Improving the Constitution

 I've been mulling over the apparent shortcomings of our federal government, and a couple possible constitutional amendments have come to mind.

One of the issues is that of gerrymandering.  The re-election rate for incumbent members of Congress is over 90%.  State legislatures draw districts in very partisan ways.  I recall a Reader's Digest article on gerrymandering that described a district that stretched in six long narrow psuedopods across half the state, and another that was two residential districts connected by several miles of interstate highway.  Somebody tried to get a district that was actually two areas completely separated from each other, but courts shot that down.

My proposed correction:  "1.  Congressional districts shall be drawn so that each can be enclosed within a rectangle with an area no more than 120% of the area of the district.  2.  If the geography and population distribution of a state make doing so impossible, then congressional districts of that state shall be drawn to minimize the total area of rectangles enclosing all congressional districts.  3.  States with only one district shall be exempt.  4.  A rectangle shall be a geometric figure with four sides and four equal vertices."

A second issue is that the states have been rendered subservient to the federal government, which was never the intention of the Founders who wrote the Constitution.  That was the original function of the Senate, to give the States a voice in the legislative process.  A third is that getting rid of bad laws is far more difficult than it ought to be.  As James Madison warned us, ""It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be to-morrow."  To correct these, I propose the following amendment:

"1.  The House of Relief is hereby established.  2.  Members of the House of Relief shall be called Relievers.  3.  The legislatures of each State shall appoint three Relievers, who shall serve at the pleasure of their respective state legislatures, which may recall or replace them at any time, and for any reason, or for no reason at all.  4.  The House of Relief shall only  have the power to pass bills that repeal federal laws and regulations of the United States, and to terminate federal departments and offices not established by the Constitution of the United States.  5.  Any such bill which receives votes of one-third of Relievers currently in office shall be passed to the President of the United States without review by the other houses of Congress, and will become law upon his signature, or fail if the President should veto the bill.  6.  Any bill which receives votes of one-half of all Relievers currently in office shall become law immediately, overriding any Presidential veto, without review by any other branch of government."

While I think these are more-or-less good ideas, I'm sure they could use some polish.  Any ideas anyone may have for their refinement would be most welcome.

We Are Tin Ducks in a Shooting Gallery

 Even some liberals and Democrats are aghast at what has hppened, lately, to President Trump.  In the aftermath of the demonstrations and riots in Washington, DC, President Trump has been deplatformed and (for all practical purposes) censored, banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and his alternate platfrom, Parler, crushed in what certainly looks like action coordinated between Twitter (Parler's competition), Amazon (who owned the computers that Parler leased), and Google and Apple (Parler's distributors).

One liberal put the reason for her discomfort front and center:  "If they can do this to the most powerful man in the world, who or what can stop them if they decide to do it to us?"  And given how the revolution eats its own, it's a reasonable fear for those on all sides, not just those on the right.

So what do we do now?

First:  Get a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.  While his speculations about alternate marriage systems have been shown to be incompatible with real human nature, it contains a description of the best sort of network for a revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) organization devised yet to date.  

Second:  Download the latest version of The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, also known as TAILS Linux.  This will boot from a thumb drive on most hardware, connect to the Internet via multiple clients, using The Onion Router (TOR) to ensure that connections are anonymous.  It will also make sure that nothing you do is stored on the hardware you use.  It also bypasses any malicious software that may be on the system you use, but it would not bypass any malicious hardware, like keyloggers.

Third:  Learn and use GNU Privacy Guard, a free implementation of PGP.  Bear in mind the security-privacy axis:  The more secure your communications, the less likely they will be received quickly and accurately.

Finally:  If we do wind up with a Constitutional Convention, there's another idea that RAH put into The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- governments need to make deregulation and removal of bad laws easier, and to make the hasty passage of laws more difficult.  One suggestion that I rather like is an elected antilegislative body, whose members are only empowered to send repeals to the President's desk for signature or veto, and perhaps on less than a majority vote.  Another is to require at least a 60% supermajority to pass a law.

Citizen vs. Subject

One of the reasons that gun controllers tend to wind up on the left is that they think that the masses should be subjects. They won't say it that way, but time and again, you'll see on the left an attitude that most problems should be handled by way of people ceding control to the government.

For example, when ordinary people can go to anyone they want for medical services, they can choose quacks or other incompetents. Thus, to protect people from quacks, the government should forbid anyone from practicing medicine until they get a license (permission) from the government.

The same principle may also apply to child care, electricians, taxi drivers, barbers, hairdressers, lawyers, plumbers, or any of as many as a hundred or more professions. Or it may be a matter of prior restraint because of the potential for endangering the public, as for truck drivers, pilots, and so forth.

And if somebody has any sort of trouble meeting basic needs, then it is incumbent upon the government to allocate resources to them. Examples include public housing, Women, Infants, and Children, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, and public schools, which have the additional benefit -- cited by the likes of John Dewey and John D. Rockefeller -- of giving the government the opportunity to mold young people like plastic.

This also applies to owning and carrying guns. The basic Leftist attitude towards gun ownership is that when ordinary people own guns, that causes problems, so they shouldn't.

Thomas Sowell would put it a bit differently, as far as the internal thinking on the Left tends to go. In his estimation, the left would tend to think that if they were in control, they could make everyone else into the sort of good people they know themselves to be. All they need to transform human nature is enough time and enough power. How much of each?

They'll let you know when they're done. Until then, the answer is "more."

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"

As Moxie Marlinspike points out, the idea that only people who have something to hide have anything to fear from our surveillance state is a load of crap. As he points out, there are far too many laws for any of us to know what they are and not break them.

The common law dictum that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" can only rationally apply to common law. It is impossible to be knowledgeable about all the new federal statute, regulatory, and case law of the last year alone!

There is greater risk: California's state legislature has previously done away with the statute of limitations, and is planning to do so again. There is a WSJ article entitled "Sacramento's Nonprofit Shakedown," but I don't have access to it behind the paywall.

We are not trying to walk through a minefield of legal problems. No, we are law enforcement's targets in a shooting gallery, and either blasted or spared based upon their whims, prejudices, and moods. We live under appointed despots.

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

PRISM Break

If you haven't heard about the PRISM scandal (where the feds copy and store everything going through numerous web services, including but not limited to google, facebook, yahoo!, and msn), you really have not been paying attention. Even if your stuff's encrypted now, the feds plan to keep it until they can crack it. But there's a bit of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://prism-break.org/

Defang the HHS Mandate

Salute to Frank Weathers.

According to the USCCB, Rep. Diane Black (along with 50 cosponsors, has introduced legislation to require the HHS to respect the first amendment civil rights of believers. It's HR 940; you can search the Library of Congress for the bill; you can tell your representatives to cosponsor and support it (if they haven't already).

An HHS Mandate Simile

I have stolen this entirely from Frank Weathers of Why I Am Catholic.

As you may (or may not) be aware, proposed rules regarding access to pornographic services have been in the making for some time now. This letter to you is a notice that marks the next step in this process. As some religious organizations, and individual members of said religious institutions, had problems with accepting our prior rules on pornographic services, modifications have been adopted as noted in the following paragraphs.

The proposed rules would make two principal changes to the health services coverage rules to provide all citizens with pornographic services coverage without cost sharing, while taking into account religious objections to said pornographic services to members of eligible organizations, including eligible organizations that are religious institutions of higher education, that establish or maintain or arrange health coverage. First, the proposed rules would amend the criteria for the religious employer exemption to ensure that an otherwise exempt employer plan is not disqualified because the employer’s purposes extend beyond the inculcation of religious values or because the employer serves or hires people of different religious faiths.

Second, the proposed rules would establish accommodations for health services coverage established or maintained by eligible organizations, or arranged by eligible organizations that are religious institutions of higher education, with religious objections to pornographic services coverage. The proposed rules also propose related amendments to other rules, consistent with the proposed accommodations. The Departments intend to finalize all such proposed amendments before the end of the temporary enforcement safe harbor on August 1, 2013.

Pornographic services will be provided at no cost to you, automatically. You will not even have to search for it, except by consulting TV guides, and by using remote controls. If you currently have access to cable television, all adult pornographic pay-per-view channels will be unblocked and made available to you without cost sharing. Also, by simply having television reception (via cable, or via the airwaves), or internet access via iOS devices, our government, understanding how important this service is to our citizens health and well-being, is making sure that the benefits of pornographic services (understood as dignified, uplifting, and morally good for society) will be provided by your local broadcasters/ purveyors of media without cost sharing by no later than the implementation date of August 1, 2013.

You, as a consumer, personally do not have to do anything regarding this service, as it will automatically become available to you through every broadcast medium, with no cost sharing. Currently, free pornographic services require you to at least initiate a Google search, or even pay a fee for viewing pornographic content via your cable television provider, or a certified pornographic services provider. But no more. You do not have to decide if you would like pornographic services, as that decision has been made for you. Therefore, you do not have to “opt in” to gain access to these services available to you with no cost sharing.

Depending on the narrowness of the broadcast/cable/ISP markets in your area, however, the numbers of channels with pornographic services content will vary. We are requesting your comments during the next six months while we seek ways to partner effectively with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple TV, Yahoo!, Google, et.al., to expand access to pornographic services so the benefits of streaming this important, healthy, content, in accordance with this mandate, without cost sharing, can begin by the deadline stated above without delay.

Here comes the kicker.

Did we mention you won’t have to pay for this service? As we feel that pornographic material is vital to the health and well-being of our citizens, parental controls on this programming will be disabled. Your children will not need to ask your permission to utilize pornographic services, as the benefits of utilizing pornography are self-evident to all. Of course, as your conscience dictates, you may decide to forgo the pornographic services provided by the proposed rules on your own.

The benevolent Uncle Sam wouldn’t want to violate your First Amendment rights, you see.

Furthermore, nothing in these proposed rules would preclude employers or others from expressing their opposition, if any, to the use of pornography; require anyone to use pornography; or require video entertainment providers to supply pornography if doing so is against their religious beliefs.

Here ends my outright theft from Frank Weathers.

I have to say, I like this way of explaining what the HHS mandate actually does to us far better than the bacon in a kosher deli argument.

Blogrollin' on Executive Fiat Mass Murder

Was Bush's decision that his people could torture captives gravely evil and utterly inexcusable? You bet. Has Obama done even worse? You bet! (salute to The Anchoress, whose post here is worth reading.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hot Air's story, which has the video, in case embedding doesn't work right.

Does this excuse Bush's use of torture? Nope. It just demonstrates that our Ruling Class has no respect for the rule of law, for morality, or for us, regardless of which side of the aisle they may call home. I have no solutions. I agree with Zippy when he says that national office elections are basically theater meant to reconcile us to being the subjects of the Ruling Class.

Assault Weapons Round-Up!

I could spend a lot of time writing about the new attempts to impose victim disarmament gun control, but others have done it for me, and better than I was likely to do.  So that means it's time for an assault weapons round-up!

First, William M. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars!

Firearm Homicides Dropping.  Assault Weapons Ban Not Correlated With Decrease In Homicides. No Need For New Restrictions.

Darwin Catholic, on the whole matter:

Assault Weapons Part 1:  Battle Rifle to Assault Rifle

Assault Weapons Part 2:  Assault Rifles vs. "Assault Weapons"

Assault Weapons Part 3:  Gun Control

I'll add that beyond target shooting, high capacity semi-automatic battle carbines are the deterrent weapon of choice for (say) a single shop proprietor or home owner, faced with a rioting mob.  This is all the more so if he's using highly frangible rounds, which do not have overpenetration issues.

On Newtown, CT, and Policy

I ran across Larry Correia's statements on mass shootings and what makes people safe in Mark Shea's commentariat.

Larry Correia may truly be one of the most qualified of people to discuss the issue of how gun ownership and use affect criminal behavior, including mass shootings like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have seen nothing I think you would do better to read if you wish to be informed on the relevant issues, especially not anything I've written.

Conscience Rights explained in 15 seconds

salute to Catholic Exchange.

A pithy quote

Salute to the Creative Minority Report Reader.  From USA Today:

In essence, the Obama administration's message to these Catholics, despite a cosmetic compromise, is akin to telling Austin's bohemians that they can dress like hipsters on the weekends so long as they behave like corporate shills Monday through Friday. 

I think this is one of the best encapsulations of what's being done to us with the HHS Mandate. Only, we're not being asked to sell out our beliefs, man, but to betray our God and Creator. 

Assembly Not Required

Salute to Mark Shea.

Behold the People's Rights Amendment:

Section 1.  We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2.  People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

Section 3.  Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

Did any of you notice what was missing from Section 3?

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.  Source

Most forms of "peaceable assembly" are corporations.  What this amendment allows the government to do is to presume that once you're standing with others in any sort of legally organized body or structure (other than government, itself), you do not have the rights of people.  Here's the article.

The Top 10, Plus Truth

Behold! The Top 10 Arguments For the Mandate, Refuted By Truth!
Salute to Frank Weathers of YIMCatholic, who consistently writes better stuff than I do.

EDIT: More truth,from The Crescat: Sex Is Not a Medical Emergency! Salute to Thomas L. McDonald of God and the Machine at Patheos.

A piece of truth

Salute to Mark Shea, the Anchoress, Frank Weathers of yimcatholic at patheos, etc. etc. etc.

What SOPA and PIPA are meant to do

I just saw a headline that has put SOPA and PIPA into perspective: BTJunkie voluntarily closes file-sharing website (more from ZDNet, Loopy Gadgets, and the Guardian).

The goal of SOPA/PIPA is not to stop piracy.

It is nothing less than to put an end to user-generated content on the Web.

That's the real goal of MPAA and RIAA in all their censorship moves and DRM strategies -- to ensure they have a monopoly on distribution of entertainment media worldwide.

They want to eliminate every form of competition. They want to ensure that all independent entertainers are crushed, so that everyone who wants any sort of entertainment will have to come to them, cash in hand. They want to ensure that every musician will have to come to them, cap in hand, to sign away all of their rights and money, in order to make the move from street corner busker/ garage band/ small local club band to the big time. They want to ensure that nobody ever successfully distributes a film without the studios getting their piece of the action.

And this plays into the hands of a censorious government. Never forget that big government and big business are in bed together and feed each other. Big business wants an unfair advantage. Big government wants to control personal expression. An oppressive government cannot afford free expression; it's far too likely to express, in a way that people can easily see and share, that the government is oppressive and corrupt.

BTJunkie's self-takedown is not ONLY stifling piracy, is not ONLY stifling Linux ISO distribution (most Linux ISOs are distributed over bittorrent to save costs) ... I have no doubt that it is also stifling the efforts of many independent artists, without labels or studio contracts, to get some market share and mind share.

Sign Frank's Petition!

Frank Weathers, of YIMCatholic at Patheos, has created a petition to ask that the vile HHS mandate to require Catholic institutions to directly fund gravely evil acts in contradiction of religious liberty. Go and sign. Yes, you have to create an account. Be not afraid!!

Petition page here

Incidentally, Frank has yet another one of those Catholic blogs far superior to mine.

SOPA and PIPA

are the acronyms for the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, bills currently being rushed through Congress as quickly as possible. As written, both will enable censorship of vast swaths of the Internet (like, any site that includes user-provided and/or generated content). Here's the rundown on why SOPA and PIPA are very bad ideas. That they are largely unconstitutional is a pretty good first reason.

Call and/or email your assorted congresscritters. Don't bother write at this point; envelopes are subjected to huge delays to protect Congressional staff personnel from biological and chemical weapons. I doubt even a postcard could get through in time. You can find your representative at House.gov and your senators at Senate.gov. A brief search and a couple of links will get you to a page with their office number (dial direct instead of trying to go through the switchboard) and email address.

Blast from the Past

I have maintained for years that taking government money is bad for Christian charity. And right about the end of this article about Obamacare on Catholic Lane it would seem that Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, IL, and Steven Mosher agree with me.