Once More into the Dark Abyss of Constitutional Law

I saw a clip on YouTube this morning that has a discussion between Arlen Specter (R-VA) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They're talking about the recent Supreme Court decision concerning the right of habeas corpus for inmates at Gitmo:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YIFqYVAOosM

(If you're lazy, it shows Gonzales saying that the Constitution does not protect the right to habeas corpus.)

As terrifying as this is, Gonzales is right, for the wrong reasons. The Constitution does not specifically enumerate our rights as citizens of the United States. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say "The people have the right to free speech" or "The people have the right to bear arms". The Constitution does not give us our rights; the government does not give us our rights. Our rights are endowed to us by our Creator, and not just in some namby-pamby spiritual sense. What this means is that we are born with our rights, and the government takes them away. Thus, the purpose of the Constitution is not to regulate the people, it is to regulate the government, and this is expressly clear in both the wording and execution of the document. This is exactly what Alexander Hamilton and Co. were afraid of when they opposed the Bill of Rights. They didn't want to make it seem like the rights specifically protected by the Constitution were the only rights granted to citizens. So they wrote in some safeguards, colloquially known as Amendments IX and X, which nowadays are hardly worth the paper they're printed on.

Amendment IX reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Amendment X reads: "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.” (emphasis mine.)

Pretty damn clear, don't you think?

So, Gonzales is right, for the wrong reasons. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we have the right to habeas corpus, because that's not what the Constitution is for. The Constitution is written to protect the rights that we already have (endowed to us by our Creator, remember) from the government itself.

Why do I understand this better than the Attorney General?

--

you and me and the devil makes three

On Growing Up

The other day, an idea came upon me. Without going into too much detail, it involved a week-long backpacking trip with my father. I was pretty excited about this: Backpacking! Father! Week! So it goes.

I proposed my idea to my father, and, to my surprise, he did not immediately respond by leaping to his feet and dancing about the room, twirling a pseudo-feminine pushbroom that he carries upon his person at all times for this specific purpose around in his arms in lieu of an actual partner, as per his usual rejoinder.

"Next time," he likes to say to the broom, once his euphoria has diminished somewhat, "I'll let you lead." Never a dull moment in my house.

Instead, he sat me down and explained to me why one cannot, in his line of work, just pack up and head out into the wilds for a week. There are certain obligations that one must attend to, he explained. Thursdays are particularly difficult.

My first reaction was one of disappointment, not just at the failure of my plan, but in my father. "Golly gee willikers," I thought to myself, "my pop sure is a square. I'm not gonna be anything like that when I grow up! I'm gonna buy a bitchin' BMX bike, and ride it in the dirt all day, and be totally rad." Unrealistic, I know, but isn't it the place of youth to desperately cling to foolish dreams before they are mercilessly dumped into the gaping abyss of adulthood?

Therein lies the nature of my revelation. During the conversation, it came up that my father has five weeks of vacation time per year. Sounds like plenty, when it's all bunched up together like that, and indeed, it's more than twice the national average. And yet, five weeks means one day out of twelve for the year. Furthermore, he knows where every day of it is going, and has known since last October. October. I don't even know what I'm doing next Monday, and my father has planned out his whole life a year in advance.

This is what it means to be an adult. You've got your whole life planned years in advance. Life goes on, one day after another, until someday, you wake up and find yourself dead.

I was hoping this would become more profound than simply comparing the freedom of youth with the restrictions of venerability, but if this story has any moral, it is that adulthood continually develops new ways to terrify me.

P. S. Velociraptors conspicuously absent from this post. I don't see why you continue to believe me.

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take me out into the black

McClouding Comics

I have made something of a New Year's resolution to post more frequently, since it's really pitiful how rare new content on this site has become. You can practically hear the tumbleweed, dear reader.*

But I've been having a lot of ideas, and, to provide a segué, I can't stop thinking !

So, without further ado, I present: McClouding Comics!

Anyone can McCloud comics with this small number of distinct steps!
Step 1: Create a small number of distinct steps. There! You're halfway done!
Step 2: Overgeneralize! Make everything fit into one of your
oversimplified, arbitrary categories. It is perfectly legitimate to
create subcategories, or to draw convoluted connections between
categories that are completely disparate. Remember, if it doesn't fit,
your categories aren't general enough! "People create comics for one
of four reasons, unless they don't. Now I will go into why these
categories I have just defined are meaningless!"
Step 3: Act like a firsthand authority on everything that has to do
with comics, even though the only comics you've made in the last
twenty years are themselves about comics.
Step 4: Draw just enough connections and parallels to other types of
media (film, literature, etc.) to lend an air of credence to your
arguments, while reiterating every other sentence that comics (oops,
sorry, "sequential art") is a completely unique medium and cannot be
meaningfully compared to any other.
Step 5: Anything else left? Don't worry, the Internet can solve it!
Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is not a global network of
computers. It is a mystical force propagated through the luminiferous
aether that has the power to solve any problem, be it economic,
creative, social, or otherwise. After all, digital media will
completely replace physical media in five years... well, give it
another five... well, any day soon, we promise.
Step 6: Thought you were done with your generalizations? Think again!
Now it's time to summarize! Do your thing!
Step 7: Don't forget an incredibly extensive bibliography with more
books than is physically possible for one man to read in a lifetime,
just to prove beyond any doubt how much smarter you are than the
reader.

There! Now you, too, can McCloud Comics!

I promise better content in the future. This is just to get me back into it.

*Using the second person here is kind of a joke, because while I could be using the (nonexistent in English) second person plural, I am actually only using the second person singular, for obvious reasons.

P. S. I lied about the velociraptors. Next time, I promise.