Update no.433

Update from the Heartland

No.433

29.3.10 – 4.4.10

Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,
The follow-up news items:
-- After the well-publicized signing of the health care law [431], President Obama signed into law the final piece of his health-care reform legislation -- Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 [PL 111-152]. The challenges to the new law from the states have only just begun. The next few years are going to be rough as the new law is implemented.
-- After the ruling in favor of the Phelps clan – Snyder v. Phelps [4CCA no. 08-1026 (2009)] [430] – the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ordered Albert Snyder [235, 307, 308] to pay the Phelps’ court cost, amounting to roughly $16,000, adding insult to injury. In 2005, Albert buried his son – Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, USMC – who was killed in action in Iraq. Reportedly, donations have poured in to cover the court costs and hopefully allow Albert to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Chechen “Black Widows” are back at it, again; this time detonating their explosive vests on Moscow Metro rail trains during morning rush hour. A third explosive device was detected at another Metro station and disarmed. Chechen rebel leader Doku Khamatovich Umarov claimed responsibility for the bombings and promised there would be many more. I trust the Russians will employ their usual brutal efficiency in dealing with their portion of Islamo-fascist terrorists.

President Obama agreed to new security screening protocols in conjunction with 14 foreign governments for anyone flying to the United States, intended to prevent attackers like the Christmas Day bomber [419]. The Department of Homeland Security will implement a more intelligence-based system to focus secondary, enhanced screening at foreign airports and reportedly includes intelligence-developed profiles to aid screeners. Based on limited information and no experience with the new U.S. system, I strongly suspect our screening system is moving closer to those procedures used by the Israeli airlines for decades . . . and successfully I must add.

I have been watching the government’s case against the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc, an Oregon nonprofit corporation, in what has become known as the NSA case, or a more colloquial version being the “illegal wiretapping” case. The latest episode is a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker in the case of al-Haramain v. Obama [USDC NDCA M:06-cv-01791-VRW (2010)] [see Update no. 343]. Walker wrote, “Under defendants’ theory, executive branch officials may treat FISA as optional and freely employ the SSP [State Secrets Privilege] to evade FISA, a statute enacted specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive-branch abuses of surveillance authority.” He went on to observe, “Perhaps sensitive to the obvious potential for governmental abuse and over reaching inherent in defendants’ theory of unfettered executive-branch discretion, defendants protest that ‘the government does not rely on an assertion of the [SSP] to cover-up alleged unlawful conduct.’” Of all the intelligence, electronic surveillance challenges to the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 [PL 107-056] and presidential directives, the al-Haramain case has survived the longest and is far from over. The latest ruling was a denial of the Executive’s petition for dismissal. Based on the publicly available information, I believe al-Haramain is as guilty as O.J. Simpson in 1995, but that is not the law. The government is protected and yet shackled by its ability to collect classified information, and the essential challenge in this case rests upon the ability of the prosecution to develop and present sufficient, non-classified evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Haramain in fact is a conduit for al-Qaeda fund-raising and recruiting. This is a very important case not only to the War on Islamic Fascism and also to our protections against unwarranted government intrusion into our private lives.

I just had an epiphany – a solution to the aversion of some citizens to the Guantánamo detention facility. Let us find some nice vacant, open ground on the plains of Afghanistan, build a nice facility there, to match the capabilities of the Guantánamo facility, and then publicize the transfer of all Islamo-fascists terrorists to that facility. Bait! Perfect. The Left gets what they want – close the Guantánamo facility – and, we gain a tempting objective for the other Islamo-fascists at large – a worthy killing ground – kinda like Khe Sanh (1968) in my generation’s war.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge Glen H. Davidson of the Northern District of Mississippi heard arguments in the case of McMillen v. Itawamba County School District [USDC MSND(ED) Case 1:10-cv-00061-GHD-JAD (2010)]. Plaintiff was Itawamba Agricultural High School Senior Constance McMillen in Fulton, Mississippi -- an openly and honestly self-identified lesbian since the eighth grade. She wanted to attend her senior prom with her girlfriend and dressed in a tuxedo. The school and board rejected Constance’s requests citing a number of lame antiquated excuses. The judge made a rather emphatic statement regarding the State’s violation of Constance’s civil rights and yet denied her request for preliminary injunction as a result of the short time interval and the fact that parent’s had organized a separate, all-inclusive prom where all students were welcome, including Constance McMillen and her girlfriend. I hope Constance pursuits her rightful claim for damages to punish the school and its board, and send a clear message that such violations of a citizen’s civil rights based on sexual identity and orientation are not acceptable.

In the light of a federal court’s view of the McMillen case, Marine Corps Commandant General James Terry Conway publicly stated, “We want to continue [two-person rooms], but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it.” He continued, “And to me that means we have to build BEQs [bachelor enlisted quarters] and have single rooms.” General Conway is trying to make the pending repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” {National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 [PL 103-160 (312, 408)]} and the prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation an economic matter in a rather feeble effort to avoid the root question. General Conway and the other leaders of the military would be better advised to create and implement an education program, similar to the racial integration education programs of the 1970’s, to help service personnel to adjust attitudes and interaction with citizens regardless of their sexual orientation. The time has come.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported a rather curious item. The European Union’s Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office rejected complaints and approved a trademark application from a German company to brew a beer labeled “Fucking Hell” and sell clothing with the trademark. The EU’s rationale: 1.) “hell” is a German word for a light ale, and 2.) “Fucking” is an Austrian town near the border with Germany, north of Salzburg. The translation into English evokes strong emotions on many levels. Ultimately, if it is not a good beer, it will not sell; but, the sensationalized trademark may well find customers among English-speakers who seek a counter-culture image or statement. Language is such a powerful tool.

News from the economic front:
-- The Commerce Department reported U.S. consumer spending increased 0.3% in February, and inflation remained stable, despite the fact that personal income remained static and unemployment remained high.
-- The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. employers created 162,000 non-farm jobs in March, the largest gain since March 2007 and the fastest pace in three years, although nearly one-third came from temporary hiring for the Census. The unemployment rate, calculated using a different survey, stayed at 9.7%.

Comments and contributions from Update no.432:
Comment to the Blog:
“As a non-mainstream person, I see ‘God’ (singular with a capital ‘G’) as essentially the artifiact of monotheist religions. I do not, however, see the total purging of historical documentation that you envision as a likely outcome of any given court decision. Besides, there's a simpler method of dealing with formal oath-taking. When I enlisted in the US Army many long years ago, the instructions included, "You may remain silent rather than say 'under God' if you so choose." Problem solved. Besides, even though I have had a running irritation with the casual official use of "God" for about forty years, I still see the whole question as a tempest in a teapot.
“I attempted to send you my blog post on the health insurance mess, but did not accomplish that.
“Before I reach my central points, let me state my agreement with your other poster on being required to purchase health insurance. This is not a valid parallel to auto insurance. When the State made auto insurance mandatory, I could and did stop driving until my financial situation improved. I cannot do that with my health. The fact that tax dollars will surely finance my health insurance makes it no less a gift to already-bloated insurance companies.
“My central complaints are two: the Congress failed to repeal the insurance companies' anti-trust exemption and failed to do anything else that might encourage actual competition, especially to set up a public option that would be able to negotiate with pharmacy companies and ‘care’ providers.
“I do not see emergency room visits, in their own right, as driving the cost of health care. I see the fact that so many have no access to health care except through emergency rooms as one of the important factors, but we must include provider greed, the antitrust exemption for the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies' insane pricing in this equation.
“The bottom line: if nothing changes, nothing changes.”
My response to the Blog:
One of the many beauties of the First Amendment . . . it protects our freedom to believe whatever we wish to believe. I cannot imagine anyone assaulting God’s name in our historic documents; however, using the Newdow dissent’s logic, the exclusion / expulsion is the logical conclusion. For whatever it’s worth, I do not agree with the Army’s “remain silent” approach. No one is telling anyone who or what they are to believe. Nonetheless, I think it is important to swear the oath to a Higher Power, otherwise there is little substance to such an oath.
I am sorry you could not post your health insurance opinion. Perhaps you can re-try when you get a chance.
I was trying to make a representative analogy however feeble it might have been. The mandatory element is a very sensitive issue with many Americans. The health care reform is only a small step on a very long journey. Hopefully, this will move us along just enough to enable us to refine the health care process. I absolutely agree with the failure of Congress to remove the anti-trust protections still in place for medical insurers. The pharmaceutical patent protections that enable companies to recover their development costs with exclusive marketing rights, like a time-limiting monopoly, are worthy of analysis and reassessment. To break the cost cycle, we must alter the business paradigm for everyone. We have such a long way to go, and as you say, we must change.
. . . a follow-up comment:
“I'll leave the rest alone and pick on ‘it is important to swear the oath to a Higher Power, otherwise there is little substance to such an oath.’ First, the substance comes from the person, not the Higher Power. As we have seen ad nauseum, many people feel no compulsion to tell their truth in a court or to live up to other oaths, ‘God’ or no ‘God.’ Second, some people don't work with any Higher Power at all and feel very seriously insulted by the insistence that they do so, which is a position I was in during my younger years; others work with a ‘Goddess,’ with gods plural as I do today, or with something that has a specific other name. Better to either work with everyone somehow or to let the whole issue drop.”
. . . my follow-up response:
Interesting perspective. My understanding of a “Higher Power of your understanding” embraces many possibilities, but boiled down to its essence, represents morality, order, discipline, respect, and many other attributes that come from somewhere. A “Higher Power” might be Mother Nature, or a sense of right & wrong, or the memory of our parents or grandparents looking over our shoulder. I do NOT ascribe any definition other than there must be something that is significant to each individual . . . even Michael Newdow. To think otherwise would be chaos and anarchy. The point I was trying to make was there must be something beyond ourselves that draws out morality. Sure, some have a higher level than others. A few individuals among us have no qualms taking another life or stealing another man’s property. Further, just swearing an oath to a “Higher Power” will not stop the habitual liar from perjuring himself before the bar. I believe the oath or the Pledge serves to tell us that the words are important; we will be judged by our conduct under these words. Again, no one is telling anyone who God is or what God means to the individual, but such reference does connote importance of the words.

Another comment:
“I believe you are correct, so help me, God.”

My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)