Look, Miami got its tongue pierced. How shocking.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But after Elian, 2000 elections, the hurricanes, tazering kindergarten kids, this Schiavo case, blah blah BLAH if Florida throws one more"center-of-attention" drama queen hissy-fit at the great Thanksgiving family dinner that is the US, I will punch it in the goddam neck.

Look at your cousin, Montana. Does he cause trouble? No. He shows up early, brings beer and chips, and takes out the garbage. Idaho just gets drunk and falls asleep on the couch. Even California, who usually annoys the crap out of the rest of us with the New Age stuff she tries to sell all of us during halftime, at least she's the fifth largest economy in the world. She's not borrowing money from Mom and Dad. (Yes, I'm looking at you Tennessee and Alabama.)

Everybody else seems to wrestle their own crap to the ground. Give it a shot, Florida.

Atrios-ians? Atrios-ites?

Anyway, thanks for coming in. Damn, I feel like I should have cleaned up the place a little. At least bought a better brand of scotch.

For a better sense of what we do here without wading through all the links (although do feel free to try that), check out Link-Fu to the popular and/or less poorly written posts.

And remember: these are the jokes people. I don't come to your blog and knock the mop out of your hand ...

This and the Weird value of Planck's Constant Prove the Existence of God

Thanks to the ever-alert, I want-to-be-that-site-when-I-grow-up Boing Boing, we find a found art/meta-narrative masterpiece An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story. A recurring model in various advertisements weaves a Sabine and Griffin-like spell over our lives.

Finally, cultural relevance

In order to defeat a critical mass of hippies in South Park, Cartman and his team must pilot a digging machine to the center of their music festival, before the City Council goes to Plan B.

The plot for South Park this week is The Core.

This. Rocks.

It's Alive! ALLIIIVEE!

Via Gizmodo, the link to the new John Deere Walking Machine. With video. Now slap a dual-plasma turret on that sucker and lets end the Ewok menace once and for all!

"Will of the People"

Last serious post for a while, I promise. But in the Activist Judges post comments, somebody asks whether the judiciary shouldn't bow to the will of the people if the will is, to paraphrase "overwhelming." At what point is a judge who decides against the majority wishes of the populace in some manner, to whit, subverting democracy?

First off, the problem is people use "democracy" as a catch-all phrase for the set of legal protections we have in place in America as opposed to its correct definition. Again, read Zakaria, then come back.

Second, and I cannot make this more plain -- that's not subverting the way the US is supposed to work, that's the way the Founding Fathers DESIGNED the US to work. Quite frankly, when you're pissed off at at least one of the branches of government, the US is working according to plan.

Hmm. An example to pull us out of the land of airy-fairy theory and into practical application:

As of this month, going by the latest Quinnipac and CBS polls, recognition of SOME sort of legal agreement between gays comes in around 45-50% now -- using the word "marriage" changes the numbers considerably, showing again the power of semantics. More tellingly, support for a Constitutional Amendment banning even marriage (the hot button word getting the biggest negative response) barely clears 40% in most polls. What does this indicate? What opposition there is, it's not as deep as it is broad. So, while one can argue either side of the issue, it's not so far out in the land of bizarre-o that the courts are breaking basic social construct by tackling the issue.

However ...

... when the Supreme Court struck down the bans against interracial marriage in 1968 through Virginia vs. Loving, SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT of Americans were against interracial marriage. As a matter of fact, approval of interracial marriage in the US didn't cross the positive threshold until -- sweet God -- 1991

Damn activist judges, eh?

Christ, Nick --

Warn me when you're going to send over the CHUD-ders. I got all serious for three days, and that's when the you link? I got to know when to roll out the funny.

Newbies may want to check out the Archives and specifically the Link-Fu post below.

Credit where credit's due

Oh, and regarding our soon-to-be pilloried "activist judge", thanks to Shakespeare's Sister we find Judge Richard Kramer is a Catholic Republican appointed to the bench by a former GOP governor.

My hat's off to you, Judge. A reasonable man, preserving the civil rights of people he may not personally agree with or approve of. I'd give my left nut for this guy to be AG instead of that corporate lawyer Gonzalez.

Also, added to the links: MyDD, way overdue, the blogfather of many of the blogs I read. And Mouse Words, who not only runs her own spiffy blog but now is installed at the super-high circulation Pandagon. Amanda is both insightful and funny.

Activist Judges

The phrase "activist judge" will pop up in this gay marriage discussion, of course. People will insist that this judge is circumventing the will of the people, the will represented by the legislature in passing certain laws, or backing certain legal definitions over others.

I'm sorry --I'm really sorry -- but if you use the term "activist judge", then frankly you know absolutely nothing about how the US works. Nothing. Nada. You are in point of fact, and again I apologize, an idiot. Allow me to explain.

The Founding Fathers (who never, ever, EVER wanted us to completely trust the guys in charge, by the way) formed the three branches of the government -- executive/legislative/judicial -- so they would be in opposition. Laws are passed, judges decide if they make sense, the laws are overturned or approved, the executive branch referees. The branches of the government are not supposed to like each other. It's called "checks and balances", not "checks and hugs." This is the fundamental basis for the United States government. A third-grader can understand this.

I'm going to say this slowly. Judges. Are. Supposed. To. Overturn. Laws. Not all of them. But yeah, some of them. Then there are appeals, or new laws are passed, and the process starts all over again. That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work.

You can disagree with a judge overturning a law you like, fine, that's democracy. But implying the judge has no right to overturn a law because said law represents the will of the majority, and therefore that judge is an "activist" judge, well, sadly, that reveals a depth of ignorance about the Constitution and the writings of the Founding Fathers which automatically disqualifies you from the discussion.

No, seriously. If you say you disagree with gay marriage, fine -- I disagree with you, but you're entitled to whatever opinion you have in your skull. But as soon as you use the phrase "activist judge", you take yourself out of the game. Not according to me. I like you. No, you're an idiot according to Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Ben Franklin, et al. So, go read the Federalist Papers, and preferably leaf through Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, and come back when you have a basic understanding of civics. And you'd better know what the Lemon Test is, too, or you -- again -- must shut your trap and go back and do the required reading.

I am reminded of one of the finest examples of practical political instruction I've ever witnessed. I was at a bar with DJ MCarthey many years ago, and some idiot tourist a few stools down started sounding off. What was particularly galling was the man's ignorance of basic history. After a few minutes of this:

DJ: "You could feel free to shut yer gob."
Tourist: "Everybody's entitled to their opinion."

At which, DJ flicked his cigarette ten feet across the bar, popping it off the man's forehead, as he replied:

"No, you ignorant fuck, everyone's entitled to their informed opinion."

A beating ensued. I believe more civics lessons would stick if delivered in this manner.

Gay Marriage

Well, a California judge has ruled California can't ban gay marriage.

Dammit, get to the important stuff. Like banning anyone who can't parallel park their SUV from owning one.

A few brief thoughts on this: first, some of you may recognize a bit of the below. I got a couple requests to pull the gay marriage section from Oh, Oh Canada for separate citation. You can skip right past this.

The main argument against gay marriage, as I understand it, is that it's some sort of attack on Christian living, or Christian beliefs. That Christians will lose ...um ... damn, I thought I understood it for a second, let me look it up again ...

Back. The right to worship Christ? No. Umm, the right to educate their children as Christians? No ... hold on ... their own marriages, performed in a Church, will be invalidated ... no, that's not true ... they'll be forced to accept homosexuals in their churches and perform gay marriages ... no, also not true, individual churches are immune to enforced acceptance (thanks to separation of Church and State -- hey, sometimes it is good for both goose and gander!) ...

Here's the problem -- and I really do believe that misunderstanding this is the root of many issue in America today:

Your beliefs are not your rights. The government is in the job of enforcing your rights, not your beliefs.

The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. It does not tell you who to marry, how to marry, who to love, what God to worship, what books to read ... that is not its job. The government's job when it comes to marriage is to make sure the legal mumbo-jumbo is observed. All the things that make marriage "marriage", all the emotional and religious context, that's up to the individual couples and their communities, be those communites Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, civil ...

If you belong to a church which is against same-sex marriage, fine. If this judgement stands, your church will not be forced to marry gay people. Do you know why? Because, and I will take this slowly, odds are gay people are not going to your church. Strange gay people are not going to paratroop in and occupy your vestry. This law will not make you have to look at gay people, or associate with them, or like them. You will not have to forgive them, or even agree with them. The special vows that make marriage a holy institution to you, they will not being saying them in your church, changing the meaning of those vows to you. They do not change what "marriage" means to you. You can continue to argue that gay people are bad or wrong or evil in God's eyes, and do so freely. Do you understand? Your. Life. Does. Not. Change. Your rights are not abridged. And so, your right to find them objectionable or icky or evil ends where their right to enter into a legal contract begins.

You may have excellent moral, or religious, or personal arguments against same-sex marriage. But you do not have a single decent legal one. And that is the government's reach, and no farther.

All that, of course, is me trying to convince someone with silly things like logic. For me personally, it quite simply boils down to this:

Christianity survived the death of its founder, centuries of brutal persecution by the most powerful Empire on earth, Crusades, corruption, bad popes, multiple schisms -- and still spread and thrived, converting over the course of its history hundreds of millions of people from wildly diverse, often hostile cultures.

It'll survive two guys sharing a life insurance policy.