Uncommon Commentary #216: Giving the Phrase "Criminal Lawyer" New Meaning

The rôle of a defense attorney is merely to ensure that his client's legal rights are respected; he is under no obligation to try to get the client acquitted of charges against him, or, should the client be convicted, to have the severity of the sentence reduced. How many criminal lawyers are even aware of this fact, and how many tacitly disregard it?

Uncommon Commentary #215: Obama Should Execute Laws; We Should Execute Him

The reason why the US president is called our "chief executive" is that his proper function is not to make laws but to execute laws made by the legislature.  For the presidential administration to participate in formulating legislation, as the current one habitually does, is to violate the Constitution's principle of separation of powers.  (For uncommon commentary on a similar subject, see here.)

Uncommon Commentary #214: How Many Years Are There in Ten Months?

Emperor Nerobama is determined to raise taxes, even if it kills him us.  Wasn't his capitulation to the opposition in December, hailed as a triumph of the Republicans, supposed to have prolonged the Bush-era tax rates for two years?

Uncommon Commentary #212: "Intelligence?" What a Misnomer!

The w.w.w. site of the Central Intelligence Agency, under the heading "Diversity," actually says:

"In order for the CIA to meet our mission of protecting our national [sic] security interests, we need to emply a workforce as diverse as America [sic] itself—the most diverse nation [sic] on earth. Diversity reflects the unique ways we vary as Intelligence Officers—our nationality, race, ethnicity, gender [sic], age, language, culture, sexual orientation, education, values, beliefs, abilities, and disabilities. These assorted attributes create different demographic, functional, and intellectual views, which are so vital to our innovation, agility, collection, and analysis."

Are we therefore to assume that, were the CIA not so "diverse," it would botch the gathering and analyzing of intelligence even more often than it does?

Uncommon Commentary #213: Get Rid of Obama! Get Rid of Obama! Get Rid of Obama! (et cetera)

In the epochal week that began with his proposed demanded solution to the ongoing economic crisis (that is to say, stimulate the economy by spending hundreds of billions of dollars—What originality and imagination!), Emperor Nerobama reportedly said "Pass this bill!", or used a close variation of the phrase, over 100 times. There is, however, one major distinction between him and a broken record: one can dispose of a broken record immediately, whereas one can't dispose of Obombast for more than another year yet.

Uncommon Commentary #211

The USA is threatening to suspend nearly half-a-billion-dollars'-worth of aid to the Palestinian Arabs if they continue their quest for statehood in a way so exclusive of Israel, rather than use the preferred US method of continually restarting talks with that country for a two-state "solution" (even though President Obombast said, earlier this year, that "the international community is tired of an endless process …"; for what I think of this diplomatic boondoggle, see here.) Why don't we cut off our aid in any event, and do so permanently?

Uncommon Commentary #210

A decade after the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001, our land (as opposed to those individuals in this land who were actually affected by the events) does not, in my opinion, still need "healing"; what it needs is to grow up.  To pronounce the date of those occurrences to be the day when the world changed forever, simply because they happened here rather than in some country where a suicide attack is almost routine, is to have a parochial attitude and an exaggerated sense of our importance.

Uncommon Commentary #209: We Will Never Forget What?

In the immediate aftermath of the disasters of 11 September 2001, many of the people of the USA solemnly proclaimed "We will never forget"; within weeks, though, people did forget all about the attack upon the Pentagon, and were using "Ground Zero" to refer exclusively to the site of the remains of the World Trade Center. (That tragedy wasn't even the first attack upon the World Trade Center, and the 1993 bombing of the twin towers wasn't the first incidence of terrorism on US soil; in 1954, Puerto Rican separatists murdered five Congressmen on the floor of the US House of Representatives.  It's astonishing how few Yanks have any knowledge of this.)  The calamity at the headquarters of our armed forces may not have been as deadly as that in New York, but that doesn't mean that it ought to be ignored.

Uncommon Commentary #208: Taxation Isn't Our Cup of Tea

It's ironic that the TEA Party movement (the name whereof, by the way, should be spelled with the "T," "E," and "A" all capitalized, since they form an acronym from "Taxed Enough Already") evokes our mythologized Revolution, which was supposed to improve life for the colonists by abolishing the so-called tyranny of "taxation without representation"; now that our land is a republic, we are subject to taxation with representation (at least in theory; no one votes for politicians who admit that they favor higher tax rates for most of the populace, but candidates for office overcome this handicap by simply concealing their intentions from the electorate), yet said movement has arisen in opposition to the government of our independent country. Doesn't this mean that the Founders' experiment was ultimately futile, that we're no better ruled—in my opinion, much worse—than before?