New Laws

I'm not of big fan of enacting new legislation, but for some time now I have been seeing a part of social interaction which is sadly deficient in controlling laws.

I hereby propose that Chapter 50 be added to the Florida Penal Code, simply titled: "Stupidity".

While it may be tempting to start this new chapter with general "Misdemeanor Stupidity" followed up by "Felony Stupidity", I have noticed that in a lot of cases, violating the Stupidity Statutes tends to be a self-correcting problem.

No, Gentle Readers, I have decided -- this very day, as a matter-of-fact -- that Chapter 50 only needs to consist of two charges:

1) Failure To Mind Your Own Business; and

2) Aggravated Failure To Mind Your Own Business.

The elements of the misdemeanor offence would be as follows:

A person, at a time and a place;intentionally or knowingly;involves himself in the affairs of a second or third party;when a reasonable man would decide it isn't the first person's business;and by such involvement tends to cause a breach of the peace.

For instance, here we have "Frank". "Frank" is regularly having chandelier-swinging sex with "JoAnne", with the caveat that both "Frank" and "JoAnne" are married -- but not to each other."Darlene" is a neighbor to "Frank", but isn't married to either one, nor is she either kith or kin to either "Frank" or "JoAnne".However, "Darlene" is outraged enough by the activities of two consenting adult strangers that she arranges to tell the wife of "Frank" about the infidelity -- resulting in "Mrs Frank" destroying various toys belonging to her spouse, selling off others, setting fire to still more, and following up by standing in the front yard, shrieking like a banshee and throwing various breakables at "Frank" and his car, thereby waking up the whole sodding neighborhood and necessitating the attention of the Gardai.In this case, "Frank" would be firmly advised to find other lodging for the nonce, "Mrs. Frank" would be gently advised to cease and desist from the Abusive, Indecent or Profane Language (In A Public Place) -- not to mention the Littering -- and "Darlene" would be hauled off to jail for misdemeanor Failure To Mind Her Own Business.

The elements of the felony offence would be the same as above, only replace the last line with:"and such involvement causes the risk of death, serious bodily injury or the felony arrest of one or both of the involved parties."

As an example -- a creative articulation -- here is "Joe". Some years ago "Joe" and his daughter "Shannon" had a falling out, leading to Shannon running off to California, vowing Never To Return.Time, distance, and the arrival of a grand-daughter has mellowed the relationship between "Joe" and "Shannon" enough that "Shannon" and her daughter have moved back to town.All is peachy and keen ... until "Chuck" hears from his sister's daughter's boyfriend's second-cousin-twice-removed's baby-sitter that "Shannon" has apparently taken up with a non-mainstream, somewhat untraditional religion."Chuck" -- bearing in mind that while he is a work buddy to "Joe", he is not a relative, nor would he actually recognize "Shannon" if her were to bump into her on the street -- breaks the news to "Joe" about his daughters choice in religion over a beer in the parking lot after work, and follows up with what seems to have been a truly awe-inspiring recital of those things what "everybody knows" about them "damn witches".Let us say that "Joe" is inspired enough by this performance that he takes about $41.00 worth of gasoline, throws it upon the porch of his daughters rented house, and follows it up with a lit road flare.In this -- hypothetical -- case, "Joe" would be arrested for Arson and "Chuck" would be arrested for Aggravated Failure To Mind His Own Goddess-be-damned Business.

I realize that some of the elements of this offence must be fine-tuned, but for too long have busy-bodies been nosing off into others peoples business thereby causing hate, discontent, heartburn and police involvement -- and the time is now to start making them shoulder some of the responsibility for the result.

It is the Right of Revolution

Why Liberals Should Love The Second Amendment

Liberals love the Constitution.
Ask anyone on the street.
They'll tell you the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a liberal organization. I know liberal couples who give each other pocket size copies of the Constitution for Christmas. Ask liberals to list their top five complaints about the Bush Administration, and they will invariably say the words "shredding" and "Constitution" in the same sentence. They might also add "Fourth Amendment" and "due process." It's possible they'll talk about "free speech zones" and "habeus corpus." There's a good chance they will mention, probably in combination with several FCC-prohibited adjectives, the former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.So.

Liberals love the Constitution.
They especially love the Bill of Rights.

They love all the Amendments.
Except for one: the Second Amendment.[...]

All of our rights, even the ones enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are restricted. You can't shout "Fire!" in a crowd. You can't threaten to kill the president. You can't publish someone else's words as your own. We have copyright laws and libel laws and slander laws. We have the FCC to regulate our radio and television content. We have plenty of restrictions on our First Amendment rights. But we don't like them. We fight them. Any card-carrying member of the ACLU will tell you that while we might agree that some restrictions are reasonable, we keep a close eye whenever anyone in government gets an itch to pass a new law that restricts our First Amendment rights. Or our Fourth. Or our Fifth, Sixth, or Eighth. We complain about free speech zones. The whole country is supposed to be a free speech zone, after all. It says so right in the First Amendment.

But when it comes to the Second Amendment...You could hear a pin drop for all the protest you'll get from liberals when politicians talk about further restrictions on the manufacture, sale, or possession of firearms. Suddenly, overly broad restrictions are "reasonable." The Washington D.C. ban on handguns -- all handguns -- is reasonable. (Later this year, the Supreme Court will quite likely issue an opinion to the contrary in the Heller case.)

Would we tolerate such a sweeping regulation of, say, the Thirteenth Amendment? Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. What if a politician -- say, a Republican from a red state in the south -- were to introduce a bill that permits enslaving black women? Would we consider that reasonable? It's not like the law would enslave all people, or even all black people. Just the women. There's no mention of enslaving women in the Thirteenth Amendment. Clearly, when Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, he didn't intend to free all the slaves. And we restrict all the other Amendments, so obviously the Thirteenth Amendment is not supposed to be absolute. What's the big deal?Ridiculous, right? We'd take to the streets, we'd send angry letters to our representatives in Washington, we'd call our progressive radio programs to quote, verbatim, the Thirteenth Amendment. Quite bluntly, although not literally, we'd be up in arms. (Yeah, pun intended.)And yet...A ban on all handguns seems reasonable to many liberals. Never mind that of 192 million firearms in America, 65 million -- about one third -- are handguns.This hardly seems consistent.Indeed!

And this conclusion:

In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night. It is the right of revolution.

Let me say that again:

It is the right of revolution.

Interesting Times Ahead

An interesting analogy:
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas Rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.

Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his bid for the presidency.

The old rancher said,"Well, ya know, Obama is a post turtle." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.The old rancher said "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you wonder what king of dumb ass put him up there."

Interesting times ahead.