On Tuesday, the US Senate introduced an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. (Full Story.) Thankfully, for the rest of dumb America, NewsMax.com does not give the full text of the amendment nor a link to it, proving once again that we are not smart enough to analyze primary sources for ourselves, and we should just let our favorite conservative op-ed outlets tell us what we should think about this. At least someone here is sane: "'The U.S. Constitution is no place to play election-year politics, particularly when our nation is facing other critical issues such as an uncertain economy, threats to our homeland, the safety of our troops in Iraq and skyrocketing health care costs,' said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch in a press release." Good for you, Elizabeth Birch! The Constitution is not a place for unilateral issues that are the pet issues of a particular group in this country.

NewsMax gives its own opinion of the amendment: "But supporters of traditional marriage say a constitutional amendment is the only way to protect the institution of marriage from courts that go beyond their constitutional mandates." Go beyond their mandates? What?! The courts of the United States, ever since Marbury v. Madison, have been given the power to review decisions of the states or of lower courts. Strangely, when the Supreme Court used this very methodology in Bush v. Gore to stop the recount process in Florida, the Republicans were curiously quiet on the issue of going "beyond their constitutional mandates." And yet, when the courts rule in a manner that they disagree with, suddenly, the judiciary is "activist" and "re-writing the law."

Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes a federal court system, says, "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."

Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison, writes, "The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable. [. . .] It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty."

For two hundred years, the foundation of our judicial system has been the ability of the judiciary to uphold the superiority of the Constitution. For an outlet so mediocre as NewsMax.com to declare that that tenet is wrong simply because it allows the judiciary to do something it happens to personally disagree with shows a resounding lack of understanding about what the Constitution means. "The Constitution should only be used to expand individual rights, not to single out a group of Americans for discrimination, Birch added."

Posted by Mark at 4:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From NewsMax.com, a decidedly conservative op-ed (not news) outlet: "Writing on the op-ed page of Wednesday's New York Times, Broadway star Harvey Fierstein announced that he'll be cross-dressed as Mrs. Santa Claus on a float dedicated to his hit Broadway show Hairspray." (Full story.) Wrong. Fierstein portrayed his character from Hairspray and dressed in a Christmasy costume, but Mrs. Santa Claus, who appeared with Santa on his float at the end of the parade, was decidedly a little old lady. Macy's put the kaibosh on Fierstein's plans, which were apparently his own: "By the end of the day, it was clear that tradition would hold: Santa Claus would be on the final sleigh float, accompanied by Mrs. Claus, a woman. Mr. Fierstein would be on a separate float. But the confusion set Macy's, owned by Federated Department Stores, on a madcap public relations campaign to distance its parade from his opinions without addressing the topics he raised. [. . .] The statement emphasized that Mr. Fierstein would be dressed not as Mrs. Claus but as "his beloved character Mrs. Edna Turnblad of the Broadway hit musical Hairspray." (Full story.) The NewsMax article was headlined, "Macy's Thanksgiving Parade to Celebrate Gay Marriage." What a nice way to scare conservatives and middle-class America for Thanksgiving.

Posted by Mark at 4:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, Cal Thomas isn't the Rush Limbaugh I thought he was. While Rush blindly follows the Republican line anywhere it goes, Cal seems to have the ability to think for himself. Headlined "The Embarassing GOP," an editorial written today criticizes the Republican congress for engaging in too much unnecessary spending. "The Bush administration was supposed to hold the line on spending as a justification for the tax cuts. The president has criticized Washington for spending too much money, yet without a peep he signs legislation that increases the budget of the Department of Education and many other agencies," he says. Good job, Cal. Although, he complains about an excess of spending on social programs, like any good Republican should.

Posted by Mark at 5:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Probably the most sinister thing the administration has done during the Iraq War is fabricate the story of Jessica Lynch, who was "kidnapped" by Iraqis (sort of) and had a harrowing (kind of) tale to tell (except, she wasn't the one telling the story; the Pentagon was telling it to any reporters who would listen).

In its original incarnation, the Jessica Lynch story was a daring tale of the first rescue of a POW since World War II and the first-ever woman POW. The New York Times reported on 2 April 2003 that Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been rescued "from Nasiriya, Iraq, where she had been held captive since March 23. [. . .] She was one of 15 members of the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, which was attacked by Iraqi forces after taking a wrong turn off a highway in southern-central Iraq as American troops advanced toward Nasiriya on the first Sunday of the war." The story of the harrowing firefight paints Lynch as a modern-day Rambo, but the reports of her heroism became gradually less conflated as time went on. By 18 June, a NYT editorial noted, "Initial reports, instigated in the patriotic fog of war, had Jane Wayne intimations of a woman warrior, 'waiflike' but determined, going down emptying her M-16. These have since been discounted by officials telling of a jammed rifle and crushing injuries suffered in a midflight collision of vehicles. Iraqi medical personnel in the hospital when American troops found her have objected to the idea that Private Lynch was in need of immediate rescue at all, saying they kept her safe and treated her well."

Then we discover that the Lynch rescue was most likely staged. Why? So that America could have a "hero" to look up to in the Iraq War, something to keep our morale high, something which would speak to our very souls. As Holden Caulfield might say, the whole episode was phony.

The Jessica Lynch Story, a TV movie pounded out an impressive six months after the incident, is a step removed from a lie. NYT notes, on 5 October, "It is based on the recollections of Mohammed Odeh Al- Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who tipped off American soldiers to Private Lynch's whereabouts." Lynch herself has come out against the supposed story of her rescue, angry that she was a pawn in Department of Defense propaganda.

Posted by Mark at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Area studies" is bogus. Asian studies, American studies, Latin American studies: it's all really dumb. Is it a good idea to lump countries together and talk about their cultures and politics in such a broad way? Area studies gives us the impression that all of the countries in a given area are homogenous, that we can talk about "Latin America" in a general way and, in doing so, encompass all the countries that make up Latin America. This is not possible. Each country is different, with its own problems and history. Argentina is not the same as Mexico (indeed, even within the geographically-defined region of Latin America, they have very little to do with each other except for the language they speak) or Brazil (which speaks Portuguese) or Cuba or Chile. Why not have individual classes that talk about the history and culture of each country? And make them history classes, because that's what area studies is: the history of an area whose countries' only commonality is that these countries are in the same geographic area.

Area studies is another easy way for people to get doctorates. This is the difference between old-school history in which we investigate the past and look for new evidence of things. New-school history involves using fancy linguistical or theoretical terms to re-interpret history (the physical penetration into the jungles of Africa was really metaphorical for the sexual penetration into the female. Don't give me that crap that would make even Freud's hair stand on end) and apply fancy philosophy to it (usually of the post-colonial variety). This re-interpretation does not contribute anything new to history. It's like the dotcoms of the late '90s that failed because they didn't actually produce anything.

This is the continuing cycle of academia: people become academics because it easy and they don't have to do produce anything tangible. They can engage in a lot of abstract philosophising, which I can do from the comfort and convenience of the bathtub. One day, academia will suffer from this lack of new, concrete information -- like academic incest -- which furthers human beings' understanding of the world.

Perhaps the best example of the meaningless academic is Jacques Derrida, a French linguist and the father of deconstructionism. Derrida developed his career simply by saying that everyone else was wrong. You think this is the correct interpretation of this literature? Wrong. In fact, guess what? There is no correct interpretation, due to the subjectivity of language. This is not the correct way to contribute to human understanding; saying that everything is wrong does not make the human race any smarter than it was before. This is the same reason why Weird Al Yankovic isn't too terribly respected: he criticizes others' work but produces no original work of his own.

Posted by Mark at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)