For those who miss the Dubya administration, Thomas Kidd of Baylor University is here to reimpose Texas values on us.  Kidd’s invasion from the Lone Star State comes in the form of an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post, “McDonnell’s Jeffersonian decision on public prayer”.

The Texan writes in praise of McDonnell’s action allowing Virginia state police chaplains in public, state-sponsored ceremonies to invoke the name of Jesus Christ – in direct violation of a 2008 US Court of Appeals court order banning this practice.  And Kidd has the nerve to make his case in the name of our favorite son, Thomas Jefferson.  He writes:

The court’s ruling was an unwarranted intrusion into Americans’ religious freedom, and it certainly was not the kind of restriction that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he drafted Virginia’s Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), or even when he wrote of a “wall of separation” between church and state. Jefferson and the other Founders meant to keep the government out of religion’s business, not to drive specific, “sectarian” religion out of the public sphere.

Since conservatives believe religiously in the “Original Intent” of the Founders, the fact that Jefferson didn’t mention police chaplains in the Statute “proves”, I guess, that this wasn’t what he had in mind.  While it is true, as Kidd writes, that Jefferson was trying to avoid having a state-funded and favored church, it is absurd to claim, as he does, that Jefferson thereby would have approved of all state-sponsored religious activity that falls short of such an establishment.  And Kidd provides no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim.

The fact is, though, that you don’t have to dig too far into the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in order to find language that could be used to argue vigorously against McDonnell’s decision.  In the preamble, the Statute talks of:

…the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others…

Sorry, but for a Jewish American like me, having my tax dollars pay for a state chaplain to ramble on about Jesus at a public ceremony is having someone else’s religion imposed on me – at my expense.  And, as Jefferson continues, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”  Amen, Brother TJ!

Kidd complains that avoiding sectarian religious references in public speech leads to a “kind of vacuous civil religion.”  Yes, but this misses the point that we have the entirety of our private lives to add the color to whatever religious paths we choose to follow.  The government is just an empty vessel to help establish a safe, healthy, open and free public space within which we have the opportunity to make a multitude of choices with others or on our own.  Why do we need the state taking sides and choosing theological winners and losers?  

The remarkable thing about the McDonnell/Cuccinelli Administration is how hard it is working to stick its nose in the places where government least belongs.  While General Cooch tries to impose his climate change conspiracy theories on our academic community, Governor Bob works to impose evangelical Christianity on the rest of us.  I can only respond by again quoting that great (not Texan but) Virginian:

Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. […] If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.

Pay attention, Virginians, before these wolves gobble up any more of our freedoms.

Del. David Englin (D-45) has some thoughts on Bob McDonnell’s appointment of Fred Malek (aka, “Sarah Palin’s leading defender”) to chair his new budget/government “reform” commission.

While I support the effort to create a top-level commission to recommend policies to reform government, it is deeply disturbing that Governor McDonnell would appoint as its chair Fred Malek, whose history in “reforming” government includes creating lists of Jews serving in government to track and remove from government service. Was there really no more qualified individual in Virginia to lead this panel? Has he done anything to disavow and make amends for his previous anti-Semitism? Otherwise, it’s one more slap in the face from McDonnell to Jewish state employees, coming right on the heels of allowing uniformed state police chaplains to proselytize to Jewish troopers and their families. These continued missteps from the McDonnell Administration are distractions from the competent and effective governing Virginians expect and deserve.

See NLS for more on this disturbing appointment.

UPDATE: Del. Adam Ebbin chimes in.

It is cause for profound concern that Governor McDonnell would appoint Fred Malek to head his Commission on Government Reform. Malek’s Nixon administration record of creating a list of Jews–with an eye towards removing them from public service–is still alarming today. There are certainly many capable Virginians who could assume this important position.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  

This video only speaks of a woman who widened the celebration of mothers.  But before Julia Ward Howe, there was Anne Reeves Jarvis.  In 1858 Anne Reeves Jarvis of Culpepper Virginia founded Mother’s Day to honor her own mother.  But Jarvis was no traditional woman (not that there’s anything wrong with that–I honor, today and always, all women’s choices). But while Jarvis did found Mother’s Day to honor her own mother, she had the country and the larger world in mind. Jarvis was, sorry, Glenn Beck, a community organizer and social activist.  In what is now West Virginia, she created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to work toward clean water and the reduction of infant mortality.  

Perhaps you’ll be surprised that what is now West Virginia became the first state to celebrate Mother’s Day.  In 1868 Anne Reeves Jarvis created a post-Civil War reconciliation event called Mother’s Friendship Day for those who fought on both sides of the Civil War. She wanted to “reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Grown men and women were said to have wept as those who had not spoken for years joined hands.  Family and friends who sometimes had been on opposite sides now had to find ways to move on.    

When Anne Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter carried on her effort.  Both women came to oppose the increasing commercialization of their movement. But it was for Julia Ward Howe to make Mother’s Day a more national celebration of what the real founder of mother’s day movement dreamed of.

1870 Julia Ward Howe founded Women’s Peace Day events . And in 1873 Howe’s conception of Mother’s Day took root.  Few today realize how women’s movement fore-mothers created this day with earnest hopes of peace.  I urge you to read Julia War Howe’s proclamation:

Mothers Day Proclamation – 1870

by Julia Ward Howe  

Arise then…women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace…

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And the earliest period consistent with its objects,

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

More information may be found at Julia’s Voice.

To the mothers out there, whether Democrat, Republican, Green, Independent, or Libertarian, in the spirit of our fore-mothers, I say: Happy Mother’s Day and …Peace.  

There are times when a person can become unhealthily obsessed with a new “love,” particularly one that promises to give you whatever you wish. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to be objective and look at a possible union with anything other than rose-colored glasses. Perhaps that explains why the unfolding catastrophe that is the BP Gulf oil spill hasn’t shaken Bob McDonnell’s love affair with the offshore oil industry that wants to “unite” with the Atlantic coast of Virginia.

McDonnell has returned to Richmond after his trip to pal around with oil and gas industry executives in Houston. “[The trip] just impressed upon me even more how enormously large this industry is, how many jobs and how much money is generated by offshore energy development,” McDonnell said, obviously enamored of his wealthy “suitor.”

(It’s pretty obvious that McDonnell wasn’t taken by his oily friends on a guided tour of the massive spill now spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and endangering fishing, shrimping, and tourist industries, as well as vital wildlife refuges.)

The governor aside, the prevailing attitude by Virginia’s politicians to the BP oil platform disaster and subsequent massive oil spill, for the most part, seems to be, “O.K., we need to pause and take stock of why this accident happened before we drill off Virginia’s Atlantic coast.” I would contend that there are other things we should be looking at as well, including whether the regulatory agency for such activities has been rehabilitated from its chronic corruption during the Bush oil-soaked presidency.

Sen Bill Nelson (D-FL) has called for an investigation of that agency, pointing out that it did not require BP to file a blowout plan when the company filed its exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig last year.  

Almost everyone will agree that the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency led to a free hand being given to many industries, including mineral extraction, to conduct their business with a minimum of oversight, a situation that was doubly true of the Bush-Cheney first love, the oil industry. An obscure agency of the Interior Department, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), is charged with regulating renewable energy, oil and gas extraction, and mineral resources, plus collecting royalties generated from such activities on federal lands, including offshore. It also oversees the health and safety regulation of offshore drilling. Amazingly, MMS allows oil producers and drilling contractors to voluntarily abide by a safety management program created by the oil industry trade group, the American Petroleum Institute.

During the Bush presidency, MMS was riddled with episodes of drug use, bribery, sex scandals and the gutting of effective oversight. Only since Secretary Ken Salazar took the helm at the Interior Department last year has an effort begun to rescue the agency from the abuses of the last decade, and it is far from over. I would argue that until the MMS is rehabilitated and genuine oversight can return to the industry, further offshore oil drilling anywhere should be on indefinite hold.

In 2008, the Interior Department inspector general, Earl Devaney, reported wrongdoing by a dozen employees of MMS. The accusations came as Congress was debating expansion of offshore drilling, including off the coast of Virginia.

Delaney termed the activity he uncovered a “culture of ethical failure.” One high-ranking bureaucrat was charged with steering a consulting contract to a retiring aide, violating rules for competitive bids. Delaney’s report also said that eight officials in the royalty program accepted expensive gifts from energy companies, including golf and ski vacations, meals and drinks, and tickets to concerts and professional sports games.

The investigation uncovered instances when officials consumed excessive alcohol at industry functions, used recreational drugs at such events, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas industry representatives. The scandal further included collecting inadequate royalties from oil companies. (I suspect that those gifts and sexual favors just may have contributed to that, don’t you?)

Robert Kennedy, Jr. has traced the start of the systematic corruption at MMS to Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret meetings in 2001 with over 100 oil industry officials,  allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands. Those meeting were followed by the re-staffing of  the Minerals Management Service with industry-friendly bureaucrats.

“In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches [on off-shore oil rigs]…’because they tend to be very costly,’ ” Kennedy said.

Acoustic switches are remotely triggered dead man’s switches that might well have been able to close off the BP oil leak at the sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed after the platform explosion and fire. (Indeed, it may be that the operator responsible for the manual cutoff switch may have died in the initial explosion on the platform.)  Acoustic switches are required for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway’s North Sea. In fact, BP uses the device elsewhere in the North Sea and in other parts of the world, as do Shell and France’s Total. In 2000, before the Bush administration gutted the agency, the Minerals Management Service called acoustic switches “essential” and proposed rules to mandate them on all offshore platforms.

So, we have yet another horrible example of why deregulation – whether of financial systems or industry – ultimately courts human disaster and environmental devastation.  

Kennedy points out, as well, that BP skirted proper drilling by failing to install a deep hole shut off valve, “another fail-safe that might have averted the spill.” And, BP’s negligence may have been compounded by Cheney’s old company, Halliburton.

The Gulf accident occurred shortly after Halliburton completed an operation to reinforce the platform’s drilling hole casing with concrete slurry. This is a difficult process that, according Kennedy, can trigger catastrophic blowouts if not performed well. Right now, Halliburton is under investigation by the Australian government for a huge blowout in the Timor Sea in 2005 that appears to have been caused by faulty concrete work.

So, Bob McDonnell notwithstanding, let’s pause for a very, very long time before we take a chance on despoiling our coastline for royalty income that, at present, isn’t even available to Virginia by law. Perhaps, we will come to the obvious conclusion that the best exploitation of our off-shore resources would be wind farms. I haven’t heard yet of a “wind spill” from a wind farm destroying the environment.  

is the topic of an important op ed in today’s Washington Post.  David Cole is a professor at Georgetown Law, and today he offers Bill to expatriate those who support terrorists more symbol than substance.  It is of course his response to the idiotic proposal by Joe Lieberman, Scott Brown and others to strip American citizenship from those who provide material support for terrorism.  

Cole is on the left of legal thoughts.  Disclosure:  I have once been a guest in his home more almost two decades ago when he hosted a Tikkun magazine salon which featured Rabbi Michael Lerner.  At that time Cole told me he was an adherent of Critical Legal Studies.   Having said that, and also acknowledged that I am not a lawyer, I found his op ed both useful and troubling, which is why I both urge you to read and ponder his words, and invite you to explore my reaction to the issues he raises.

Cole notes that Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have at least in principle given support to the idea.   He also writes

Lieberman argued while introducing the bill that “those who join such groups [as al-Qaeda and the Taliban] join our enemy and should be deprived of the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship.”

.  And yet there are problems with the proposed legislation on this point, for as he also notes

In fact, the bill does not expatriate those who join al-Qaeda or provide it with “material support” — because it cannot. U.S. law once made the commission of certain acts — such as taking citizenship in another country or joining another nation’s military — automatic grounds for losing one’s citizenship. But the Supreme Court ruled in Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967 and Vance v. Terrazas in 1980 that citizenship cannot be taken from individuals against their will — no matter how heinously or treasonously they act.

 Cole offers us the legal reasoning of those earlier decisions, that citizenship is a constitutional right, which like other constitutional rights cannot be taken away – citizens must “knowingly, volountarily, and intentionally” waive such rights, including citizenship, and since those two decisions that has been the standard, with Cole further adding

Indeed, courts have ruled that even going into a U.S. Embassy and signing papers renouncing citizenship is insufficient to lead to expatriation if the citizen acted out of economic pressure or was insufficiently informed of the consequences of these actions.

Cole also reminds us that the expatriation statute was amended by the Congress in 1986 to be in conformity with those decisions, with the effect that

one does not lose citizenship by joining a foreign country’s army — unless one does so with the express purpose of renouncing citizenship.

The language of Lieberman’s proposed statute would have little effect on this standard, absent the clear intent.  And I might add that one who in joining a foreign army took up arms directly against the US is already subject to prosecution for treason, conviction of which can already lead to expatriation / loss of one’s citizenship.

I want to explore the bit on joining foreign militaries.  My memory may be fading as I approach my 64th birthday, but I have clear memories of problems for some in the 1960s and even into the 1970s of problems for people of certain national origins, or in some cases, even descent (a parent born in that country even if the young man was born in the US).  Those countries, France and Greece in particular, claimed the right to draft such men into their armies even if they had obtained (or in the case of one born in the US of non-citizen parents opted for) US Citizenship.  There were risks for draft age men traveling to those nations, because they could find themselves involuntarily inducted into a foreign military.  Clearly the import of the 1986 revision to the expatriation statute offers some protection of their American citizenship.  And if it does, what if one were involuntarily or unknowingly involved with a terrorist organization, with no intent of surrendering one’s citizenship or directly taking up arms against the US?  For me that is one problem with the broad reach of Lieberman’s proposal.

What troubles me more is another part of the column, on which I want to shine a bright light.  

In a pending Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the government has taken the position that the “material support” ban — already a part of our criminal law but not a basis for expatriation — is so broad that it makes it a crime to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, to lobby Congress, to teach human rights or to write an op-ed piece, so long as it is done with or for a designated group. Should we be expatriating people for engaging in political speech simply because we don’t approve of those with or for whom they are speaking?

Let me step back a bit.  I want to go back to the previous administration, when the US Senate passed the Military Commissions Act.  I wrote about it in September of 2006, in What I told my students yesterday, from which I want to quote the following – please bear with my on the length:  

Of course I described the provisions of the Bill.  I tried to give them an example which would bring it home.  I noted for those of my students who are not citizens (we have many in our school) it would not matter were they taken into custody in the United States, that they could be referred to the military tribunals.  I explained how the legal “protections” built in to the legislation could be suspended by the president at his discretion – I tried to illustrate this by the example of a policeman whom the law prohibits from beating a confession out of you  having the power to decide it is important enough so is able to beat you with impunity.

I then used myself as an example.  I described the diary I posted yesterday.  I noted how widely read it was.  I asked rhetorically if it was protected by the First Amendment.  I noted that I had disclosed neither military secrets nor intelligence sources, methods or identifies of assets, because I knew none.  I had not advocated violent overthrow of the US Government nor urged violence against the president.  Normally one would say that what I had written was protected speech.

But the top two leaders of Al Qaeda both know English (bin Laden has talked with people in English in the past, and knew it as university in Saudi Arabia).    Suppose hypothetically they were surfing the net and encountered my diary, and in the next tape they released they quoted something from me affirmatively.    Would that qualify me as an illegal enemy combatant, even though I never met them, and had never left the US, and was a US citizen?  My answer was that given this legislation I did not know, because this legislation gives the president authority with no oversight from anyone to make such a determination.

I was as blunt as I could be.  I pointed out that there I could not understand how senators who believed that parts of the legislation were clearly unconstitutional could nevertheless vote for the bill and hope the courts would fix the problems.  I raised the issue of having standing to get the issue before the courts.  I noted that I had lived through McCarthyism, Watergate and Iran Contra, and considered this legislation potentially the greatest threat to our constitutional liberties in my lifetime.  

I told the students that they might feel that I was only saying this because I had opposed Bush in both elections and also opposed our actions in Iraq.  I acknowledged that such a reaction had some cogency.  But then I asked that if they were willing to give Bush this authority whether they would be willing to give the same authority to a President Clinton, Bill or Hillary.   If they were, then I would grant there was intellectual consistency to their position, and while I disagreed I would respect our differences.  For my part, I would not give such authority to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Let me now return to what I have just quoted from Cole.  That this administration would support such an argument before the Supreme Court horrifies me.  It in fact comes close to pushing me away from further support of this administration on any topic, because this is so basic.  I remember a candidate informing us that he knew the Constitution, had taught the Constitution, and would follow the Constitution.  At least in principle the line of argument the government is supporting in that case seems to abandon the principles of the Constitution.  And that is simply not acceptable to me.  I think I made that fairly clear in my diary a few days back (the title of which some objected to), I am a fundamentalist.  To me the Constitution – especially the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment – make clear the intent of limiting the reach of governments (state and local as well as federal) to interfere with our basic rights, which include the ability to criticize the government.  We banned bills of attainder – before we punish we are supposed to give due process of law.  Holding someone indefinitely with no court-based determination of the basis for that detention seems a clear violation both of habeas corpus and the due process clauses, the latter making clear that one cannot be denied liberty without due process.

I noted in that recent diary the Constitutional emphasis not on citizens, but on persons, something of which I was reminded when reading this from Cole:

It is true that under a 2009 law, only noncitizens may be tried in military tribunals. But that distinction, many experts argue, renders the untested military tribunal law itself unconstitutional. There is no legitimate justification for selectively subjecting noncitizens to substandard criminal process — citizen terrorists pose as much a threat as do noncitizen terrorists, and both are guaranteed the same constitutional rights in the criminal process, military or otherwise.

Cole describes Lieberman’s and parallel proposals as political grandstanding, even as he acknowledges the need for “thoughtful reform of our security practices.”  Here I might part company with the law professor.  I am willing to grant the need for thoughtful and careful examination of our security practices, but absent that I am unwilling to commit to the proposition that they need to be changed, because that seems to cede the framing of the argument to the likes of Lieberman.  

I have multiple times made clear my great unhappiness with the Obama administration on the issue that includes my profession, education.  As unhappy as I am with Duncan and the President on educational issues, that would be insufficient for me to walk away from overall support of the administration.

On civil liberties, on the principles of the Constitution, that is another matter.  These are not negotiable, not for me.  Some criticized me for my describing the Constitution as “sacred words” arguing that the combination of the adjective sacred with the term fundamentalist somehow moved me into religious territory.  I disagree.  I used fundamentalist in the sense of being committed to something basic and fundamental, which is what the Constitution is for me.  And the word sacred was used in the sense it was used by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who pledged “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.”

That is why on Wednesday I wrote this:  

There can be no justification for violating these sacred words, these words which should be what bind us together, in common.

It should be to these words that we pledge our allegiance.

We are told The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution

And our chief executive, to take office, swears or affirms that he will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States

He cannot violate the words and be faithful to that oath.

And we cannot justify or rationalize abrogating the reach of these words – and the many more I did not repeat – because we claim some higher goal.  When we place individual judgment or loyalty against the only thing that defines us and binds us together, we are lost.  We might think otherwise, but then we are lost.

This is not negotiable.  You cannot do other than the requirements of these words and be loyal to the oaths of office.  You do not have our permission, which would be required, because We the People of the United States. . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution should bind the government.  It cannot be modified by a statute contrary to its principles.  John Marshall made that clear in his opinion in Marbury v Madison when he wrote this:

To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing; if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. 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.

from which let me emphasize Marshall’s contention that if the Constitution can be altered by ordinary legislative act  then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

But we do not give that power, either to legislatures or to executives, theories about the unitary executive and the power of the Commander in Chief during a time of war notwithstanding.  

Marshall also concludes

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

Perhaps I worry too much about slippery slopes?  Perhaps some might argue that they are attempting to faithful to the Constitution while addressing the needs of the moment, and might even quote Justice Robert Jackson to the effect that after all the Constitution is not a suicide pact.  But if they take that approach, they clearly can no longer claim that they are interpreting the Constitution strictly, that they are functioning with an “originalist” mindset.  

I do not want to quibble about legal theories.  

I want to do far more than quibble about the basic matters of Constitutional rights.

One purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, to get the target of the terrorist action to be afraid, to change how they live and act.

There is no change more basic the the limitations of governmental power imposed by the protection of rights clearly delineated in the Constitution as amended.  

Citizenship is clearly defined in the 14th Amendment, in part in reaction to the refusal of former states of the Confederacy in recognizing the citizenship of those freed by the 13th Amendment.  

Congress can define, as it has, the punishment for treason, which can and does include stripping of citizenship.   But the Constitution also makes clear that there can be no conviction of treason absent a confession IN OPEN COURT or upon the testimony of two witnesses.  It bans bills of attainder, and empowering a government official to strip citizenship of someone who has neither been convicted of treason nor voluntarily and knowingly and deliberately surrendering citizenship is in my mind a clear bill of attainder, a legislative action imposing a severe punishment.  

Someone can be a mass murderer, convicted in court, sentenced to death and executed.  No where in our criminal statutes does that person, if a natural born citizen, lose his citizenship.  We might accept that a felony conviction  could lead to removing the citizenship of a naturalized citizen, except I think a clear case can me made that except for dishonesty in the process of obtaining naturalization one runs into the same constitutional barrier, that the Constitution allows few distinctions between those who have citizenship and those who do not, and only one distinction between natural born and naturalized, that being eligibility for the office of President (and by the requirements of the 12th Amendment the office of Vice President).  

Terrorism can be horrible.  So can the kinds of financial actions done by the likes of Enron, whether or not they are found to be violations of law.  

Terrorism is does not just originate overseas.  We have our Eric Rudolphs and our Timothy McVeighs.  As I would no more deny them their constitutional rights, nor would I deny those from other nations, because they are persons.

If we as a nation insist that the reach of our criminal law extends to acts against our nation, its interests, and its citizens that occur outside our borders, then concomitant with that must be the proposition that we can only extend the entirety of our criminal justice system, meaning that those being accused under US law must have the rights guaranteed under US law.  

I am not a lawyer.  I am well aware of a history of Constitutional interpretation that seeks to parse exceptions in order to achieve specific immediate goals.  Justices are human, subject to human frailty.

And yet, the Constitution does not begin “We the Justices” or even “We the Lawyers.”  Rather, it begins We the People of the United States.   If the document is not one that the people can understand, how can it be their creation?  Is not that why we require students in our public schools to teach that document, as I am required to do as a teacher of Government?  To what end do I teach that document if people can, for political or other reasons, choose to ignore its most basic – or if you will, sacred – principles, starting with the idea that a Constitution exists to limit the power of government, that the government(s) are specifically prohibited from interfering with rights of the people, some of which are enumerated others of which are implied (in the 9th Amendment).  

Obviously I have little respect for what Lieberman is attempting to do.  I am horrified to see an administration whose election I supported taking legal positions that are even worse.   By the rationale it is seemingly taking in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project by writing and posting this diary I could be accused of giving material support to terrorists.

Beyond any personal legal jeopardy I might face, I find that position totally unacceptable.  In advocating it the administration has given terrorists a victory they could not achieve with their attempts at mass murder, an abandonment of the principles on which this country was founded.

That one is accused of a crime, including those we might define as terrorism, does not allow the government to abrogate the rights to which any accused is entitled.  That should not be negotiable.  It can not be acceptable and let those who so argue still maintain that they are operating within the constitutional framework that they are abandoning and even undermining.

I teach government. At this point our focus is preparation for the mandated state test on May 20th.  Yet that is less important than my students understanding what may be at risk.  Which I why I know I will have to address this issue, with all my students, as I did in 2006.

It is also why, despite much else on my plate right now, I have taken the time to write and post this, even as I know it is too rambling, probably not titled attractively enough to draw much attention.  I feel a moral obligation to speak out.  I only wish I had sufficient power of words to make this a clarion call.  I can hope that perhaps someone having that gift who encounters these words can find a more effective way of communicating the importance of this issue.

Peace.

The Washington Post reports the 31 members of Bob McDonnell’s new “Governor’s Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring,” including the commission’s chairman.

It is that sense of loyalty that has led [Fred] Malek, a prominent Republican rainmaker, to emerge as the leading defender of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the wake of the 2008 election where she served as the party’s vice presidential nominee.

Palin’s surprise resignation last week has made Malek a wanted man — one of a coveted few in Washington who have a relationship with the Alaska governor.

Wonderful. Oh, and there’s also that little “Jewish cabal” controversy from Malek’s days in the Nixon Administration. Other than that, Malek’s a great pick to head this commission!

But wait, there’s more.  The next person on the list is Alexandra Liddy Bourne, Executive Director of the American Energy Freedom Center.

George Allen recently announced the formation of the American Energy Freedom Center, a project of the Institute for Energy Research, yet another group attempting to fight efforts to stop the climate crisis with connections to Exxon.

[…]

Almost 10% of the Institute for Energy Research’s 2007 budget was provided by ExxonMobil. In 2007, ExxonMobil donated $95,000 of the $988,980 received by the Institute for Energy Research…

In June 2009, Bourne, “in her personal capacity as a nurse, took EPA to task for failing to identify any specific evidence of morbidity and other health risks linked to greenhouse gas emissions.”  Uh, you mean “health risks” like destroying the planet’s environment?  Oh wait, I almost forgot, people like Bourne and others at the far-right wing Heartland Institute don’t “believe” in climate change science.  Was Bourne a Kookinelli recommendation, or did McDonnell come up with her all by himself?

A couple more fine members of McDonnell’s budget commission include:

*Our old pal Benjamin “Benedict” Lambert, a supposed Democrat who infamously endorsed George Allen over Jim Webb in 2006.  Thankfully, Donald McEachin trounced Benedict in the June 2007 primary.

*Senator Mark Obenshain, by all accounts one of the craziest, most extreme right-wing members of the Virginia General Assembly. Last we saw him, he was ranting about the “North American Man-Boy Love Association,” and Rachel Maddow was calling him out for “stoop[ing] to a pedophilia argument in a debate over McEachin’s civil rights bill.”

I can’t wait to see what this commission comes up with!