Category: Society & Politics

The Clowns of the Courts

Last year, the elected Supreme Court Chief Justice of Alabama was told by a federal appeals court judge to remove a piece of furniture from his courthouse. In that case, no law was being broken, and the Judge Moore’s refusal to comply cost him is position. [See Rule of Law verses Rule of Judges]

Now, in San Francisco, the mayor has ordered that marriage licenses be given to homosexual couples, despite the fact that California citizens voted overwhelmingly to make it law that a marriage is between one man and one woman. In this case, the mayor is clearly breaking the law, and no legal or constitutional acrobatics are necessary to realize that. Unlike in the Alabama Ten Commandments issue, there is a clear law on the books in California prohibiting what is being allowed in San Francisco.

And yet, nothing is being done. It is in fact the responsibility of the governor of California to oversee the execution of California’s laws. However, Governor Schwarzenegger has simply issued a statement that he “encourages” San Francisco officials to abide by the law. How nice… and the courts? They are allowing this show to go on for a while because someone misplaced a semicolon in a legal filing. Perhaps the California courts will eventually affirm that the marriage licenses in question are invalid, but the damage has been done.

What we have here is a clear and blatant double-standard. Where Judge Moore broke no law and merely did not bow to the whim of an activist judge, the mayor of San Francisco is openly defying a law recently passed by the majority of California voters, and getting away with it. Whereas Judge Moore could be attacked and vilified because he was upholding what he believed was the foundation of law in Alabama, Mayor Gavin is untouchable because his cause is politically correct and designed to completely dismantle the traditional definition of a family unit.

If this continues and so-called “gay marriage” eventually becomes legal in the US, a government marriage license will be utterly meaningless.

Democrats not satisfied with National Guard documents

Today Bush released hundreds of documents in an effort to show that he really, honestly did serve in the National Guard. Democrats, who now care about military service since it suits them (what with Kerry having been in Vietnam and all), are unconvinced. It’s now rumored that Bush will order the de-classification of time travel technology so that they can go back in time to Alabama and actually see Bush appearing for duty. Democrats respond that even that would not be convincing enough. Terry McAuliffe was recently overheard suggesting that Bush’s dental records (also released recently) were faked by Carl Rove, and that he can’t wait for the presidential debates so that Americans can see that unlike Bush, Kerry really does have teeth.

Republican by default

When I was a teenager and Clinton was elected president (oh, dark of days it was), it was good to be a Republican. For as a Republican, you stood against the higher taxes and government entitlements and waste that the Democrats wanted to foist upon the country in effort to build their “government is daddy” utopia. You could actually hold your head up high and say that you stood for something different than the prevailing wisdom in Washington.

But now, in a time when Republicans own the government, it is not so good to be a Republican. Indeed, for me, the victorious feeling I had when Bush beat Gore (and he did, so get over it!) and when the Republicans gained complete control of Congress two years later, has turned bitter and cynical. The party I was so gleeful to see gain power after so many years as a minority has squandered their moral authority in less time than it took Clinton to get caught in an “inappropriate” relationship with an intern.

Now the inappropriate relationship is that of the Republicans and big government.

I don’t care about deficit spending. If we need to spend more money on defense and homeland security, do it. The government should never be running a surplus, because that inherently means that the government is stealing from the taxpayer.

But I do care about waste and ever-ballooning government programs. Spending billions of dollars to find out if Mars was ever wet is a waste of taxpayer money. Billions of dollars being flushed down the toilet of the NEA is a waste of taxpayer money. Billions of dollars being sent to third-world countries is a waste of taxpayer money when that money does nothing but enable poor economic policy. And spending even more Federal tax dollars on education is a total and complete waste, when all of the research shows that the more money we spend on schools, the worse they perform — to say nothing of the inherent problem of making everyone drink at the trough of government welfare education.

It is sad to have to say why I am a Republican. I am a Republican because I am loathe to be a Democrat. I am a Republican, because if I voted for Democrats, I would be voting for even more wasteful spending, and side-orders of bad security policy and legalized infanticide on top of higher taxes. And I am a Republican because I am not extreme enough to be a Libertarian and I have to be somewhat pragmatic in the voting booth.

Oh, I know that there are still a lot of Republican representatives who are not big-spending, government bloating, vote-buying, NEA-appeasing weasels. And I hope that they knock some sense into the Republican leadership and get things under control. But until they do, I will be a Republican by default.