless opportunities for political ass-clownery built into the Constitution.

Have a good day. More thoughts on the Constitution tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I'm using the generic pronoun he to refer to the President. I know this is "sexist," but it's too cumbersome to type he (or she) and him (or her) all the time. Each time you read he or him, understand that it refers to both sexes. If you don't like it, that's tough ... it's my blog. Get your own and you can write what you want.

B.