Snowflake to the D's in Congress

How about creating a new Medicare program, "Part E", as the "public option"? Republicans are suddenly defending Medicare. They created Medicare "Part D". Their response to "Medicare Part E" should be comedy gold!

Alex Budarin


UPDATE: Okay, it already is comedy gold, courtesy of Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican Party. See his interview with National Public Radio here.

"Snowflake" to the President

"Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked."

Yogi Berra

Republicans Behaving Badly

President Obama and his policies seem to bring out the worst in those people who constitute the current Republican base. Even when the topic is something as boring as government-insured healthcare!

I think I know the roots of this Mad Tea Party.

The core issue in this dispute is the role of government. Republicans believe that the government should have a role in our defense and little else. They trust corporations more than they trust government. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that government also has an obligation to ensure the general welfare and equal protection of American citizens. When corporations, public and private, fail to ensure the general welfare and equal protection of American citizens, democrats believe the government is obliged to intervene on behalf of American citizens. Because Republicans do not recognize any constitutional obligation for ensuring the well-being and rights of anyone beyond themselves, they are outraged that the arc of American politics since 1901 has inclined more and more in favor of the democratic ideal. This has been true even under Republican Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt [Pure Food & Drug Act, Employers Liability Act, railroad regulation, and trust-busting] and Richard Nixon [Consumer Product Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration]. But it has been most dramatic under Democratic Presidents, such as Franklin Roosevelt, who was responsible for the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Administration, and Lyndon Johnson, who pushed for Medicare and The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Republicans fought loudly and bitterly against Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. Franklin Roosevelt, like Obama today, was accused of engaging in socialism.

So, what happened after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs were enacted? American capitalism flourished and spread. And it will do so again with “Obamacare.” Far from destroying capitalism, it will encourage Americans to try setting up businesses, because they will never have to worry about finding and paying for individual health insurance for themselves and their families at the same time that they are trying to get a business going. “Obamacare” will be there.

The reality is that the government programs which were instituted to ensure the general welfare and equal protection of American citizens have helped maintain our society. The “America” that they replaced was an America that was obscene in its cruelty and callousness toward the well-being of Americans. Maybe Republicans love “America”, they just dislike and distrust their fellow Americans. We can not let this country fail just to calm their paranoia.

Republicans must remember that Obama has the power and the authority that a majority of the American voters gave him. He is doing what the majority of Americans voters elected him to do. Republicans will have to live with this like I had to live with the fact that George W. Bush was my President for 8 years.

Parlor Wit

Courtesy of Mike Keefe, The Denver Post and Intoon.com

Constitutional Purposivism

About a month ago, NPR [National Public Radio] reported about the debate over interpretation of the U.S. constitution. The report noted that conservative jurists, particularly Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, are advocates of “constitutional originalism,” defined as “adherence to the ‘original intent’ of the creators of the Constitution.” We’re talking about strict interpretation of the document. Literalism. Only what is said is covered. If it is not there, it is not covered.

The NPR report suggested that U.S. liberals did not have a coherent counter-theory of constitutional interpretation. My research on the Internet suggests that there is and has been a popular liberal counter-theory: constitutional purposivism. According to “purposivism”, the constitution (and other laws) should be interpreted “in light of the purpose behind the legislation.”

Sometimes our Constitution sets highly specific standards, such as when it says the President must be at least 35 years of age. But elsewhere it uses language which is open to interpretation, such as in the Fourth Amendment, where it says that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

An “originalist” would argue that there is nothing explicitly written in the Fourth Amendment about “individual privacy” or “abortion rights”, so these concepts have no basis for protection under the U.S. Constitution. The stated purposes of the Constitution are irrelevant. The modern consequences of such an interpretation are irrelevant.

A “purposivist” judge, on the other hand, would consider the stated or implied purpose when interpreting the Constitution. There are modern circumstances to be considered, broad language in the source document, and a question about the consequences of applying the law in a literalist fashion: if you applied the law literally, how would the results compare with the intended purpose of the law? The Constitution was written for a purpose. The purpose therefore matters when you interpret it.

You will have guessed that I am inclined toward purposivism. I believe the Constitution should be interpreted with an eye toward the purposes stated in its Preamble. It clearly states that its purpose is to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” I think it is logical to conclude that any interpretation of the Constitution should consider whether the interpretation advances or defeats its stated purposes. Considering the stated purposes of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment can be read as generally protecting citizens from unreasonable government intrusion into their private lives.

This argument reminds me of Jesus’s reported arguments with the Pharisees [Matthew 12]. The Pharisees accused Jesus of “working” on the Sabbath, which was against the law, because it was the Sabbath and he was busy healing people. Jesus reportedly replied that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” In my opinion, Jesus was being a purposivist.