PA State Sen. Eichelberger: "We're allowing them to exist."

From John Morgan at The Pennsylvania Progressive:

"State Senator John Eichelberger says 'we're allowing [gay and lesbian couples] to exist' in a recent radio debate. Today twenty of us confronted him with petitions asking for an apology and he steadfastly refused and ducked behind security so as not to answer questions. The story with video: http://tiny.cc/DFCXI

"This is an important story we need to get viral. This is as outrageous a homophobic statement as anyone can say. He implies he and the state also have the right to deny our existence. Sen. Eichelberger has introduced legislation writing discrimination into the state constitution by denying the right to marriage and equal rights for GLBT people."

Pretty rad. I'm intrigued. Who's "we"? The PA House? The PA Legislature? The Far Right in PA? In the USA? "We" hets? Who? Exactly who does he mean when he says "We're allowing [gays and lesbians] to exist"? I mean, I think I have a right to know. I do have a pretty big dawg in this fight.

I want to know, because I've long taken seriously the fact that the US Constitution applies to me. Whatever else I am, I am an American. I have certain inalienable rights. Until and unless I am convicted of a felony, I have all the rights enumerated in and implied by the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights.

Predicating this argument on my queerness evades the core point that I am an American. Still more fundamentally, most fundamentally, it evades the core point that I am a human being.

Force a shift in this argument. This isn't about whom I love. This is about who I am.

Seen in that inescapable light, Senator Eichelberger's comment becomes, "we're allowing her to exist." This is both a direct existential threat and an act of treason against the United States Constitution. It is both an implicit promise of violent extermination if his mood changes, and a violation of the one set of principles that makes an American an American.

The reality is that we're allowing Eichelberger to govern. That's profoundly disturbing.

Grab Bag

Weather Underground Prosecuter Bashes McCain Campaign
From Church of What's Happening Now:

"In a letter to the New York Times on Friday, the lead prosecutor of the Weather Underground "Weathermen" in the early 1970's, William Ibershof, expresses outrage and amazement at the efforts to link Barack Obama to William Ayer's former criminal activities."

He would know.

More on [Disgusting] For-Profit Immigrant Detention Centers
From Facing South, more about the profoundly disturbing GOP-driven practice of profiteering on immigrant detention:

"We've been hearing horror stories about detainees being put into prison with other criminals when all they have done is be here without documentation. Our goal is to keep them safe," Spates said. "But I want to be honest with you. We do stand to gain financially from this."

During a public meeting in Farmville [VA], ICA spokesperson Ken Newsome projected that at 85 percent capacity the facility will generate $322,000 annually in fees for the city in addition to an estimated $450,000 in tax revenue for Farmville and Prince Edward County. According to the Washington Post, if the facility does run at the projected capacity, ICA stands to gross $20 million in federal tax dollars annually.

Privately-run immigrant detention centers of this type have been plagued by scandal, lawsuits and controversy. The private-prison watchdog group Grassroots Leadership has documented a pattern of abuses. They cite examples including a center in Elizabeth, N.J. that was shut down temporarily when immigrants were awarded $2.5 million in damages after an investigation showed that poorly trained guards served rotting food and physically and mentally abused prisoners. ICE turned the facility over to Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), despite this group also having a documented history of abuses in its facilities. In March of last year, nearly 1,000 immigrant prisoners in the 1,500-bed facility run by CCA in Lumpkin, Ga. went on a hunger strike protesting conditions including lack of medical care.

Private companies like ICA [the start-up in question] profit from inefficiency in the immigrant detention system. A recent article by the Washington Post documents immigrants languishing in ICE custody for months even after signing a voluntary deportation order. This means more days of space "purchased" from companies like ICA at taxpayer expense.

The demand for these spaces is at an all-time high with the recent increase in ICE raids, and all indications are that it will continue to rise. Under the Secure Communities plan, ICE will be expanding enforcement efforts and initiating deportation proceedings against any noncitizen, documented or not, who is arrested.

Viable alternatives to immigrant incarceration do exist at a fraction of the cost. With their Appearance Assistance Program, the Vera Institute for Justice achieved a 93 percent appearance rate in court including final appearances at a cost of $12 a day. ICA's $63 dollar per day rate is at the low end of the range of per diem charges in the region where Alexandria tops the list at $113 daily.

Can anybody miss noticing the direction of incentives here? That's one of the two main things wrong with private, for-profit prisons. The other is the authority/legitimacy thing. If you'll pardon a stretched comparison, they're kind of like political churches. There's no way to know for sure who's talking. [Emphasis added throughout. Please see original for significant links.]

Was Civil Rights Hero Rep. John Lewis Wrong?
Not "No." "Hell no!" One of the clearest signs that Palin isn't qualified is her blissful recklessness. Apart from the fact that her kind of "otherizing" points to her fascistic inclinations and her hypocrisy to her struggle to cover it up, this kind of thing--equating Obama with terrorists--is nothing if not inciting the crowds to a level of rage that she can't control even if she wanted to. When a guy like John Lewis speaks of the dangers of mob violence, people should sit down, shut up, and listen.

Those were hideously dangerous times. They were days of rage built up, on the Right, by decades of racism and by escalated terrors of Communism evoked by Kruschev, Castro, and Joe McCarthy, and on the Left, by waves of protest against a culture twisted by a myriad inequalities, an insatiable lust for violence, and out-of-control materialism.

We still haven't gotten over the 1960s. But today, ten factors in addition to racism and the spectre of a foreign devil are at work. The first is the resentment borne of the whole of the Vietnam experience--the war, the results, and the return. The second is an intentional 30-year secular and religious media campaign devoted to demonizing the Left. The third is the politics of Lee Atwater brought to full fruition by Karl Rove and the swiftboaters, and the resulting rage. The fourth is an extreme, highly politicized Christianist Right active in politics and zealous in creating a theocratic society in the name of Jesus. The fifth is the economic crash and the desperation that has created nationally, especially among the poorest and least educated. The sixth is the systematic outsourcing of working class and middle class jobs. The seventh is a privatized military and privatized, for-profit prisons that depend for their daily bread on a steady crop of "criminals." The eighth is the so-called "Patriot Acts" and "legalized" domestic espionage, dedicated to providing them. The ninth is a systematic attack on the idea of education and on public schools, resulting in a less educated population less capable of navigating change and challenge. The tenth is the unparalleled speed with which today's news and disinformation travel, and the closely related capacity for organizing bestowed by the Internet.

Arguably, today's environment is much more volatile, and the people much more divided, than in the 1960s. I was there then, too, and I think it is worse today. It's just different now: It's a systematized, establishment fascism today threatening chaos from the top down. That's way scarier than a rag-tag bottom-up movement of peaceful pro-Constitution activists.

What the Founding Fathers Believed?

Let's take this discussion about how any genuine (constitutional) American can be a rightwinger one bite at a time, for clarity and sanity's sake.

Responding to my post asking that question, Rightwing Reader (RWR) said this:

"Ok I'll bite. We obviously have very different views of what the founding fathers believed. For instance, they did not advocate for gay marriage, comprehensive welfare, social security, lack of personal responsibility, unions controlling schools, abortion, flag burning, open borders, experimentation with embryos, euthanasia, high taxes and a slew of other things. The reason I am conservative is that I believe in what they believed, staring with the right to LIFE, then liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

OK. Groundrules: We will remain civil and we will provide citations for assertions of fact. These are the rules, because without civility and without a solid and shared set of data, we'll soon end up in a hailstorm of useless accusations that harden the divide.

RWR, let me clear up a couple of things from the get-go. I didn't address "what the founding fathers believed" for good reasons (see following). I discussed the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, no. We don't disagree about "what the founding fathers believed." We do disagree on appropriate policy for a variety of problems, and I disagree with your presentation of (I suppose you'd say) liberal positions. That said, it's not my intent or mission to change your mind about social policy.

Your comment about "what the founding fathers believed" is based on this assumption: that it can be proved that somewhere, at some time, all the founders expressed unanimous agreement on how to resolve all the issues addressed in the Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments, and the Bill of Rights, and on how the words in all these documents were to be interpreted forevermore. This is the conservative doctrine of "original intent." Debate about "original intent" has been with us from Day 1. It's not a new invention.

The facts are these: (1) The founders did not officially preserve the proceedings leading up to ratification. This is a matter of record. That's mighty odd if they actually universally "believed" their "intent" mattered even greatly, let alone more than anything.

(2) Madison, who is to conservatives what Jefferson is to progressives, and one of the greatest of the brilliant minds of the period, actually "subordinated original intent to other considerations, as when he said that the sense of the Constitution would be found 'in the proceedings of the Convention, the contemporary expositions, and, above all, in the ratifying conventions of the States.'" (Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution. Leonard Levy. McMillan, 1988. Pp. 5-29.)

Note well: For the greatest conservative mind of that era (and possibly since), the drafters themselves were not important. What counted were the RATIFIERS: the conventions of the States themselves. The reason is clear: it is the will of The People, as expressed in the acts of ratification, that makes these documents sacred to Americans.

Madison is also on record repeatedly noting that the meaning of the Constitution would emerge in discussions of The People over time. (Ibid., 21) He wasn't thrilled about that, but he knew that such is the nature of human language, life, and experience. This means that to Madison, The People are the "founding fathers." If you think--or think Madison thought--that The People agree on anything always and forever--possess original intent, we'll, we'll have to disagree.

[Correction: I had inadvertently left in the word "didn't" in this sentence when I originally posted it. It has now been deleted.] As to change, these brilliant men clearly did realize that the future would bring changes in technology, circumstance, science, common attitudes, etc., that would affect how The People would interpret the founding documents. Because they realized that, it seems clear that they also realized that the founding documents would necessarily be interpreted differently over time, in light of new circumstances affecting The People. Surely that's not arguable.

So: We know for a fact that the only things the founders agreed on was to sign the documents they drafted and to present them for ratification. Even then, many had reservations, which we know based on their letters and other writings. This is a matter of record, but for proof, I cite The Federalist Papers and also The Anti-Federalist Papers. There was wide disagreement even about ratification!

What they wrote about what they believed and thought (two different things, mind you) was sometimes unclear and confusing, as was how they lived their lives. Moreover, many of them are inconsistent between their writings and how they lived. Which of those would you say should prevail in an attempt to prove "what the founders believed"? Contradition, confusion, lack of consistency: Not surprising. They were human beings. To seek crystalline clarity and unanimity among them is to be bitterly disappointed.

What is significant is that they set aside their disagreements and reservations in order to sign the consensus draft Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments of their day, and the Bill of Rights and forward them for ratification. Therefore, these ratified consensus documents are what matter. Their personal "beliefs," other writings, and the history leading up to the ratification are interesting but can never provide the ultimate absolute unanimity and clarity that you imply.

The entire subsequent course of US law and legal theory is proof of that. It contains countless references to their disputes.

Some even warned us directly that their personal beliefs are irrelevant.

So, RWR, if you can point to the unanimous "founders' beliefs" document, signed and dated, of course, showing universal agreement on how all the words in all the core documents are to be interpreted, please do. Otherwise, refrain from basing your argument on the myth of what the founders believed. Because it is clear that whatever you or I say on that subject is only our personal interpretation based on what they wrote and didn't write. And my friend, as an American, my interpretation is as valid as yours.

Speaking both practically and philosophically, it doesn't matter what they believed. All that matters is what We The People joined together to ratify for posterity: The Declaration, the Constitution, its Amendments, and the Bill of Rights.

"What the founders believed"? Since there's universal disagreement among the founders, the concept is misleading from the get-go. Ever since the core documents were signed, there's been disagreement among Americans about their interpretation. That, alone, proves that they are living documents whether we like it or not. We continue to argue them because we are free, and because we too disagree on best courses of action for all these weighty matters. As long as we're humans, it can't be otherwise.

I submit that you and I disagree on how to argue them as well as on what the outcomes ought to be.

Why Would Any Genuine American Ever be a Rightwinger?

Yesterday's B-and-F with Rightwing Reader (see comments) reminds me of something I've been meaning to blog about for some time: What makes the average American take a hard-right turn?

All of us Americans grew up breathing the same constitutional air, with the same Bill of Rights, and the same cultural stories (I use the word in its large sense)about what America stands for, didn't we?

We are the Land of the Free. We're innately suspicious of government. We originated because of governmental abuse. We don't cotton to domestic spying, which we associate with Red Square and the KGB. That stuff's for the UN-free. Americans won't tolerate it. Freedom belongs to all Americans. It's our birthright.

All men are created equal. We know "men" means "people." All Americans are created equal. Well, OK, we might not be perfect, but we'll get there eventually because of our long tradition of believing that God created us all in God's image.

We have three branches of government because we don't want a king, we know that legislators make mistakes, and we need judges to balance laws against the intent of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have 230+ years of legal tradition about what all that means. The idea that judges shouldn't play that role is anathema. It's why we created the judiciary as equal to the executive and the legislative.

We have freedom of religion. Quakers, Catholics, Baptists, and all the rest came here partly to get away from somebody else's idea of what religion ought to be. The last thing we want is an official state religion, because we know where that goes. Besides, no real American would tolerate anybody telling him or her what to think or what to believe.

Now, all this, and much more, is bred in the bone of Americans. So what can possibly cause an American, of all people, to turn his or her back on our founding values?

And more mystifying than that, what make any American think that today's generations--unfamiliar as we are with state oppression, inexperienced as we are in the reality of a state religion, innocent as we generally are (so far) of applied star chambers, domestic detention centers, systematic domestic spying, and genuine authoritarian rule--think for a second that we are wiser than the founders? Our founders experienced all these things, and for that reason, wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that have sustained us so well all these years. Our experience, and our education, are paltry compared with theirs. It's hard to imagine that we could do better at governing than they did.

I'm all ears. What offense in the last forty years was so great that it even conceivably justifies a revolution--think a 180-degree revolution--in the meaning of America? I'd really like to know.

More About David Addington Here

If you don't know who David Addington is or what he does, you really need to get your head out. The New Yorker has a fascinating profile here. It begins thus:

On December 18th, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, joined other prominent Washington figures at FedEx Field, the Redskins’ stadium, in a skybox belonging to the team’s owner. During the game, between the Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, Powell spoke of a recent report in the Times which revealed that President Bush, in his pursuit of terrorists, had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by federal law. This requirement, which was instituted by Congress in 1978, after the Watergate scandal, was designed to protect civil liberties and curb abuses of executive power, such as Nixon’s secret monitoring of political opponents and the F.B.I.’s eavesdropping on Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon had claimed that as President he had the “inherent authority” to spy on people his Administration deemed enemies, such as the anti-Vietnam War activist Daniel Ellsberg. Both Nixon and the institution of the Presidency had paid a high price for this assumption. But, according to the Times, since 2002 the legal checks that Congress constructed to insure that no President would repeat Nixon’s actions had been secretly ignored.

According to someone who knows Powell, his comment about the article was terse. “It’s Addington,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.” Powell was referring to David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and his longtime principal legal adviser. [emphasis added]

So, when a VP who is sworn to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution instead hires and faithfully follows the thinking of a man who hates, ignores, and undermines the Constitution, do we have an impeachable offense? Inquiring minds want to know.

Seriously, Americans are as dumb as a box of paper clips.

AZ's GOP and The Constitution: Oil and Water?

Over at PolitickerAZ is the continuing report of a survey of AZ CD5 Republican primary candidates' views on burning issues of the day.

Now that I've read it, I realize once again that I can't look to Republicans like Susan Bitter Smith and Mark Anderson (or John McCain) to consult the founding documents for guidance on how a true American should resolve a controversial question like gay marriage.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--and the blood shed to sanctify them--established our Republic. Only they define what it means to be an American. Therefore, patriotic Americans don’t just wear flags on their lapels. They swear allegiance to these founding principles, and solemnly promise to uphold, protect, and defend them.

The Declaration begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Constitution and Bill of Rights reaffirm these distinctively American principles.

There it is, in plain English. Every American knows from first grade that (1) it is self evident (2) that ALL of us have (3) God-given rights that (4) no one can sever from us for any reason. Although we can forfeit these rights by committing certain felony offenses, they cannot be arbitrarily taken away. This means that I have exactly the same right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that any other American has, whether they agree or not.

If you are a patriotic American, you don’t just give this lip service. You are sworn to uphold my rights just as I am sworn to uphold yours. Further, if you are a patriotic American, you have sworn your allegiance to the conviction that your religion does not trump mine. You have sworn to uphold, protect, and defend my rights as if they were your own.

I have seen Democrats assert these values proudly, and I have also seen Democrats trample them. But in all my 60 years, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a single Republican assert these views in order to defend somebody else’s freedoms.

Surely I'm mistaken, but it certainly seems not. It’s been just the opposite. Republicans truly seem to have an in-the-grain antipathy to the concept that all of us have equal unalienable rights. Instead of affirming that, time and again they seek to limit it—-as in proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage--or undermine it altogether, as in specious “strict construction” and “judicial activism” arguments.

I’ve never understood this, and I want to know.

What is there in the Republican psychology or political philosophy that doesn’t accept, let alone revere, this primary affirmation that makes an American an American?

I’d like to hear Susan Bitter Smith and Mark Anderson and John McCain answer that.

I’d also like to hear them justify their stance on gay marriage with reference to their sworn allegiance to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution, and enumerate the specific, real, concrete, and irreversible harm my marriage in fact has done to them.

I don’t want to hear the rhetoric. I've so been there and done that. I want to see irrefutable proof of tangible harm.

Will they point to their interpretation of religion and say that it transcends the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Not if they are true American patriots. Will they insist that their social and psychological comfort ought to take precedence over my fundamental rights? Not if they are real American patriots.

If they dare make it, I'd like to hear their constitutional defense of their positions that I have no right to live my life in liberty, that they have the right to define whom I may marry, and that my definition of my personal happiness in this most profound of all relationships is not worth their notice. I’m waiting.

Surely it's time for us to hold all our candidates to their oath of office. If they can't even pass that scratch and sniff test, we need to be looking elsewhere.