Patterico asks for a commitment from bloggers who will defy any federal attempt to regulate our writing.
Heh, heh, heh. I built a solid career being a contrarian. This is simple compared to some stances I’ve taken.
I will continue to speak my mind. The First Amendment guarantees me that right. Specifically. In very clear language.
My opinion may be wrong, but I can voice that opinion.
Golf has a rich history of literature, and baseball is probably the only sport to compare in that regard. Not that golf is any more spectacular than the rest, but that the writers of golf are of a class shared only by baseball. Names like Henry Longhurst (quoted above), Bernard Darwin, Henry Warren Wind, John Updike, and Grantland Rice grace the pages of golf story collections. It has to do with the pace of golf and the people involved I would guess.
I have been building my personal library of golf books, and adding many of these classics. I don’t collect how-to books, but rather enjoy the reading of histories, personal stories, and tall tales. I have two golf books by P. G. Wodehouse, best known for the “Jeeves and Wooster” books. The first is The Golf Omnibus, of which I have an old, well-read copy from a used book store. The second is a new one I just received, The Clicking of Cuthbert.
It was Wodehouse’s first golf collection, originally published in 1922, and regales us with tales spun by The Oldest Member to those unwary souls who stumbled into his presence on the clubhouse porch and are too polite to extricate themselves from the encounter.
As a simple appetizer from Omnibus:
Archibald Mealing was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirrror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America.
Many golfers share Archibald’s enthusiasm. I do. But I also share the desire to write as well as people like Wodehouse.
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, spoke to a group at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Jeffrey King transcribed the speech from tape, a diligence I certainly appreciate. And I have added his blog to my list.
Scalia calls himself an “originalist” rather than a “strict constructionist”, and I think that term fits much better. And he explains why he defines the two differently.
More important, he talks about what the Constitution is really about, and how we ended up where we are today with the Senate.
I think the very terminology suggests where we have arrived: at the point of selecting people to write a constitution, rather than people to give us the fair meaning of one that has been democratically adopted. And when that happens, when the Senate interrogates nominees to the Supreme Court, or to the lower courts, you know, “Judge so and so, do you think there is a right to this in the Constitution? You don’t?! Well my constituents’ think there ought to be, and I’m not going to appoint to the court someone who is not going to find that.” When we are in that mode, you realize, we have rendered the Constitution useless, because the Constitution will mean what the majority wants it to mean. The senators are representing the majority. And they will be selecting justices who will devise a constitution that the majority wants.
And that of course, deprives the Constitution of its principle utility. The Bill of Rights is devised to protect you and me against, who do you think? The majority. My most important function on the Supreme Court is to tell the majority to take a walk. And the notion that the justices ought to be selected because of the positions that they will take that are favored by the majority is a recipe for destruction of what we have had for two-hundred years.
He summed up the issue quite well, thank you.
It is precisely the point to be made. If you don’t like something, get the laws changed. Don’t go to court. The courts are supposed to be there to protect your rights, not to impose your desires on others. And if the majority impose their beliefs on you through law that infringes on your rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, the courts are supposed to strike down those laws.
It’s really a pretty simple concept.
The crux of all issues in the Senate at this time is abortion. The Democratic Party holds this issue as their most important rallying point. They will accept no nominee to the Supreme Court who is unwilling to state they will protect Roe v. Wade without question. And right now, they are unwilling to allow Dubya to put anyone onto the Court unless they are “moderate.” Read Scalia’s speech and see how he destroys the entire concept of “moderate judges.”
As a follow-up to my earlier post on McCain-Feingold, I need to point you to the follow-up of an article I linked to in that post. Ryan Sager is on top of the story behind “Campaign Finance Reform” here, and the transcript of the video he talks about is here.
The tape — of a conference held at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia’s remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress.
I don’t care whether it is being drive from the left or the right. The BCRA is a sham, and is designed to do nothing but keep money and power in the hands of incumbents. I think I need to write to my Congressman and Senators once again. I haven’t heard anything back from my most recent epistles.
Glenn has posted a great email from a soldier who attended a speech at Fort Hood by MG Pete Chiarelli, the Commanding General of 1st Cav.
Said that of all the money appropriated for Iraq, not a cent was earmarked for agriculture. Said that Iraq could feed itself completely and still have food for export but no one thought about it. Said the Cav started working with Texas A&M on ag projects and had special hybrid seeds sent to them through Jordan. TAM analyzed soil samples and worked out how and what to plant. Said he had an E7 from Belton, TX (just down the road from Ft. Hood) who was almost single-handedly rebuilding the ag industry in the Baghdad area.
Them damn Texas farm boys. And Aggies!
Makes a Texan proud.
Lago has a tale of the return of a sailor to his wife. No Kleenex required, unless you cry when you laugh.
Are these two stories linked in some way?
Senate Votes for Oil Drilling in Alaskan Refuge
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to keep, in a broad federal budget legislation, the language that would open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling.
OPEC OKs 500K Barrel Daily Output Boost
Looking ahead to strong demand next winter, OPEC ministers on Wednesday agreed to start pumping an extra half-million barrels of oil a day within two weeks and held out prospects of a similar boost later if needed.
Nah…. The oil sheiks don’t have any contacts in the halls of Congress, do they?
Powered by WordPress