Sanity Hearing

Reflections on 10 Commandments Supreme Court Decision

Recently there has been some criticism of the Supreme Court's decision to not allow a judge to post the 10 Commandments in his court room.  Some sample comments from one conservative talking head:

— We CAN distribute Korans to aspiring terrorists at Guantanamo. — U.S. military

— we CAN support a governor of Arkansas to state employee, begging, "Kiss it."

— we CAN support (with our TAX $$$$) Close-up photos of women's vaginas plastered all over a portrait of the Virgin Mary — Brooklyn Museum of Art

...and a photo of a woman breastfeeding an infant, titled "Jesus Sucks." — NEA-funded performance

...and a photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open titled to suggest the infant was available for oral sex. — NEA-funded performance

...and a "F—- a Fetus" poster showing an unborn baby with the caption: "For all you folks who consider a fetus more valuable than a woman, have a fetus cook for you, have a fetus affair, go to a fetus' house to ease your sexual frustration." — NEA-funded performance

...and a performance of giant bloody tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot feces and vibrators. — NEA-funded performance

...and a novel depicting the sexual molestation of a group of 10 children in a pedophile's garage, including acts of bestiality, with the children commenting on how much they enjoyed the pedophilia. — NEA-funded publisher

...and Christ submerged in a jar of urine. — NEA-funded exhibit

...and a female performer inserting a speculum into her vagina and inviting audience members on stage to view her cervix with a flashlight. — NEA-funded performance

...and a performance of large, sexually explicit props covered with Bibles performing a wide variety of sex acts and concluding with a mass Bible-burning. — NEA-funded performance

...and a show titled "DEGENERATE WITH A CAPITAL D" featuring a display of the remains of the artist's own aborted baby. — NEA-funded exhibit

...and a play titled "Sincerity Forever," depicting Christ using obscenities and endorsing any and all types of sexual activities as consistent with Biblical teaching. — NEA-funded exhibit

...and a Essay describing then-New York Cardinal John O'Connor as a "fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas up on Fifth Avenue." Also photographs of men performing oral sex, anal sex, oral-anal sex and masturbation. — NEA-funded exhibit

That's the America you live in! A country founded on a compact with God, forged from the idea that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights is now a country where taxpayers can be forced to subsidize "artistic" exhibits of aborted fetuses. But don't start thinking about putting up a Ten Commandments display. That's offensive!

I don't want to hear any jabberwocky from the Court TV amateurs about "the establishment of religion." (1) A Ten Commandments monument does not establish a religion. (2) The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law "respecting" an establishment of religion — meaning Congress cannot make a law establishing a religion, nor can it make a law prohibiting the states from establishing a religion. We've been through this a million times.

Now the Supreme Court is itching to ban the Pledge of Allegiance because of its offensive reference to one nation "under God." (Perhaps that "God" stuff could be replaced with a vulgar sexual reference.) But with the court looking like a geriatric ward these days, they don't want to alarm Americans right before a battle over the next Supreme Court nominee. Be alarmed. This is what it's about.

My Thoughts:

My opinion is that so called "originalist" legal thought can be highly dangerous, which seems to be where this line of commentary is headed.  The "founding fathers" were by many respects dynamic men with incredible forsight to set up institutions like a national bank with a system of national debt, a bill of rights, a flexible constitution, and I could go on.  However, there are certain things that some of them believed that I simply do not agree with, or at the very least do not agree should be part of our government today.  Do not forget that many of these same men were slave owners, did not support the right of women to vote or even own property, and were probably strongly prejuduiced against non-protestant let alone non-christain religion.

The real success story of American government and our constitution has been the flexibility of the document over time in order to continue to adapt to the current social climate while simultaneously protecting citizen's rights.  The beauty of the constitution and our government is NOT to hold us in a 1700's regime of civil rights and social thinking.

In addition, the comparison between the NEA funded art and the recent anit-10 com. in courthouses decision is absolutely awful.  I fail to see them as parallel issues.  As already pointed out by others, the 10 commandment issue has to do with the formal endorsement of religion by the government, it should seem fairly elementary why putting up the ten commandments in a court room might indicate a religious bias towards non judeo-christian litigants.  The artwork, while we could argue over the completely seperate obscenity issue, has little to do with government formal endorsing religion.  State funded museums collect valuable artwork of significance in any number of religions, but no one mistakes this for an endorsement of religion.

File Sharing Revisited

The Supreme Court considers the file sharing issue today.  For once I think the authorities are headed in the right direction on this issue in recognizing that the law needs to have a light touch when it comes to meddling in new technology, which after all any semi-competant intro to macro student can tell you is a major contributor (in my opinion the single greatest) to economic growth.

In my opinion, the opponents of the file sharing make two major logical mistakes in their argument.  First of all, file sharing opponenants seem to make the major mistake of equating the number of albums downloaded with number of albums not purchased.  The argument that internet file sharing leads to a loss in album sales has simply failed to materialize and this should come to no suprise to anyone.  Afterall when tapes and CDR's and every other form of home writable media emerged on the scene, new album sales did not collapse, in fact if anything they have continued to rise.  The second major problem I see with the reasoning of these file sharing critics is the assertion that downloading songs is equivelent to copyright infringement.  I simply do not buy it.  Is it copyright infringement when I borrow a book or a CD from my local library?  Personally I do not see a lot of difference between downloading a song from a filesharing network and borrowing a CD from your local library.  I also fear that as media, including literature, becomes increasingly electronic any precedents against file sharing are going to result in the effectual destruction of libraries.  Are we going to see a day when Metallica is suing the local library because loaning out their new CD is resulting in revenue they are "losing"?  I suggest that that day is not so far off.

Driving Age

Article on raising driving age

This idea is one that I have heard bumped around before.  I do not anticipate much happening unless there is pressure exerted by the insurance lobby, but that would not exactly shock me either.

Part of what colors my feelings about this issue are my experience (albeit limited) as an exchange student in Germany at 17 years old.  Germany is well known for having no speed limits at all on certain areas of their highway despite the fact that they have fewer number of accidents than here in the U.S.  At least when I was in Germany, the national German driving age was 18 years old.  At the time, I was there I had been driving for a year and a half, although with a minor fender bender already under my belt (sorry mom), meanwhile an 18 year old friend of our family that I knew and visited was just beginning to learn how to drive on an ancient manual shift Range Rover.  The interesting flip side to this paradigm is that when I went to Germany at 17 I had probably only had a small number of beers in my entire life (I was a nerd, I know) and the legal drinking age in the U.S. is/was 21, meanwhile in Germany the drinking age is an astonishing 16.  Although German kids at the school I went to could have drank Frank the Tank under the table, they could not yet drive. 

It was interesting because Americans absolutely cringe at the idea of lowering the drinking age for a variety of puritanical moral reasons.  Granted, at 24 I really have no stake in the situation either way really- make the drinking age 25 if you really like- I can probably hold out for another 22 days.  But the thing that always perplexed me about the situation in the U.S. is that we are willing to let an immature kid drive a 1 ton car, then at 18 let him go fight and die for the military as well as vote, and then at 21 when he is likely finally off to college and free of his parents for the first time in the company of thousands of other kids just like him do we give him his first taste of legal alcohol-- if you ask me this is a disaster cocktail.  It really truly would make more sense to allow kids to truly get experimentation with alcohol when they are 16 (when most are doing so anyways, albeit it illegally) in a forum where parents and adults can actually serve as a safe guard.  I am sure college students would still have great parties, but you would likely have a lot less kids driving drunk or getting alcohol poisoning freshman year. 

Sadly I do not see this happening.  Madd and DARE and other groups, good causes though they are, will probably take a prohibition style stand to young kids drinking, which of course is ironic since their kids are the same ones sneaking hooch into the SAFE parties and proms and then driving drunk afterwards.

Useless Knowledge

I seem to have an extremely deep mental library of obscure pop-culture references. When I am having a conversation with someone I cannot help thinking of how what they are telling me seems similar to something I saw on an episode of the Sopranos, or how a quotation from Family Guy would seem funny at this juncture. Let me give you just one example (this actually occurred last night):
Matt: (looking at table next to us full of kids who are in fact mostly asian) wow, seems like an asian invasion around here ever since the college kids came back.
Me: The reminds me of Cable Guy, you know where Ben Stiller's character is testifying in the mock-menendez trial thing and he's like "I didn't get a good look at them...but I think they were asian"
Matt: (looking at me like I am crazy) Yeah, totally. haha.
And as lame as an example as that is- it serves to illustrate the frequency that this type of thing happens.

The problem is that while I have this vast knowledge and the uncanny ability to recall it without a moments hesitation, it is essentially useless outside of the realm of trivial pursuit (maybe). I suppose I remember some stuff from books as well, but still- no practical use in society. You cannot make a dollar buy explaining what you think the scene in the Great Gatsby means when Gatsby is throwing all his custom made shirts out on his bed and Daisy is rolling around in them in front of her husband. See, the name of characters from the Simpsons is taking up space in my brain where I need to put more "important" things like, for example the federal rules of civil procedure.

The best solution I can come up with is if through some sort of grassroots lobbying effort I could get congress to add a new rule to the Federal Rules of Evidence, so that in my future career as a lawyer I could use my pop-culture knowledge in some sort of practical fashion. I am not totally sure what the rule would need to say, but something along lines allowing me to bring up any sort of pop-culture reference in court so long as it is rellevant and not outweighed by the unfair prejuduice it would have on the jury by me bringing it up (if you've taken evidence, then you might find this funny- rule 403 balancing test? no? not suprised). In my head I picture it going something like this:

Other lawyer: (Questioning witness) Isn't it true that you told your wife that you were going to stab her with the grapefruit knife if she didn't stop hassling you about cleaning out the garage?
Me: Objection your honor!
Judge: On what grounds
Me: The rule of "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer," Michael Corleone, from the Godfather.
Judge: Sustained.
Me: Sweet.

I know it's a long shot, but think how much more interesting trials would be. If I succeed in getting this approved somehow I think the next rule should be to require a courtroom two drink minimum- now that would definitely make things more interesting.