Uncommon Commentary #344: Kermit the Toad

It's hard to feel that justice has been done in the case of infanticide Kermit Gosnell, who has been sentenced only to life imprisonment despite being found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder (and on hundreds of lesser charges).  The life expectancy of a male in this country is currently 75.94 years, and so, should the 72-year-old Gosnell survive until the mean age of death, he will effectively serve a total of under four years in prison for the three of his thousands of murders for which he's actually been convicted.  Since I consider it appropriate to let the punishment fit the crime, I would, if I had the power to do this, and at the risk of being accused of cruelty, have the prisoner executed using the same method that he used to kill those babies: cutting through the neck with scissors.

Miscellaneous Musing #51: He Couldn't Have Dun More to Free Slaves

It's been established that in 1862, the year of his "Emancipation Proclamation", President Lincoln still had disturbingly unenlightened attitudes toward Blacks.  This raises an intriguing question: Was the motivation for his proclamation any different from that for the one made four-score-and-seven years earlier, by Virginia's royal governor Lord Dunmore, viz., to recruit slaves as soldiers to help win a war of secession?

Uncommon Commentary #343: Kermit the Dog

I find it extraordinary that no one, to my knowledge, made the same observation that I am now about public attitude during the just-concluded trial of serial killer Kermit Gosnell: Even someone who believes that there is a right to commit fœticide ought to be appalled to learn of the unsanitary conditions and medical inadequacies of Gosnell’s pseudo-clinic.  Do pro-choicers not care that his malpractice caused the death of a woman who was exercising what they consider to be her "right to choose"?  Evidently not.  The lack of indignation from Abortion Land demonstrates at least their true lack of concern for the women in whose interests they pretend to act, and perhaps also that they know that the "House of Horrors" was not exceptional.

Uncommon Commentary #342: "Benghazi-Gate"? May I Suggest "Give-Obama-the-Gate"?

In his ongoing cover-up of the cover-up related to the 11 September 2012 attack, President Obombast said “There’s no there there”.  That Obama eloquence just keeps flowing, doesn't it?
The Obfuscator-in-Chief also dismissed as a "sideshow" the efforts of Republicans (and a pitifully small number of Democrats, whom, unsurprisingly, he didn't mention) to learn the whole truth about the actions that his administration took as a result of what happened in Benghazi.  In a way, he's right; just as when the Clintons were jointly president, government scandals are coming along so quickly that you practically need a database to keep track of them, and so the one concerning Benghazi could well become lost in the crowd.

Uncommon Commentary #341: Tweets by Twits

The White House Twitter account put out "tweets" on the Tenth of this month to promote the (Patient Protection and) Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCareless (see the list of domanisms).  One read: "Thanks to the #ACA, 1 in 3 women under 65 gained access to preventive care—like birth control—with no out-of-pocket costs. #HappyMothersDay".  A story from LifeNews related this information, but did not explicitly note the irony of affixing a "hashtag" (if that's what those things are called) that reads "HappyMothersDay" to a "tweet" touting what the ACA (or OC) has done for birth control; hence, one of two reasons for this uncommon commentary.  My second reason for writing is to alert you to the use of the phrase "preventive care"; since when does this term, which applies to the prevention of disease, subsume birth control?  As I previously wrote here on the D.D., conceiving and bearing children is absolutely normal; in fact, without the ability to reproduce, our species would have gone extinct quite some time ago.  Twits don't come any "twitter" than those who work for Obama.

Uncommon Commentary #340: Texas, Taxes, &c.

Most of the cultural and political trends in this country I find offensive or merely vapid, but, as an historian, I do feel interest and even some excitement in what's happening in places like South Carolina.  The Palmetto State's House of Representatives has passed a bill that declares ObamaCareless (see the list of domanisms) to be "null and void" within South Carolina's borders.  Over 180 years ago, South Carolina made the same pronouncement about the federal tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, and threatened to leave the Union if the laws should be enforced; President Jackson, however, made a proclamation in which he warned that enforcement would indeed take place, and, after the US Congress enacted a Force Bill in support of this, the Carolinians backed down. (Further, a compromise in 1833 substantially reduced tariff duties.)  It was thought that the crisis had ended, but it had only abated, for South Carolina did secede from the USA in 1860, and for the same underlying reason why it had considered doing so 28 years earlier. (That's right: The "US Civil War", or, more accurately, War of Southern Independence, was not fought over slavery, contrary to our secular mythology.  What became the Confederacy seceded because of a desire for autonomy; Southerners thought that whether slavery—opponents of which included Robert E. Lee, but not Ulysses S. Grant, an Ohioan who'd had slaves of his own—and tariffs were legal in their States was none of the rest of the country's business.  It might be noted also that autonomist sentiment was not unique to the South; in New England where I live, there was a strong secession movement in rightful opposition to the pointless and unprovoked War of 1812.)  Military action achieved its objective of preserving the Union—that, not the abolition of slavery, was the reason why the North (and part of the West) went to war—and so the issue of "States' rights" again submerged, but the oppression and ineptitude of Emperor Nerobama's administration are driving it back to the surface.  (And this trend will only be exacerbated if the federal government raises taxes to pay down the approaching-17-trillion-dollar debt.  Why should residents of solvent States help to defray a debt, the largest part of which is owed to the public anyway, which Washington ran up all by itself?)  It wouldn't surprise me if one or more "States" (v.i.) such as South Carolina or Texas (where the secessionist volcano that erupted in 1861 is waking from dormancy) should withdraw from the USA during the next generation, and it wouldn't disturb me either.  I've no wish for civil war, of course, but presumably D.C. won't use force or the threat thereof to compel States to remain in the Union, as it did in the Nineteenth Century.  Besides, why ought the ironically termed "States" (which name was given to the thirteen original former colonies because they were all theoretically independent political units, viz., "states", which gave up only so much of their sovereignty as was deemed necessary for the sake of forming a confederation) not be permitted to withdraw from the United States of America if they choose to do so?  Is this country a prison?  Texas was a fully independent republic for nine years prior to its annexation by the USA, which took place a mere 16 years before the Lone Star State joined the Confederacy; Texans who favored the incorporation into Columbia likely didn't regard this as action as irrevocable.  There's also, of course, the matter of hypocrisy.  If the 13 original States became such by rejecting the authority of the royal government, don't they and the 37 that came later have the right to reject the authority of the government that replaced it?

Uncommon Commentary #339: UC #338 Follow-Up

We need to refine the way that we prosecute not only the terrorists but also the war against terrorists.  When a state is at war versus a fellow state, it achieves victory by eliminating or reducing the opposing state's ability to wage war; in a campaign versus a stateless terrorism organization, which has a seemingly endless supply of fanatics whose concept of "martyrdom" is something to be desired rather than avoided, one must adopt less conventional tactics.

Uncommon Commentary #338: Dzhokhar's No Joker

You may recall that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (of the explosive underwear) spoke volubly about his plot until he was "Mirandized", i.e., advised of the right that a US citizen (which this Nigerian has never been anyway) has to remain silent upon being arrested &c., and that afterward he provided no information.  And you probably know that history is repeating itself, for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev acknowledged his part in the bombing of the Boston Marathon's finish line (and supplied valuable intelligence), before a judge and lawyers prematurely terminated the FBI's questioning of him and delivered the same Miranda warning, whereupon he began his boffo mime performance.  Republicans had wanted the Obama administration to treat him as an enemy combatant, so that he could be interrogated for at least 30 days before he would be given a preliminary judicial hearing; instead, his hearing commenced after just 16 hours.  Certainly giving him such a status would have been preferable to the approach that has been taken, but why regard terrorists either as enemy combatants (and thus entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions) or as domestic criminals (and thus entitled to the protections of the US Constitution)?  Have we forgotten that, earlier during this War on Terror, the more perspicacious legal experts were recommending that we view terrorists in the same way as we do pirates, who have traditionally been considered hostes humani generis, that is, enemies of all mankind?  To call someone an "enemy combatant" is to confer some dignity upon him by implying that he fights for his country against other soldiers; a terrorist attacks civilians on behalf of a stateless organization like Hezbollah or Al-Qaeda.  To prosecute a foreign and international criminal as if he were a domestic one is, of course, worse yet. (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a US citizen, and thus has a Constitutional right to a trial—I, however, see no point in spending taxpayer money to try someone whose guilt is indisputable, as that of Tsarnaev now is—but I'm writing of terrorists in general; I was planning this uncommon commentary in advance of the tragedy in Boston.)