Iowa? This is a huge surprise, and a huge win for the advancement of human rights for all people! An unanimous Iowa Supreme Court decision, a long history of civil rights, a convoluted constitutional amendment process, and a disinclined Iowa State Senate Leader to bring the process up this session or next session.

blackwingbear

Since there is nothing supernatural, it can’t be from any gods.  Since Kenneth Starr seems to think that a bare majority can strip said rights away from us, it most certainly can’t be from the people, neither.  So what is left?  If our rights don’t come from gods, and they can’t also come from the People, the only thing left is from the mere fact of our existence.

Perhaps we don’t have any rights at all that are inherent in the simple fact of existence, and that all our rights are given at whim by our fellow humans.

When a people believe they have the right to deny civil rights to one group of people, the government takes that idea more steps further.  In a free society, this child would have never been questioned without an advocate present.

Thomas Jefferson was right: 

The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed.

Current Mood:  angry

What else?  Oh, yeah: the Vice President is NOT “in charge” of the US Senate, Governor Palin.  While the Vice President is the President of the Senate, the only power they actually have is casting the tie-breaking vote.

Didn’t she just admit a few months ago that she didn’t know what the job of the Vice President did?  Apparently, she still doesn’t know:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

For all intents and purposes, it is the Senate Majority Leader who runs the Senate.  Sarah Palin displays a breathtaking ignorance of the US Constitution.  Is it any wonder that she’s not fit for national elective office?

The Washington Post reports:

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Obama had a few problems with that.

“First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch ‘em,” Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. “They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later.”

The answer is that they are not there.  Who knows how anyone would be tried and their innocence or guilt proved if the christian reconstructionist Sarah Palin had her way.  The Constitution is not some silly piece of paper to be tossed aside when it is no longer convenient.  It defines at the deepest level of our culture what it means to be an American.  There is nothing more primal than that.

“These people,” sheesh!