The Bigsibling Blog

Some people just don’t like us ordinary folks. Those of use who, according to Barack Hussein Obama cling to our guns and our religion out of bitterness. Use people in fly-over country, who hold good, strong beliefs about our faith, and our country.

People like the Joseph L. Conn who wrote this editorial about the how stupid and ignorant of the U.S. Constitution the majority of Americans are. see, the "State of the First Amendment" study came out recently. And this guy picked and focused on two questions on which to base his disgust of use normal people. Two questions, out of more than 40, in which the answers did not skew to his preference, and uses that to tell the rest of us regular folks how dolts we are.

Here’s the questions, and the answers:

The U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

The nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation.

Now, Ol’ Joey there is appalled, and it seems rather worried that a whopping 63% of Americans responded that they mildly or strongly agree that our founding fathers intended the US to be a Christian nation. Also, that 55% responded they mildly or strongly agree the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Note, please, that it does NOT say a theocracy.

Here is the rub in these questions. What are the people saying when they answered these questions. There are no qualifying explanations of what they mean by a ‘Christian Nation’. If the respondent asked "what do you mean a Christian nation?" What did the questioner respond with? We don’t know this. If asked for clarification, did the interviewer assure the respondent they did not mean a theocracy, but merely a nation based on Christian principles? If that is the case (and somehow, I suspect it is), these answers are dead-on, and as they should be.

Joe spews his stuff about how the religious right has brain-washed the bunch of us. Because, you know, according to him (it would seem) we’re all a bunch of idiots who don’t know any better. I’m certain, under all that disgust, he really feels sorry for us poor saps.

What he fails to mention in his "shame on you" article is the following question:

So, this guy, who appears to be in fear of people wanting a theocracy, and wanting to stifle and squash the religious freedom of others, completely neglects the fact that a whopping 54% of the people believe the US Constitution applies to all religious groups regardless of their extremism. Granted, since 2000 that ideal has lost a bit of traction, but then, who would not have expected that.

Dealing with these three questions alone, I’m personally encouraged by the response people have given. Especially if you look at it objectively, without trying to read things into that may or may not be there.

I’m going to post some more on this study here in the near future - there are some fascinating responses in there, things I would not have guess, and some things which almost seem to directly contradict other answers, so stay tuned. This guy’s article just caught my attention, and my ire. It irks me when people skew the numbers just to try a make something out of nothing at all.

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I find this such and incredible story. It boggles the mind. Like that bill that was proposed in Mississippi that would have made it illegal for a restaurant to serve fat people, there is currently a bill before the state legislature in Arizona that would hold businesses liable for civil damage if they distribute obscene or dangerous stuff.

Bookstores, news organizations, cable companies and other businesses are strongly opposed to legislation that would make an individual or a company liable for civil damages if they produce, publish or distribute any dangerous or obscene materials that causes someone to commit an act of terrorism or a felony.

Are these guys for real? So a bookseller sells a book, and someone buys it, and they go and kill some poor schmuck, and then claim that reading the book made them do it. So the bookseller is now on the hook, civilly, for the crime? Well, I suppose it worked for the tobacco industry. People smoke, don’t like that they made poor choices, and therefore sue the tobacco company for their poor decisions.

It works for bars. If a bartender serves an already drunk person more, then he goes out and runs over some little old lady, killing her and mangling her walker, the bartender can be held liable for that. It sucks I know. But it’s just one more way to remove responsibility from the offender, to make the offender the victim. It’s not Johnny’s fault he took a rifle and shot up the mall, he just listened to Helter Skelter 500 times in the last two days. That’s why we killed all those people, it wasn’t Johnny’s fault, it was that evil, evil music.

Although…thinking about this just a little more…that would mean that booksellers could no longer sell the Koran. That can even go so far as to make so that Koran’s can’t even be given away. I wonder if that is possibly the true reason for this stupid bill? It would be interesting to see if any religious groups will express outrage or opposition to this bill.

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On 23 June, 2007 four people were silently praying in a park in Elmira, NY. The people were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. Of course, they wouldn’t ever be convicted of such a thing. Surely a jury of their peers would realize that praying in a park is protected speech under the First Amendment…right?

No. On 29 February, 2008 they were found guilty of disturbing the peace and ordered to each pay a $100 fine and court costs. As you can probably guess there is just a little more to this story than just four folks praying in a park. Did I mention the folks are Christians? Of course, how could they not be. Would the police arrest four Muslims silently praying in public? Would they arrest four Muslims loudly praying in public? No, that would be discrimination, after all, the Muslims have a right to pray (more so apparently than Christians do).

In addition, in the park that day, and the time they were silently praying, was occurring a gay pride event. The notorious four were laying on the ground, praying silently. They were not passing out Christian literature. They were not talking to anyone. They were not evangelizing, they were not proselytizing. They were laying prostrate in silent prayer, asking God to shine His mercy on the souls of sinners.

Granted, they were told by the police they were not allowed to cross the street and enter the park. The police told them there were unwelcome at an event that was advertised as "open to the public" where "all are welcome."

While the ACLU won’t step in a protect he civil rights of the Elmira Four, the Alliance Defense Fund is. They have filed an appeal in the case. I’m hoping beyond hope that the appellate court will see the folly and reverse the decision. Somewhere in the justice system there just has to be some sanity and common sense remaining.

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Mike Cox, Attorney General for the state of Michigan, wrote a very clear, concise and informed piece on the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" in the Wall Street Journal.

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that will affect millions of Americans and could also have an impact on the 2008 elections. That case, Parker v. D.C., should settle the decades-old argument whether the right "to keep and bear arms" of the Constitution’s Second Amendment is an individual right — that all Americans enjoy — or only a collective right that states may regulate freely. Legal, historical and even empirical reasons all command a decision that recognizes the Second Amendment guarantee as an individual right.

The amendment reads: "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." If "the right of the people" to keep and bear arms was merely an incident of, or subordinate to, a governmental (i.e., a collective) purpose — that of ensuring an efficient or "well regulated" militia — it would be logical to conclude, as does the District of Columbia — that government can outlaw the individual ownership of guns. But this collective interpretation is incorrect.

To analyze what "the right of the people" means, look elsewhere within the Bill of Rights for guidance. The First Amendment speaks of "the right of the people peaceably to assemble . . ." No one seriously argues that the right to assemble or associate with your fellow citizens is predicated on the number of citizens or the assent of a government. It is an individual right.

The Fourth Amendment says, "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . " The "people" here does not refer to a collectivity, either.

The rights guaranteed in the Bill of Right are individual. The Third and Fifth Amendments protect individual property owners; the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments protect potential individual criminal defendants from unreasonable searches, involuntary incrimination, appearing in court without an attorney, excessive bail, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment protects individual rights not otherwise enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment states, "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." Here, "the people" are separate from "the states"; thus, the Second Amendment must be about more than simply a "state" militia when it uses the term "the people."

Consider the grammar. The Second Amendment is about the right to "keep and bear arms." Before the conjunction "and" there is a right to "keep," meaning to possess. This word would be superfluous if the Second Amendment were only about bearing arms as part of the state militia. Reading these words to restrict the right to possess arms strains common rules of composition.

Colonial history and politics are also instructive. James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights to provide a political compromise between the Federalists, who favored a strong central government, and the Anti-Federalists, who feared a strong central government as an inherent danger to individual rights. In June 1789, then Rep. Madison introduced 12 amendments, a "bill of rights," to the Constitution to convince the remaining two of the original 13 colonies to ratify the document.

Madison’s draft borrowed liberally from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and Virginia’s Declaration of Rights. Both granted individual rights, not collective rights. As a result, Madison proposed a bill of rights that reflected, as Stanford University historian Jack Rakove notes, his belief that the "greatest dangers to liberty would continue to arise within the states, rather than from a reconstituted national government." Accordingly, Mr. Rakove writes that "Madison justified all of these proposals (Bill of Rights) in terms of the protection they would extend to individual and minority rights."

One of the earliest scholars of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, confirmed this focus on individuals in his famous "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States" in 1833. "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms," Story wrote, "has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of republics, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers . . ."

It is also important to consider the social context at the time of the drafting and adoption of the Bill of Rights. Our Founding Fathers lived in an era where there were arms in virtually every household. Most of America was rural or, even more accurately, frontier. The idea that in the 1780s the common man, living in the remote woods of the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania and Virginia, would depend on the indulgence of his individual state or colony — not to mention the new federal government — to possess and use arms in order to defend himself is ludicrous. From the Minutemen of Concord and Lexington to the irregulars at Yorktown, members of the militias marched into battle with privately-owned weapons.

Lastly, consider the empirical arguments. The three D.C. ordinances at issue are of the broadest possible nature. According to the statute, a person is not legally able to own a handgun in D.C. at all and may have a long-gun — even in one’s home — only if it is kept unloaded and disassembled (or bound with a trigger lock). The statute was passed in 1976. What have been the results?

Illegal guns continue to be widely available in the district; criminals have easy access to guns while law-abiding citizens do not. Cathy L. Lanier, Acting Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police Department, was quoted as follows: "Last year [2006], more than 2,600 illegal firearms were recovered in D.C., a 13% increase over 2005." Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before the 1976 ban, the murder rate fell to 27 from 37 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose to 35. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.

This comports with my own personal experience. In almost 14 years as prosecutor and as head of the Homicide Unit of the Wayne County (Detroit) Prosecutor’s Office, I never saw anyone charged with murder who had a license to legally carry a concealed weapon. Most people who want to possess guns are law-abiding and present no threat to others. Rather than the availability of weapons, my experience is that gun violence is driven by culture, police presence (or lack of same), and failures in the supervision of parolees and probationers.

Not only does history demonstrate that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but experience demonstrates that the broad ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia has led to precisely the opposite effect from what was intended. For legal and historical reasons, and for the safety of the residents of our nation’s capital, the Supreme Court should affirm an individual right to keep and bear arms.

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Gabriel Garnica has a great article over at Family Security Matters about freedoms.

Check it out, very well worth a read!

Technorati Tags: Freedom, Liberals, Conservatives, Gabriel Garnica

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Daniel Frazier is a despicable man. He gleefully uses the names of dead soldiers for commercial gain. Not much, according to him, but commercial gain nonetheless. For those who aren’t familiar, this is the guy who prints the names of United States servicemen and women on t-shirts along with the words “Bush Lied - They Died” and sells them.

Some states have passed laws that prohibit this. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake in Phoenix issued an injunction prohibiting the state of Arizona from shutting down Frazier’s operation. And rightfully so. Just because Frazier’s speech is in the form of a t-shirt, and just because I happen to disagree with his message, and just because the families of the fallen heroes disagree with the message and the use of their loved ones’ names, does not mean that Frazier loses his right to deliver his message.

I’ve said before that this really isn’t and shouldn’t be a first amendment issue. It isn’t a speech issue at all. What this is, and I think the families would get farther faster going this route, is a civil issue. The issue at hand is unauthorized use of the name and/or likeness of the individual in question. The families should sue Frazier for copyright and/or trademark infringement. The families should have any and all rights to the names and likenesses of their deceased loved ones, and should be able to control how those names and/or likenesses are used.

And in a civil trial, in front of a jury, I believe the families would come out winners because it would be a jury of citizens who decide the case, and it would have nothing to do with Constitutional rights, and everything to do with licensing. There is plenty of precedent for this as well. I’m am fairly certain if I made a t-shirt with the likeness of John Wayne with the words “Bush Lied-They Died” that the folks who control the licensing to John Wayne’s name and likeness would be all over me like grease on bacon.

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Technorati Tags: Daniel Frazier, Iraq War, T-Shirts, Bush Lied They Died

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In yet another victory for the First Amendment ( that is the one which gives use the right to free speech, and religion and a free press - for those of you in Parma, OH). An Ohio (go figure) federal judge struck down an Ohio state law which basically said, anything one says on the Internet is illegal if  it is harmful to juveniles”. What a crock.

Read about it here: source

Technorati Tags: First Amendment, Free Speech, Internet Laws, Ohio

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Well, not really. It was an exercise, a pay at Bishop Flaget school in Chillicothe, Ohio. For those not in the know, this is Constitution Week - celebrating the drafting of the Constitution 225 years ago on 17 September. The students put on plays which describe what they believe life would be like without our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The plays centered on the First Amendment (because, let’s face it, that is the most important one - at least in my opinion).

Frank Robertson/Gazette

A seventh-grader is arrested for praying by officers portrayed by students during a student play Monday morning at Bishop Flaget. The students were depicting what could possibly happen without first amendment rights.

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Technorati Tags: Bishop Flaget, Ohio, First Amendment, Play, Exercise

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Back in the day, some 230 or so years ago, when the First Amendment to the Constitution of these United States was written, it had zero exceptions. There were no exceptions for offending anyone. There were no exceptions for so-called ‘hate speech’. There were no exceptions for political speech. There were no exceptions for anything. What the First Amendment said is:

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

It is fairly simple really. There are no exceptions for speech in which one explains how something is made, or how something works, or how to build something. Not even a Molotov cocktail, or even a pipe bomb. Yet Rod Coronado of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is in trouble for just that. He stood in front of an audience, and gave detailed explanations on how to make Molotov cocktail, and now he is in the hot seat for it.

I don’t agree with the ELF’s mission, or their tactics. I don’t agree that Coronado did anything wise or smart or ethical in teaching this bomb making class. But I do agree that he did nothing illegal in discussing how to best make the explosive device. His speech, like all speech, is protected speech, and the government has no business prosecuting him for it.

The government says that Coronado’s intent on giving the class was for others to go out and commit illegal acts of destruction and violence. I don’t see how the government could know what his intent really was. Perhaps this is what he wanted, perhaps he figured, with his vast experience in explosives and blowing things up, to make sure that if anyone else wanted to do that, they knew the proper way to build a bomb so they didn’t go around blowing themselves up. It doesn’t really matter. They are not claiming that he actually told anyone to use the bomb, or what to use the bomb on. They just figure that, since he has a history of blowing things up in his environmental campaigns, that’s what he wanted them to do.

Personally, I think this guy is a wacko that needs to be off the streets. And I don’t mind saying that it pains me to be on the same side as this creep, but the First Amendment is the First Amendment, and it has no exceptions in my book. If someone were to use his specific Molotov cocktail recipe and technique, then the government should get him for conspiracy. But not for disseminating the information.

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Technorati Tags: Free Speech, First Amendment, Constitution, ELF, Rod Coronado

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Some people just don’t know when to quit. Case in point is Mr. Joseph Frederick. Joe is from Juneau, Alaska. Back in 2002 the students Juneau-Douglas High School stepped outside to witness a fairly rare, and unique event. The Olympic Torch was passing through that little city in the Last Frontier. Joe, being a wiseacre (and possible pot-head) that one can reasonably presume him to be, created and displayed a banner which read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

The banner was, in any reasonable sense, inappropriate, and rather sophomoric. Which is to be expected. These were high school students after all. The principle of the school viewed the banner as promoting the use of illegal drugs (for those not in the know, a ‘bong’ is someone one uses for ingesting marijuana). She confiscated the banner and suspended Joe for ten days for promoting drug use amongst the students.

For the past five years this thing has been floating around the courts. Finally the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the school. But ol’ Joe just doesn’t want to give up, and the case is going back to court. Not happy with his fifteen minutes of fame, he wants more. It seems to me this is a fellow who has been so spoiled that when he doesn’t get his way, he throws a fit. So now he is suing for damages. Damages? WTF? Damages? What damages? How was this guy damaged by the principal removing the banner? This is ridiculous and certainly I am certain that the good hard working tax payers of Juneau and Alaska really appreciate this spoiled little brat wasting the tax dollars in this manner.

Oh, this quote is a pretty good one, Doug Mertz, Joe’s attorney said the school district “continues to deny that students have free speech on serious matters.” Serious matters? Taking bong hits? How serious can that be? I could see their point if they were exposing something about the school board, if they were being silenced because their point of view would embarrass or expose the misdeeds of some official. But bong hits…serious? Puh-leeeze.

Of course, during the case Joe’s lawyer loaded his lip with the good story that the banner wasn’t about drugs or bong hits or Jesus (all three of which are verboten in public schools), but was ‘political speech’ - a protest in favor of student’s free speech rights. Yeah, right.

This guy, I am certain, will have a tough time in the future finding a good, lasting job. There are things we do which follow us the rest of our lives, especially with the Internet now, where things just don’t seem to ever go away. Some future employer is going to Google this guy, and come up with his little spoiled brat tirade. His actions here show a lot about what kind of person he is.

What I see from Joe’s actions is, he pulled a prank and got caught. Instead of taking his punishment like a man, he cries and whines about it and then tries to sue the punisher. When he loses that, he tries to sue more. He simply can’t take it that he doesn’t get his way. There is a great difference between fighting the good fight, and persevering through tough times, and fighting a battle that should never have been fought in the first place, and continuing to fight that battle after it has been lost just because it didn’t go your way.

But I have to wonder. I have to wonder how would this whole thing have unfolded if his banner had read “Bong Hits 4 Mohammad”. I wonder if the principal would have let him keep his sign for fear of offending the Muslims. The world may never know….

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Technorati Tags: Joseph Frederick, Bong Hits 4 Jesus, Juneau-Douglas High School, Free Speech, First Amendment, Students

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