Congressional Reform, Part Two

"'Tis not therefore for Kent or Sussex, Lewis or Maidstone, but for the whole nation, that the members chosen in these places are sent to serve in Parliament: and tho it be fit for them as friends and neighbors (so far as may be) to hearken to the opinions of the electors for the information of their judgments, and to the end that what they shall say may be of more weight, when everyone is known not to speak his own thoughts only, but those of a great number of men; yet they are not strictly and properly obliged to give account of their actions to any, unless the whole body of the nation for they serve, and who are equally concerned in their resolutions could be assembled."
Algernon Sidney
Discourses on Government, p 565.

Lex Misericordia

"Sir, there is no human enactment which is just that is not a re-enactment of the law of God."
William Henry Seward
Higher Law Speech

Laws Lean on One Another, Part Two

"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex and sooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them."

Edmund Burke
Letters on a Regicide Peace, p 126.

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?

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The Strange Death of Humor, Part Two

This is directed to those of you who write what passes for comedy in 2010. Down's Syndrome is not a hoot. Have you traded in your humanity? What is wrong with you? Do other people's problems make you feel like laughing? Oh, it's your politics. So it is all right to make fun of diseases, so long as it advances your political position. It's vivisection morality again. THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION, WHILE THE WORST ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY.

Things Reversed

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The Falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION, WHILE THE WORST
ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W.B. Yeats
"The Second Coming"

Laws Lean On One Another

"[S]uch traditions should neither be designated laws nor left unformulated. They are the mortises of a constitution, the connecting links between all the enactments already reduced to writing, and preserved by it, and those yet to be recorded, a true corpus of ancestral and primitive tradition which, rightly instituted and duly followed in practice, will serve as a sure shield for all the statutes hitherto committed to writing, while if they swerve from the right bounds, it is as when a builder's supports give and subside under his edifice; the result is a general collapse of one part upon another, substructure and all that has been so admirably built upon it alike, when once the original supports have fallen."
Plato
Laws, Book Seven, p 176
(A.E. Taylor trans.)

Endorsements

No one really cares about what candidates Estase picks for Illinois's Republican primary, but here goes anyway.

Governor- Dan Proft. He seems to be a solid conservative who might help purify the cloaca maxima of Springfield. No Republican is likely to become governor anyway,but my money is on Proft.

Senator- Patrick Hughes. He is what I think of when I think of a Republican--someone with genuinely conservative social values. What's more, the only other conservative in the race carries some nasty birther baggage. Therefore, I'm going with Hughes to replace the big Dick who is our current Senator.

Typical Squishys

Mark Kirk--someone who calls himself a fiscal conservative, because no one would call him any other kind of conservative. Why is it that the Illinois GOP continues to offer us Durbin-lite instead of a real choice?

Enough Already!

The Night of the Big Wind in Ireland was an incident in the 1840's where hurricane force winds tore the roofs of of thousands of Irish cottages right before temperatures dropped precipitously and snow fell. Many thousands of people died as a result. Yesterday's earthquake in Haiti raises the question once again--why do horrible things happen to countries that have already suffered enough?

Vivisection Morality

"The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community-- which may dispose of it as an expirimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb."

This example of Saul Alinsky type morals comes from Darkness at Noon, page 127, by Arthur Koestler.

From Sinai's Height

I always thought that pro-choice meant being free to choose whether or not to be involved with abortion. That abortion is not about choice is shown by events at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where nurse Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a Catholic nurse, was forced to participate in a non-emergency abortion on a 22-week pregnancy. The details can be found at www.hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/12/12/pro-life-nurse-forced-to-assist-an-abortion.

BEAR TO THE RIGHT

BEAR TO THE RIGHT
I have an idea-- announce a moratorium on building settlements in Judea and Samaria that commences when Iran abandons all its nuclear program. It would be really nice if our government were as tough on Iran as it is on Israel.

The Catholic Key Blog: Bishop John Wester Challenges Senate, Obama to Allow Undocumented Immigrants Health Coverage

The Catholic Key Blog: Bishop John Wester Challenges Senate, Obama to Allow Undocumented Immigrants Health Coverage
I wish Bishop Wester's ilk cared as much about abortion as they do about inflating our deficit to pay for illegals to get free health care.

Rinky Dink Reading Lists, Rated X

Anyone looking for a real gross-out that won't make you feel like eating for a few days should go to FirstThings.com. They have a very disturbing story about the recommended reading list that Kevin Jennings's organization created for children to read. It includes fun books about first grade boys having sex, wholesome stuff for kids to read. What kind of a psycho thinks that Kevin Jennings has any business being allowed near a school, let alone being made the man in charge of making them safe? How entangled with the promotion of homosexuality is President Obama?

Freedom of Speech

"A freedom of raillery, a liberty in decent language to question everything, and an allowance of unravelling or refuting any argument, without offense to the arguer, are the only terms which can render such speculative conversations in any way agreeable(p 49)."

A.A. Cooper (Lord Shaftesbury)
Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times

An Observation

The difference between a statesman and a politician is the difference between Susan Boyle and Britney Spears. The statesman looks unimpressive and performs well, and the politician is slick and, well, does not perform well. See also Plato's Gorgias, where the philosopher is compared to the physician and the rhetor is compared to the chef.

The Confused and Scuffling Bustle of Local Agency, Part Two

The trillion dollar stimulus was sold to us as a necessary job-saving measure. Now the government website Recovery.gov is claiming jobs were saved in congressional districts that do not even exist. This is not a mistake on the part of the government, it is a deliberate effort to decieve the American people into believing that this series of pork programs have done something they have not and will not do--save or create jobs.

Why Systematizers Are Wrong, Part Three

"In short, my lord, all these systems are so many enchanted castles, they appear to be something, they are nothing but appearances: like them too, dissolve the charm, and they vanish from the sight(p9). The philosopher begins with reason and ends with imagination. The historian inverts this order: he begins without memorials and he sometimes ends with them (p70)."
Henry St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke)
Study and Use of History

Remember Joe?

Last week, Frank Rich railed that by rejecting a liberal Republican in New York state, conservatives were "eating their own." Mr. Rich never showed much concern when his own party did exactly the same thing to liberal hawk Joseph Lieberman. (Remember my August 2007 blog "Hypocritical Kos," which was about a tasteless photo promulgated by Daily Kos showing the Senator's head at the level of President Bush's waist.) What is good politics for Democrats is barbarism for Republicans.