More on Justice Ginsburg

For what ever reason, the conservative hullabaloo about Justice Ginsburg's comments on referencing foreign law has really irritated me, more so than the usual conservative nonsense out of Powerline and the like. Perhaps it's 1984 of "Slavery is Freedom" aspect of this bloviating. For the all the ridiculous screaming about Tyranny On Horizonl, none of these sycophants has one example about how exactly liberal justices are leading us to to tyrannical state. However, Justice O'Connor has warned about how the Republican denigration of the judiciary can lead to dictatorship.

Thinking about the freedoms of the Constitutions as more powerful ideas rather than mere words will only protect against tyranny. Those who advocate literalism of the Constitution do not really mean it has they magically find inherent powers of the President that allow suspension of the Bill of Rights during war time. I'm still looking for the asterisk in the Constitution that says "the 4th amendment does not apply during times of discretionary war." Thinking about the experience of other countries only serves to enrich our ideas about freedom.

Then bloviators always go on to say to how the Court will impose policy choices. The court has only prescribed anything resembling "policy" remedies to address willful and long-running disregard of Constitutional rights. The only example that comes to mind for me is school desegregation.

The best test for conservative judicial philosophy is how it would have handled segregation. If true to originalism, a conservative court have may found nothing wrong with segregation since it had existed for over 80 years even with the 14th amendment so there's an easy argument that segregation allowable under the original intent of the 14th amendment. If any conservatives actually read this, they are sure to howl but consider their zeal to deny homosexuals equal protection under law. It's the same impulse as racial segregation. The only difference is that today open racial bigotry has become socially unacceptable. We can only hope its not too many decades till we can say the same about homophobia.

Idiots at Powerline

Powerline is complaining about a Justice Ginsburg where she defends using international law as a point of consideration in US jurisprudence. Powerline takes offensce at the idea that the Consitution is at it's core about basic fairness.

Not surprisingly their logic is utterly flawed. One claim is that liberal justices will shop for foreign law that suits them. Scalia and Thomas love to do with dictionaries when looking to finds words defined in ways that suit them. The hypocrasy of the law shopping argrument is even more galling than when one realizes that originalists should never use a modern dictionary and by their own login must use 1780s except when interpreting later admendments. Of couse, the morons at Powerline can find no examples of foreign shopping except a silly argument that homosexuals should be executed criminalized because thats what Mulism countries do and that's foreign law.

One my general critique of conservative thinking when it comes to the law is that conservatives apparently believe Americans have too many rights. They especially hate the right the privacy since it prevents telling other people how to live. The citing of Lawrence v. Texas is a great example of their obcession the private lives of others.

Unfortunately, our corporate controlled media never asks conservatives about the logical implications of their views. One is that many of the rights we take for granted like freedom for segregation are based on an expanded view of the our Constituional rights and not directly by admendment. Those who object to Lawrence v. Texas also ought to object to Brown v. Board of Education. Both found new meaning in clauses of the Consitution that were written over hunderd years prior. Of course, I 've seen a conservative even address this flaw in their reasoning. There are too busy trying ot make sure that no new rights are ever found in the Constitution.

Ice Dancing

Watching the Olympic Ice Dancing competition last night, I was stuck by both how awful in terms of style and how revealing some of the costumes were. I'm not a prude but the Olympics should be family entertainment. The couple with the worst attire fell so I'll refrain from from singling them out but suffice to say good taste was notably absent.

Food Porn

I've come across two good pieces on food in media recrently. One is On the Media's Pornucopia which shows the similaries between the Food Network and porngraphy. The bit about Iron Chef is particularly amsusing. The other is Food Slut by Ann Bauer in Salon. Bauer's pieces chronicles her journey from novice food writer to elitist food critic.

Great Radio - Heretics

This American Life did a fantastic show called Heretics a couple of weeks back. I'm a huge fan of the show and Heretics is one of their best shows of the year. It's the story of Carlton Pearson who was a big name evangelical preacher who was declared a Heretic for saying that Jesus will save everyone, not just those who go to church.

What's a fascinating about this piece is that gives the listener a view into the evangelical mindset that I haven't seen before. I came to the conclusion that the belief that those who have not been born again are all going to hell, is really a form elitelism. It's why hard-core evaneligcals think they are better than everyone else. They excuse the moral issue of most humans suffering for eternity by meekly claiming they didn't make the rules but then refuse to consider may their view of the rules in incorrect even when their trusted pastor preaches another interpretation.

A great companion to Heretics is Bart Ehrman's The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew which I'm reading now. Ehrman shows how the today's Christian beliefs about Jesus and God were not always the only or even the predominate beliefs but rather the set of beliefs that won out after a protracted struggle in the 3rd century.

Harmony Remote

One of Christmas gifts was a Harmony 520 remote. Harmony's website which is necessary to set up the remote was down for the most of the day yesterday. I finally got the remote programmed around 11pm. This morning I discovered I needed to make a few adjustments, and the site is once again down today, again due to "heavy traffic." What incredibly poor planning on the Harmony people's part.

Great Articles

I've been very infrequent in my postings, to remedy this, I have new set of topics. I'm going to post links to articles or audio clips I thought were particularly interesting or worthwhile. The first is a

NPR Segement with Clotaire Rapaille.

I like this segement because it is hilarious and Rapaille has great insights into the American mind. Rapaille is riot every time I've heard him. And yes, the clip is a bit dated in terms of the election Rapaille talks about the principles involved are not.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

Last week, I saw Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit at LACMA. First, let me say the exhibit is has some really impressive artifacts and I'm glad I saw it.

However, the lines to get in were horrible. The tickets were sold for entry at a specific hour which should have kept waiting down. I arrived 20 minutes early for my hour and had to wait over 2 hours to get in. Tickets were oversold which made the whole experience much less pleasant than it could have been.

Second, exhibit does not include the famous King Tut Golden Mask. I understand that maybe it was too fragile to travel. What I find inexcusable is the deceptive advertising, which makes ticket buyers think the mask will be there. The web site linked above as well as all the all the banners and other advertisements I’ve seen show an image that almost everyone will think is the golden mask. However, it’s actually of an artifact that’s a small sarcophagus used hold an internal organ. There were plenty of impressive artifacts on display and it’s wrong to confuse people in this manner. Shame of National Geographic for participating this deception

First Post

Here's my first post and it's of course a rant. A bit of background first though. About the name: I think monkeys are hilarious. And while there is a certain "In Chief" who is the real "Monkey In Chief" for generally looking and acting like a chimp while sending the country down the tubes, he has not claimed the name so I've taken it mostly for my own amusement.

Second order of business, I can't spell well. I tend to leave words out when I write. I don't have the time or the energy to proof these posts so that's just the way it is.

Now for my rant. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and make it a good income but it's impossible to find a decent place to live at anything approaching a reasonable price. I'd really prefer to buy something but $700,000 for a starter house in a decent area is insane and beyond my budget. I'm not willing to commute the hour plus each way to get a cheaper area. Though rental market is supposedly softer after the Internet bust, rents are still insane by the standards of anywhere else in the country except Manhattan.

What really pisses me off about all this is the houses in this area were mostly built in the early 1950's to be easily affordable on one blue collar income. These days is it's a stretch to buy a starter house on 2 professional incomes. When this real estate bubble bursts and all those who supported the insanity with their interest only loans are in deep shit, I'm not going to have sympathy for them