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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Big Bertha 2.0: Something That I Didn't Think About It finally came time to mount Big Bertha 2.0 on the equatorial mount today--and I ran into a problem that I now realize is pretty significant. Deformation along the length of the telescope isn't a problem (especially now that I have switched the rail that the dovetail plate attaches to from 1/16" wall to 1/8" wall). But I hadn't considered the problem of deformation across the telescope. It was immediately apparent that when over at an angle, the primary mirror assembly would twist the rail quite severely. I think the problem here is that all the stress of the primary mirror assembly is being transferred to the one rail to which the dovetail plate attaches. Within the existing design, I can see the following possible solution: 1. Add three more rails, so that I get a hexagon. This only adds about five more pounds to the telescope. 2. Add supports that transfer the load that is currently entirely on one rail (and at the bottom part of the rail alone, where most of the weight is) to distribute the load to the other five rails. This might be something as simple as using 1" square aluminum tube sections to connect all six rails together. This involves making a series of 60 degrees cuts (easy with the chop saw), then drilling and tapping holes that will allow them to lock to the rails going lengthwise. At least at the moment, I am having a little trouble figuring out exactly how this will work. The 1" square tubes are stiff enough, however, that I suspect that it would not take a lot of these segments to do the job. Remember that they don't have to be terribly strong themselves; they just need to stiff enough to transfer the load that is currently on one rail to the other five rails. UPDATE: It occurs to me that the big problem isn't even twisting of the telescope itself--but that the lower assembly (which is very heavy, because of the mirror) is twisting on the rail because there is a single point of contact (round surface on a flat surface). Perhaps using an aluminum extrusion that consists of two right angles might work better. In that case, the round tubes drop into the extrusion. The tube then rests not only on a single point of contact, but also against the two uprights. In this case, a 4" wide base with two uprights would prevent the rotation across the flat surface. Labels: telescopes McGovern, 1972 The only good thing about being old is that you get to say, "I've seen this idiocy before!" It is increasingly apparent that the Democrats are planning to reprise the 1972 election--with a Republican that many Republicans didn't like, because he wasn't very conservative (the 55 mph national speed limit, wage and price controls) running against a very liberal Democrat that talked a lot about idealism. A little background for those of you aren't old enough to remember the age of disco, leisure suits, waiting in line to buy gasoline, and a time when no one worried about STDs. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy tried to get the Democratic Party nomination away from V.P. Hubert Humphrey--a machine liberal politician, but one identified far too closely with President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Democratic Party activists, however much they might have sympathized with McCarthy's "flower power" campaign (remember those little plastic flower appliques that antiwar activists put on their VW Beetles?), recognized that giving the nomination to a bunch of pot-smoking, antiwar, long-haired hippies, was going to be the twentieth century's equivalent of the Children's Crusade. For those who don't know--the Children's Crusade was a thirteenth century effort by children to retake the Holy Land where their adult ancestors had failed. The children, being of holy and pure spirits, would succeed where the sinful adults had failed. Many of them never even got close to the Holy Land, and unsurprisingly, after arranging for sea transport, a large number were sold into Muslim slavery. Purity and good intentions aren't enough. Anyway, Humphrey ended up getting the Democratic nomination in 1968, and came darn close to winning the election (perhaps helped by George Wallace's independent run for President). By the time the 1972 Democratic primary race was under way, the hippies had cut their hair, found suits, proudly took over the Democratic Party, and picked a far left Democrat, George McGovern, to lead the party over a cliff. And boy did he ever! He won Massachusetts (and I think, DC). He didn't even carry his own state, South Dakota. What the was magic trick to this? Contrary to what some tenured radicals want to believe, Watergate isn't what won Nixon the election. If anything, the small amount of bad press from it probably hurt Nixon slightly. What did it was that McGovern had been very far to the left, and had emphasized that during the primaries. He was, after all, trying to appeal to a faction of the Democratic Party that Nixon's campaign characterized as "acid, amnesty, and abortion." From my recollections of the time, that was an exaggeration, but it was not without some basis in fact. ( And I think my memories are more trustworthy than your graying professor's memories, because I seem to be one of about 48 members of my generation that did not smoke pot or drop acid during that time.) During the general election, McGovern's campaign tried to run away from his radical positions--and one especially powerful Nixon ad showed McGovern's picture on a weathervane, spinning back and forth between his primary statements, and his general election statements. The radical positions upset lots of voters--and the flip-flopping, I suspect, upset radical voters who were still suffering from the delusive idealism of McCarthy's Children's Crusade. Barack Hussein Obama is, by any sensible standard, pretty far to the left--and some of the positions that he has taken should just about guarantee a McCain victory in November. I've mentioned his position in support of restrictive gun control--a position that is going to force at least ten million voters to vote for McCain. (Many of them would do so anyway, but Obama's position on this will guarantee it.) I see that Obama has also taken another quite divisive position--and one that puts him in the minority, by a large margin: Q: What us your view on the decision on partial-birth abortion and your reaction to most of the public agreeing with the court's holding?Pro-life voters, of course, are going to be unlikely to vote for Obama, but partial-birth abortion is such a repulsive procedure that even most pro-choice voters are prepared to make an exception, and ban it. An August, 2007 Pew Research survey found that 75% of Americans wanted it to be illegal--only 17% thought it should be legal. McCain's support for stem cell research, which is the major black mark against him for pro-life voters, is pretty minor compared to support for partial-birth abortion. Here's a twofer: an area where he gets to upset not just smokers, but those who understand that the Constitution's division of powers between states and the federal government limits what the federal government can do: Q: Over 400,000 Americans have premature death due to smoking or secondhand smoke. Would you be in favor of a national law to ban smoking in all public places? Now, if I were going to just take a Machiavellian view, I would say, "Excellent! Obama will guarantee a McCain victory!" But as I have explained in the past, there are real dangers in taking this approach. We need the best candidate from each party, because you never know what craziness can happen--and there is a war on, you know. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, abortion, gun rights Mercury, CFLs, Global Warming, Migraines, & Breast Cancer What else can I drag into this seemingly implausible combination? I mentioned a couple of days ago in an posting about the connection between overillumination and breast cancer that some experts are concerned because compact fluorescent light bulbs are likely to actually aggravate the breast cancer issue relative to incandescents. One of my readers told me that he had to remove the compact fluorescent bulbs from his home because they gave his wife migraine headaches--and when I searched scholar.google.com for articles, I was surprised to find quite a bit of discussion of how the non-visible flicker associated with fluorescent bulbs seems to be related to migraine headaches. Of course, compact fluorescents have mercury in them--and this article over at FoxNews points out that many of the environmentalists who are now pushing CFLs, just a few years ago, were warning how dangerous they were because of mercury--and now that the environmentalists have persuaded Congress and President Bush to sign a mandatory CFL law (phasing out incandescent bulbs by 2012)--they are asking the lawyers to start suing: Of course, the environmentalist about-face is because they decided that anthropogenic global warming (which may or may not be happening, and is likely not anthropogenic) is more important than mercury poisoning (which is very real). One of these days, the environmentalist/ambulance chaser scam is going to become visible to the average American. I just hope that they haven't completely bankrupted the country paying for CFLs, the reduced productivity because of migraine headaches, treating hundreds of thousands of extra cases of breast cancer and caused massive mercury poisoning before that point is reached. Labels: dark skies, enviromental lunacy, global warming John Delling I've previously mentioned John Delling, who was being tried for multiple murders. From an Associated Press story in the February 21, 2008 Idaho Statesman: BOISE, Idaho — A Boise man is mentally unfit to stand trial because his paranoid schizophrenia prevents him from helping his attorneys fight a first-degree murder charge, a court-appointed psychologist said.This other news story by Patrick Orr, also in the February 21, 2008 Idaho Statesman, goes into more detail:
All accounts that I have read suggest that Delling's parents made attempts to get psychiatric help for him in high school, and were unsuccessful. Again, it isn't clear how much of this problem can be laid at the feet of deinstitutionalization, and how much is the result of failure of the system to appreciate how troubled he was. Labels: deinstitutionalization Another Tragedy From the February 22, 2008 Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review: I'm not sure that this qualifies as a deinstitutionalization failure; there isn't enough information to say for sure, one way or the other. But I find myself wondering how long Kim's parents had been struggling with an out of control kid. Labels: deinstitutionalization Idaho Press-Tribune Published My Piece about deinstitutionalization's failure. Read it here. Labels: deinstitutionalization Thursday, February 21, 2008
Coincidence? The first part of the story is worrisome--but I could almost believe his claim that he hollowed out this book to hide money and drugs. From the February 20, 2008 Pinellas County, Florida Suncoast News: TAMPA - A 21-year-old Clearwater man was arrested at Tampa International Airport this weekend after security personnel found a box cutter in a hollowed-out book, authorities said.The other books that Baines had with him were...interesting: Officers found books in the backpack titled "Muhammad in the Bible," "The Prophet's Prayer" and "The Noble Qur'an." He also had a copy of the Quran and the Bible.What are the odds that this guy wasn't engaged in some sort of dry run to see how good TSA is? Labels: terrorism Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sexual Abuse & Adult Homosexuality There's a surprising number of journal articles about this subject. The abstracts alone are pretty telling. Lynda S. Doll, "Self-Reported Childhood and Adolescent Sexual Abuse among Adult Homosexual and Bisexual Men," Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal, v16 n6 p855-64 Nov-Dec 1992: This study of 1,001 adult homosexual and bisexual men found that 37% reported they had been encouraged or forced to have sexual contact with an older or more powerful partner before age 19. Median age at first contact was 10. Ninety-three percent of participants reporting early sexual contact were classified as sexually abused.Median age at first contact was 10? Beitchman JH, Zucker KJ, Hood JE, daCosta GA, Akman D, Cassavia E., "A review of the long-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse Negl. 1992;16(1):101-18: By the same authors: "A review of the short-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse Negl. 1991;15(4):537-56: This is the first of a two-part report that critically evaluates empirical studies on the short- and long-term effects of child sexual abuse. With the exception of sexualized behavior, the majority of short-term effects noted in the literature are symptoms that characterize child clinical samples in general. Among adolescents, commonly reported sequelae include sexual dissatisfaction, promiscuity, homosexuality, and an increased risk for revictimization.Here's an article that isn't specifically addressing homosexuality, but that is the major risk factor in the U.S. for HIV--which is what this study examines. S Zierler, L Feingold, D Laufer, P Velentgas, I Kantrowitz-Gordon and K Mayer, " Adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and subsequent risk of HIV infection," American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 81, Issue 5 572-575: METHODS: In an adult cohort enrolled to investigate causes of transmission of human immunodeficiency virus, we identified current behaviors affecting risk of infection that were associated with a history of early sexual abuse. One hundred and eighty-six individuals provided information on the occurrence of abuse and subsequent sexual and drug using activities. RESULTS: Approximately half of the women and one-fifth of the men reported a history of rape during childhood or adulthood. Twenty-eight percent of the women and 15 percent of the men recalled that they had been sexually assaulted during childhood. People who reported childhood rape compared with people who did not were four times more likely to be working as prostitutes (90 percent confidence interval = 2.0, 8.0). Women were nearly three times more likely to become pregnant before the age of 18 (90% CI = 1.6, 4.1). Men who reported a history of sexual abuse had a twofold increase in prevalence of HIV infection relative to unabused men (90% CI = 1.0, 3.9). CONCLUSIONS: The disturbing prevalence of early sexual abuse and its possible health-related consequences call for prompt and routine investigation of sexual abuse histories. Identification of sexual victimization may be an important component for management of risk factors for human immunodeficiency virus.You would think that it might have been interesting to ask if there was some connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual orientation. Here's another study examining childhood sexual abuse and HIV status among homosexual and bisexual men. Samuel Jinich and Thomas J. Coates, Jay P. Paul, Ron Stall, Michael Acree, Susan Kegeles, Colleen Hoff, "Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk-Taking Behavior Among Gay and Bisexual Men," AIDS and Behavior, Volume 2, Number 1 / March, 1998. The abstract: We explored the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay and bisexual men and measured the association between childhood sexual abuse and high-risk sexual behavior in adulthood. Two separate population-based samples of gay and bisexual men (n = 1,941) residing in Portland and Tucson were surveyed. Over one quarter reported a history of childhood sexual abuse (sexual behavior with someone at least 5 years older prior to age 13, or with someone at least 10 years older when between ages 13 and 15). Men who were abused were more likely to engage in sexual risk behavior than men who were not abused (e.g., unprotected anal intercourse with non-primary partners in the previous 12 months: 21.4% vs. 15.0%, p < .001). Perception of having been coerced was associated with greater sexual risk. Furthermore, childhood sexual abuse and level of coercion were associated with reported levels of HIV infection among gay and bisexual men.Hmmm. More than one-quarter of gay men reported that they had been sexually abused? That's almost three times the rates of sexual abuse among men in the general population. Isn't anyone noticing what might be an obvious connection here? And there are lots of other articles out there, again ignoring the elephant in the bathtub--the high rates of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay men. UPDATE: Just to clarify: these studies suggest that adult homosexuals were disproportionately victims of child sexual abuse--not the other way around. Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality If South Africa Were Still A Whites-Only Government I would assume that this tragic news story was propaganda put out to make black African governments look like incompetent fools. From the February 18, 2008 Lagos [Nigeria] Daily Champion: If this is an "accident," what would constitute an intentional action of murder? One of the arguments that gun control supporters often raise is that civilians just aren't highly enough trained to be trusted with guns. If this was an accident, it sounds like the Nigerian Army isn't highly enough trained, either. Yes, There Was A Lunar Eclipse Tonight and no, there won't be any pictures. We had high thin clouds here--it just ruined all the pictures I took. Labels: astrophotography Breast Cancer & Dark Skies I'm always a bit skeptical of correlations that fit with what I want, and I'm skeptical of this one as well--but there is at least a plausible causal connection here, and because I am an amateur astronomer, I'm not going to spend a long time looking this gift horse in the mouth. (Several years ago, the Idaho Statesman published a piece by me about the importance of dark skies.) From the February 20, 2008 Washington Post:
That matter of the compact fluorescents is especially interesting and worrisome. Like I said, there are all sorts of other possible reasons for this correlation. Perhaps women that live in big cities, with lots of night illumination, and big city values, are more likely to smoke. There have been some studies that suggest a link between abortion and cancer, although the National Cancer Institute says that the most recent and best done studies do not show the link. Here's a study from the New England Journal of Medicine which "370,715 induced abortions among 280,965 women" and "10,246 women with breast cancer" from Danish records, and found no correlation. This 1994 study published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, on the other hand, did find a correlation: Highest risks were observed when the abortion was done at ages younger than 18 years—particularly if it took place after 8 weeks' gestation—or at 30 years of age or older. No increased risk of breast cancer was associated with a spontaneous abortion (RR = 0.9; 95% CI = 0.7-1.2).Similarly, this 1996 article from Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reviewed existing studies, and concluded: Although the increase in risk was relatively low, the high incidence of both breast cancer and induced abortion suggest a substantial impact of thousands of excess cases per year currently, and a potentially much greater impact in the next century, as the first cohort of women exposed to legal induced abortion continues to age.This 2004 article in Cancer Causes and Control found no correlation, but I notice that it looked at both induced and spontaneous abortions--and that Journal of the National Cancer Institute study that found a correlation with induced abortions didn't find it with spontaneous abortions. It is conceivable that the correlation is weak enough that combining spontaneous abortions might wash out the results of induced abortions. I don't find a link between abortion and breast cancer implausible (there's a lot of hormonal consequences to pregnancy, and an abortion would certainly affect hormonal activity), but considering the number of variables that are correlated with abortion, I can see how even if such a connection exists, it would be very difficult to definitively prove or disprove. Labels: dark skies Feeling Especially Stupid This Morning I finished mounting the dovetail plate on Big Bertha 2.0 yesterday, and did a sufficiently slapdash job on it that I decided to replace that one square aluminum tube with one with a 1/8" wall. This way it will be stiffer, and I can do a more precise job drilling the holes because it won't be attached to the rest of the telescope when I drill them. Then, I decided to go ahead and put Big Bertha 2.0 on the CI-700 mount, which is the only one that I have with the weight rating for a 50 pound telescope. This soon led to a minor disaster for the following reasons: 1. A German equatorial mount is a balancing act. The counterweight shaft for a 50 pound telescope has to have 50 pounds of weights on it, or at least close to it. That means that when the telescope isn't on the mount, it is intrinsically unstable. 2. I had not removed an extension from the tripod that put the equatorial mount head twelve inches higher than it needed to be. Partly I didn't do this because it would have required me to drill two holes in the tripod to mount some of the CI-700 mount's electronics on it, and I was in a bit of a hurry. 3. I neglected to lock down the casters under the tripod before trying to mount the telescope, and so it was a little too willing to roll. The net result was that when my wife and I tried to put Big Bertha 2.0 into the dovetail slot on the mount, the mount (but not the telescope) fell over, landing on the counterweight shaft, and narrowly missing the 5" refractor that I had just taken off this mount. The head of most equatorial mounts (including the CI-700) are positioned in between two verticals, held in position by a bolt that squeezes the verticals tightly against the head. It isn't a great picture, but you can sort of see this (especially if you know what you are supposed to be seeing from the description above):  Click to enlarge In the case of the CI-700, there is also a latitude adjuster bolt that goes in between the bolt and the verticals, and makes it easy to adjust the mount for your latitude. The latitude adjuster bolt moves a cylinder back and forth that presses against two sets of "ears" on the under side of the head. Here you can see the latitude adjuster bolt, and the cylinder that moves back and forth against those ears.  Click to enlarge The counterweight shaft had enough force against it to break most the ears (the lobes?) off the under side of the head, and bend the latitude adjuster bolt. Here are the broken pieces of aluminum that were the ears:  Click to enlarge The ears are an integral part of the head; replacing the head would cost many hundreds of dollars--if parts were available, which they aren't. It might be possible to have them welded back in position, although I am afraid of what that might cost. I'm quite sure that epoxy wouldn't have the strength for this bond. The latitude adjuster bolt is a 3/8"-16 thread. I'm thinking of buying a bolt of the right length, turning down the end that isn't threaded, and then making a larger cylinder--large enough that it will work against the parts of the ears that weren't broken off. This means that the hole that I have to tap in it will be offset, instead of centered. Any suggestions or hints for alternative strategies? Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Obama's Gun Fanaticism David Bernstein over at Volokh Conspiracy has some useful information on where Obama was about gun control in 1999--and either he has made a 180 degree turn since then, or he was lying up a storm in Boise a few weeks ago. Heck, maybe McCain can beat the Democrat--if Obama is the Democrat. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, gun rights Monday, February 18, 2008
The Telescope Is Together It is all assembled--and weighs fifty pounds--which is darn impressive for a 17.5" reflector. I still believe that it will be stiff enough that I won't need to add the other three rails--but if I need to do so, it would still only be fifty-five pounds. The balance point is 14.5" from the mirror end of the scope. This means that the dovetail plate that will attach it to the mount will be centered at that point on the bottom rail. I have some concern that over time, the rail might bend under load. If I see any sign of this, I might swap that rail for one that is still 1" square, but with a .125" or even .25" wall. This would add 1.68 pounds for the .125" wall, or about 3.7 pounds for the .25" wall--quite acceptable increases in weight if it lets me keep the rest of it light. Some of you have asked why I didn't go with a more conventional truss design. My primary reason is this: I wanted something that I could mount on a conventional equatorial mount, and I haven't seen any truss designs that would do that. I wish that I had the energy to finish this tonight--we had a wonderfully clear (although cold) evening. Labels: telescopes McCain/Rice Eric Scheie at Classical Values is promoting the McCain/Rice ticket. Sounds good to me! Two people that seem to take the War on Terror seriously--and while McCain is a little squishy at times about gun rights, Rice isn't squishy. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Debasing the Meaning of "Felony" Eric Scheie at Classical Values has a picture of a no trespassing sign from Florida--where apparently trespassing on a construction site can be a felony. This is crazy. Felonies for most of our history have been really, really serious crimes: things like rape, murder, robbery, forgery. We keep distinctions between different categories of serious crimes because some crimes are really serious, and some are not so much. I keep thinking of that Larry Niven short story where the need for transplantable organs leads to less and less serious crimes because capital--so that executed criminals could be "parted out" for transplantation. Eventually, they get it down to jaywalking. Niven was making a joke of the problem, right? Why is trespassing on a construction site a felony, then? I'm Sure These Kids Thought It Was Funny From February 13, 2008 KRQE in Albuquerque: LOS LUNAS, N.M. (KRQE) - A pueblo police officer already mad at being served a burger spiked with marijuana is even more upset that the two men responsible got probation instead of jail sentences.No jail time? I wonder if the problem here is that much of my generation are such heavy pot users that they just can't see this as the serious crime that it is. It would be a serious matter under any circumstances--but when you know that you are going to get someone intoxicated who is: 1. Driving a car. 2. Carrying a gun. 3. Has the full power and responsibility of law enforcement behind him. This is a very serious matter. Blue Skies! It is still cold, and there's still a lot of snow on the ground, but we've have a week or more of generally blue skies! It does wonders for my attitude!  Click to enlarge It's cold at night, but clear. Getting Big Bertha's weight loss program completed is at the top of my priority list. The Telescope Is Coming Together (Part 2) Here you can see that even though I didn't have the right length and finish of bolts, I had enough of a collection of 1/4"-20 fasteners to get everything together. I don't have the mirror cell in it, so I don't know for sure whether three rails will be enough, but at least right now, I can't detect any bending when I hold it by one rail.  Click to enlarge And as I mentioned, it is going to need some repainting before final assembly. More by dumb luck than planning, there is no problem adding three more rails of the same size if needed to reduce deflection. This would only be another five pounds, and should reduce deflection by half. Labels: telescopes Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Constitution Was Not A Libertarian Document Over at Volokh Conspiracy, everyone and their brother is going on about how wonderful it is that the Supreme Court may have to decide whether state laws prohibiting various sex toys are constitutional or not. Professor Somin is the latest to chime in with this attitude that of course such laws are unconstitutional: I think this is a stupid law. Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to persuade some people that there's a difference between "stupid law" and "unconstitutional." The U.S. Constitution was not, and is not, a libertarian document. At best, it limited federal power in most areas (which the Court has generally ignored since the 1930s), limited state power in a few areas (see Art. I, secs.9 and 10), and pre-empted state power in a few others by granting these powers to the federal government (see Art. I, sec. 8). But it otherwise left nearly all power to the states. State constitutions could, and often did, protect individual rights from state tyranny, but the U.S. Constitution wasn't limiting their power. Significantly, states engaged in all sorts of regulation of sexual morality for many decades after ratification of the Bill of Rights: laws banning adultery, sodomy, premarital sex, prostitution, and obscenity. And oddly enough, I can't seem to find any examples of courts striking down those laws for violating this libertarian Constitution until very recently. This is rather like the academics who are convinced that the Second Amendment couldn't possibly protect an individual right, and then spend time trying to twist the historical evidence to suit the public policy conclusion that they want. Starting with the 14th Amendment, bits and pieces of the first eight amendments have been slowly applied to the states. Proponents of the 14th Amendment, such as Rep. John Bingham, were very clear that the privileges and immunities clause would impose the first eight amendments to the states. The Court, for a variety of stupid reasons, chose to ignore the privileges and immunities clause, and engaged in what is called "selective incorporation," slowly applying some (but not all) of those protections to the states through either the due process or equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. While they might be achieving the original intent, piecemeal, it was certainly not what was expected. Sometimes, however, rights have been plucked out of the behinds of some federal judges that can't be found in either the text, or the historical record of original intent. In the case of Griswold, Justice Douglas's opinion concluded that there was some right of privacy: The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 , as protection against all governmental invasions "of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."Yet somehow, in spite of almost a century and a half of meddling in "the privacies of life" with all sorts of laws regulating sexual morality and contraceptives, no one seems to have noticed the conflict before. As stupid as this law was, Douglas was just reaching into thin air to find a basis for striking down a law he didn't like. Even worse was Justice Goldberg's concurring opinion that found that the Ninth Amendment in some way limited state authority to pass stupid laws. Yet Madison (who was actually a proponent of a Bill of Rights that limited state power) was very clear that the Ninth Amendment limited only the federal government--not the states. See Annals of Congress, 1:456, where he very clearly recognized that there was legitimate concern that creating an enumerated list of rights might be interpreted as meaning that any rights that were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempt it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.You can read the "last clause of the fourth resolution"--the ancestor of the Ninth Amendment, at Annals of Congress, 1:452. As previously mentioned, proponents of the 14th Amendment, such as Rep. John Bingham, were very clear that the 14th Amendment's privileges and immunities clause only imposed the first eight amendments on the states. Why only eight? Because the Ninth Amendment, as Madison observed, was to protect against federal denial of individual rights: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. The Tenth Amendment was not limited to protecting individual rights; it included provisions that protected some elements of state power from an overreaching federal government: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.No matter. It doesn't matter what the Constitution says, or what everyone understood it to mean in 1789, or in 1868. This attempt to reimagine the Constitution as being a libertarian manifesto is historically inaccurate. Labels: constitutional history Obama & Fainting Instapundit mentions that people are fainting at Obama rallies. Wow! What a powerful influence he must have! When was the last time that a politician was so charismatic? Many years ago, I recall seeing an interview with William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer was an American journalist in Germany at the time of Hitler's rise to power. Shirer discussed the memerizing influence Hitler had on those present at his speeches--and how women would faint in his presence. There are a number of accounts that I can find that mention this powerful effect that Hitler had on women (using the rather quaint word "swoon"): like this one, and this one (quoting from one of Shirer's other books). I'm not saying that Obama is Hitler. I'm saying that the level of emotion about Obama means that rationality has gone completely out the door--and that's a very dangerous situation. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates |
