Who Yoo, what Yoo do?

Jesus Haploid Christ, how did anyone as dumb as John Yoo appears to be get through law school? The fact that he’s an unmitigated partisan hack shouldn’t factor into it, because, you know, law school.

Whether he’s right or wrong is almost irrelevant at this point, to be honest — given his history, he should be disbarred immediately, and then waterboarded every day until he says he’s sorry (and means it).

The comments are even more priceless, though — a bunch of bigots and no-mark NRO readers (but I repeat myself) opining on Constitutional law and the limits of the Presidency as if they knew anything; notably absent is any discussion of the years 2001 to 2009 or signing statements during that time. Funny, that; it’s almost as if NRO readers were hypocritical douchebags or something.

Via Zandar at B-J, who wrote a much better post than I did.

ETA: More via OTB where Doug Mataconis fails to carry as much Republican water as he usually does.

Yet more evidence that birtherism rots your brain

This time, it’s unlicensed “pastoral therapist” and crazypants blogger, Sam Sewell, who seems to think that this gives any law enforcement officer in the US the right to take a peek at Obama’s birth certificate. Yes, kids, you guessed it – it’s yet another “Any day now, this’ll be the thing that sinks the USURPERTRON!” moment (Usurpertron pictured at right, only $14.99 in all good local stores!).

Does the law say what Sam thinks? Sadly, no. The legislation refers to Haw. Rev. Stat. § 710-1000(13), which reads

(13) “Law enforcement officer” means any public servant, whether employed by the State or subdivisions thereof or by the United States, vested by law with a duty to maintain public order or, to make arrests for offenses or to enforce the criminal laws, whether that duty extends to all offenses or is limited to a specific class of offenses;

meaning Hawaiian or Federal law enforcement. Oops, Sam. You kind of made a booboo there.

Your second mistake, Mr Bond, was not actually reading beyond the part which tickled your fantasy; namely, that the PDF you linked to is not the law at present, so your whole post, while stupid, is also moot.

Meanwhile, in Wingnutopia…

… this is apparently what passes for a valid argument about the separation of church and state. Go ahead, read it; it’s not terribly long, or terribly hard to understand. Nor is it terribly well-argued – or indeed argued at all, other than via the equivalent of the numpty blogger sticking his fingers in his ears and screeching “Nyah nyah nyah I’m right because I say so leave me alone I CAN’T HEAR YOOOOOOOOOUUU!”.

A few points to consider:

1. Preambles are essentially non-operative introductions – in other words, they don’t mean shit about the separation of church and state.
2. The Supremacy Clause; if Federal law, the Constitution and case law say there is separation of church and state, there is. Need I say more? I think not, other than go suck it, wingnuts.
3. Finally, the idiot who wrote it tries to be clever, by saying that nowhere is Christian belief mandated, and promptly faceplants on the cold hard pavement of logic. If there is no mandate to impose Christianity, and Christianity is nowhere mentioned in the documents themselves, you have a constitution which is entirely secular in its operative parts; in other words, separation of church and state.

To summarise, Twilight’s Last Gleaming is run and read by people who couldn’t think their collective way out of a wet paperback with a map and a pair of scissors.

A reply to a right-wing musician

So SouthernConservativeMusician posted the following here:

WIll someone please tell me which page, or Amendment, or even a paragraph of the COnstitution the term “Separation of Church and State” is on?

I made a comment to it which I’m posting here because it might not make it through moderation, and also because I think it’s a good summary of the issues, even if I do say so myself!

This isn’t quite the gotcha question you seem to think.

The phrase “fair trial” appears nowhere in the Constitution or Bill of Rights; will you therefore assume that nobody is entitled to a fair trial? Of course not – the right to a fair trial is a reasonable description of the rights embodied in the 5th, 6th and 7th Amendments.

Similarly, while the phrase “Separation of Church and State” does not appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, in light of the facts that religious tests for office are prohibited and that Congress is prohibited from making laws pertaining specifically to religion, it is a reasonable interpretation.

Actually, that’s bullshit

Tarpon and many other birthers think that Natual-born Citizen means born to two citizen parents. This, birther folk, is bulshit; it’s something that Leo Donofrio created out of thin air a couple of years ago, based on a mistranslation of Vattel and a misapprehension of Vattel’s relative importance.

Natural-born has always meant a citizen from birth. Nothing more, nothing less; it’s not some kind of super citizen category. Your frightened little appeals to emotion about the children of foreign dictators and terrorists are simply a cloak to conceal a hefty dollop of racism and xenophobia.

This is the problem with the internet; on the one hand, it’s great because it allows everyone a voice, but on the other, it’s atrocious because it allows everyone a voice. It does nobody any good if you use your freedom of speech to tell lies and show how ignorant you are.

ETA: You can add this joker as well.

Oklazona!

Apparently, Oklahoma has decided that it’s fed up with up with Arizona’s repeated wins at the All-States Crazy Championships, and has decided to run with an illegal immigration bill of its very own. Look out for another Federal pre-emption lawsuit.

Illegal immigration bill allows arrest, seizure without warrant

OKLAHOMA CITY — A sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill that allows police to arrest people they suspect are in the country illegally and seize property used to commit immigration-related crimes has passed the Oklahoma Senate.

The Senate voted 29-15 on Wednesday for the bill over the objections of some members who say the plan is unconstitutional and would be detrimental to Oklahoma’s economy.

The bill authorizes law enforcement officers to arrest someone without a warrant, if the officer has “probable cause” to believe the person is in the country illegally.

It also allows police to seize property, like homes or vehicles, used to knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants.

Some members voiced concerns that farmers could risk losing their property and expensive equipment by hiring migrant workers.

It’s worth noting that the Oklahoma state Senate is currently Republican-dominated, and that the current composition is 32:16 in favour of them; the voting being 29:15 for the immigration bill suggests a straight party line vote. In light of that, it looks like Teahadism has infected the Oklahoma Senate; the fact that it’s plainly un-Constitutional might have deflected Republicans in times past, or at least made them think twice, but it doesn’t ever seem to bother the ‘baggers too much.

You know, for a bunch of people who claim to revere the Constitution so much, they sure as shit don’t seem to know much about it. You get the kind half-arsed of knowledge and interpretation from them which come from half-remembered civics lessons mixed with a huge dollop of knee-jerk anti-governmentalism, talk radio propraganda and just plain bigotry.

Give it a bit more of this, and Oklahoma will overtake Arizona; hell, a bit of more this, and it’ll overtake Texas. But the question is, is a race to the bottom the kind of race Oklahomans want to win?

Heh.

Via.

An Open Letter to Greg Goss

Dear Greg,

The answer to your question is “No”. You and Lakin are ignorant tools who don’t understand the law or the Constitution you seem to fetishize.

I’ll be clearer and break it down for you.

The Constitution specifies that only a natural-born citizen can be President. Every particle and iota of law relating to the subject states that a natural-born subject is one born a citizen. Pursuant to his valid Hawaii birth certificate, the President is a natural-born citizen.

The offence that Lakin is charged with if failure to report for movement. This order and its subsequent disobedience don’t relate to President Obama’s birthplace, so even if discovery could be ordered, it wouldn’t cover Obama’s birth certificate. Furthermore, even if Obama somehow were proved ineligible for the Presidency and Congress ordered his removal, Lakin would still be charged, because he failed to obey a valid order – not only is Obama not in his chain of command which gave the order, he’d also be a de facto officer – meaning that any official acts done by someone later found to be ineligible for an elected or appointed post remain in force. This doctrine is in place precisely to counter the kind of idiocy that Lakin is engaging in and which you are encouraging.

In short, you and Lakin both qualify for the title of ignoramus, and both of you should STFU before you embarrass yourselves any further.

Mike

P.S. Your commenters are fairly dumb too, although I’m not surprised; they’d have to be to agree with you.

lolwut

I was going to do a shorter of this post by noted birfoon mattie, but some posts just mock themselves, and besides, it’s pretty short already. My response is below the jump.

barry: birth announcement vs birth certificate

Birth certificate posts

Stop and think objectively for a moment.

Now answer me this:

How crazy is it to rely on 48 year-old untraceable as to who placed them or where exactly the information was obtained birth announcements when $20 buys 20 verifiable facts already vouched for by the ultimate authority?

A short burst of aarrgh

Following a comment I left on a blog elsewhere, I’m dragging myself out of my quiescent blogging state to throw a quick post down about the whole screaming over the so-called Slaughter Solution. Because I’m in that kind of mood, I’m going to throw reconciliation into the mix.

Before I start, though, I should point out that the blog I linked to in the first sentence is run by a guy who respects the right of others to hold opinions in opposition to his own, a rare quality in the modern American political sphere; this post is not directed at him, even if he is a little ornery about it… 😉

To everyone else screaming loudly that these measures will be the death of the democratic process in America – shut the fuck up already. It irks me that I have to be so blunt, but, well, sometimes that’s what you have to do.

The self-executing rule, otherwise known as deem and pass, has been in use since the 1930s, and has been relatively uncontroversial since that time, at least in the sense that it has been used broadly by both major parties when in power, and that court cases at the Federal District level have upheld it as a valid procedure.

In a stunning example of hypocrisy, though, many on the right are decrying the use of the rule and claiming it as some kind of new procedure invented by Democrats to cheat the legislative process. My only response is to ask, where were you the last year the Republicans controlled Congress, when the self-executing rule was used 35 times?

The same issue applies to the screeching and flapping over reconciliation. Budgetary reconciliation has been used umpteen times in Congresses controlled by Republicans and Democrats alike, with little or no fuss, and is established as a fully viable, Constitutional procedure – and yet here we are, with the right wing kicking up a whole mess of stupidity over the subject. And again, I ask, where were you when reconciliation was used to pass the massive and economically-debilitating tax cuts which are partly responsible for the current train wreck economy?

There’s a good argument to be made that the requirement of 60 votes for cloture in the Senate is an impediment to the smooth running of that chamber, that it makes for bad lawmaking and that it is not in the spirit of the Constitution’s allowance of each chamber to make its own rules; if I actually believed original intent were in fact a viable and non-risible means of Constitutional interpretation, I might run with it. As I don’t, I won’t. As it stands, though, the rules allow for a straight majority vote in the reconciliation process to allow budgetary bills to pass. Don’t like it? Tough – them’s the rules, and it’s Constitutionally allowed. Don’t piss and moan over it if you don’t like it – exercise your vote and tell your future Senators that you want a change to the rules.

I find it difficult to take seriously the idea that these purported defenders of the Constitution are somehow heroes of democracy and freedom and apple pie and non-aborted foetuses and flags and all that crap when they seem so ill-informed on the subject. You don’t get to claim the mantle of guardian of Constitutional liberties when you don’t know shit about it.