Quick thoughts on segue day
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007So many thoughts, so little time.
Virginia Tech Tragedy
My heart goes out to the friends and families of the victims of this horrific attack. I haven’t written this week largely due to this tragedy; not ready to write about the events that unfolded Monday morning and not interested in writing about anything else with this weighing so heavily on my mind.
Tonight the major TV news outlets are showing clips of a video this murderer made before he killed all of these innocent people. While showing the video may fill a need to satisfy a morbid curiosity, I hope it does not serve as a catalyst for others to follow this same path.
Some, like Rosie O’Donnell, will take this as an opportunity to push a gun control agenda; others will blame a society where we protect the rights of potentially dangerous people at the risk of leaving ourselves vulnerable to this type of tragedy (I fall somewhat into that category). But the bottom line is that we will never be able to protect ourselves and our children from evil 100% of the time.
In situations like this, we feel helpless and afraid. Our reaction, as we have seen in past encounters with evil such as 911, is to respond by grasping for answers, looking for something or someone to blame, because if we can figure out who or what is to blame, maybe we can prevent it from ever happening again and move on with our lives.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
Stricter controls on guns may or may not have prevented this particular incident from occurring on this particular day, but evil will find a way. Allowing professors to carry weapons on campus, as some have suggested, may have reduced the carnage, but there is no guarantee.
Perhaps if privacy laws were not so strict, Seung-Hui would never have been flying under the radar and would not have been in a position to carry out his delusion driven attack; then again, perhaps others who are no threat to anyone would be shunned and isolated simply because they sought treatment for depression at some point in their lives. Where’s the balance? Is there a right answer? I think it really depends…
Speaking of Rosie…
After Columbine, Rosie said we need more gun control laws (even though several gun laws on the books were already broken in that incident, which would lead one to believe more laws would have simply meant more broken laws).
Then in 2002, Rosie explained she didn’t really mean it, admitting her body guards carry guns and indicating her comments after Columbine were based upon an emotional knee-jerk reaction. She said that all she wants is all guns to be licensed and registered:
Now, following the Virginia Tech incident, Rosie says we should amend the Constitution and that we need to take away “illegal” handguns:
So… how do we decide who has the right to carry a hand gun and who does not? Seems like, according to folks like Rosie, it depends on who you are. If you are a Rosie O’Donnell, you have a right to carry a hand gun or have a hired gun; the rest of us need to be kept in line.
Two classes, two sets of rights.
Speaking of class…
The governor of a state should not consider himself above the laws of the state he has been elected to lead.
Shortly after the accident involving NJ Gov. Jon Corzine, nearly as high a priority as ensuring the governor was cared for was finding someone to blame. There was a search for the mystery truck that caused the chain event that lead to Gov. Corizine being rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
One thing that caused me to smirk, just a bit, was thinking about how much time and effort would have been put in to find that mystery truck, which was not actually involved in the accident itself, if you or I had been in that passenger seat instead of the Governor of New Jersey. How often is an accident caused by a vehicle not involved in the actual crash and how much resource is expended trying to find that vehicle?
But we must find those responsible for the governor’s critical injuries and bring them to justice. That is the way we view the world these days… some one must be blamed and punished.
With all due respect, and continuing sympathy and concern for his current situation, the governor need look no further than his mirror to find the person who is responsible for his being so badly injured.
For starters, we learn that the governor does not wear a seat belt. I often questioned the man’s judgment when he was a senator, but this indicates three things to me. First, being among the US aristocracy exempts him from the rules you and I must abide by; second, he is going to do whatever he wants regardless of the evidence, whether it be seat belts or taxes; and third, no matter what happens, it’s someone else’s fault.
Then we learn that the SUV he was riding in was traveling at 91 mph!!!!!
I have never in my life traveled at 91 mph, even in states with much higher speed limits than New Jersey. I can’t imagine so blatantly breaking the laws of NJ when I visit. Not only did he endanger himself and his staff (yes, I know he wasn’t driving, but do you think the state trooper who was driving that fast was doing so without, at a minimum, the full knowledge of the governor?), he endangered every other person he passed on the road that day. Why? because he is the governor and can do what he wants. (By the way, does it bother anyone else that a state police official added that speed was “not a factor” in the accident.
If you are driving 91mph in New Jersey and you have an accident, speed is a factor. (Unless of course the driver is a state trooper and the passenger is the governor… than someone else is 100% to blame.) What politicians like Corzine tend to forget is that they are governor because they were elected to represent the people, they are not kings or dukes who are above the laws that are there to keep the rest of us in line.
This is an excellent opportunity for him to prove me wrong on at least one point and do some good at the same time. After he has recovered enough to breath on his own (and I pray that happens soon and that he has a full recovery), he needs to admit he was wrong, subject himself to whatever appropriate legal actions would be taken with anyone else in a similar situation, and become an advocate for following traffic safety laws, using himself as an example of what can go very wrong when you don’t follow the laws of the state that he leads.
And speaking of laws…
Congratulations to the US Supreme Court for getting it right:
Yahoo/AP & AFP: The US Supreme Court backtracked on abortion rights for the first time in more than a generation Wednesday, upholding a federal law banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure.
The controversial procedure — carried out after the fifth month of pregnancy when the fetus poses a danger to the mother’s health — was banned by the US Congress in 2003, after lawmakers concluded it was not medically necessary.
Keep in mind.. Congress passed a law banning the procedure, the President signed it into law, and the Supreme Court affirmed the law is Constitutional. Three branches of the US Government, all in agreement. Period.
So, what does Justice Ginsberg have to say about it:
“Today’s decision is alarming,” Ginsburg wrote in dissent for the court’s liberal bloc. She said the ruling “refuses to take … seriously” previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.
“It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases,” she said.
“For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman’s health,” Ginsburg wrote.
Found necessary and proper by whom? The process worked madam. Congress writes laws, the president signs them, and your only roll is to determine if they fit within constitutional bounds… not legislate from the bench as the more liberal courts have established as their domain.
I’ve always found it fascinating that we must assume that the previous decisions by the Supreme Court are right and that the court is infallible… until a court disagrees with the liberal view of the world, then the decision is flawed.
If, as Ginsberg implies, the Supreme Court should never reverse previous positions, we might still be living in the dark days of slavery in this country (read up on Dred Scott v. Sandford):
Claiming Missouri citizenship, Scott sued Sanford for his freedom in the federal court in St. Louis. Sanford’s lawyers argued that Scott could not be a citizen because he was a slave and a Negro. The court ruled against Scott on May 15, 1854. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act two weeks later, opening areas of the West to slavery where it had been banned by the Missouri Compromise. Furious northerners burned its author, Stephen A. Douglas, in effigy. On July 4, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, crying, “So perish all compromises with tyranny.”
Fighting broke out in Kansas and made the expansion of slavery the issue in the 1856 Presidential campaign, won by James Buchanan. The Supreme Court heard argument in Dred Scott. v. Sandford in February 1856, reached the end of its term, then heard argument again in December. In February 1857, a majority of the Justices agreed to follow precedent and say that the ruling of the highest state court was final—that Scott was a slave under state law. Such a narrow finding would leave unresolved two dangerously controversial issues: Whether or not a free Negro might be a citizen of the United States; and whether or not the 1820 Missouri Compromise was constitutional.
When it was learned that two dissenting Justices planned to argue that Congress in fact had the power to regulate slavery in the territories, that under the Missouri Compromise Scott was a free man and a citizen, the majority decided to enlarge the scope of the decision and deny the power of Congress. Some members hoped the Court’s opinion would resolve the question, win acceptance, and possibly save the Union. Newly elected President James Buchanan may have shared that hope; in his Inaugural Address on March 4, he promised that “in common with all good citizens” he would “cheerfully submit” to the Court’s decision. Two days later the Justices began to deliver eight separate opinions. The majority ruled that Scott was still a slave. Three, including Taney, said no Negro, even if free, could hold citizenship in the United States. And for the first time since 1803, the Court held an Act of Congress null and void. Under the Constitution, it announced, Congress had no power to limit the expansion of slavery by law, as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had done.
So.. our infallible Supreme Court said that Congress did not have the power to limit the expansion of slavery, that Dred Scott must remain a slave even though he had argued he was freed when he was brought to a free territory, and three justices said that “no Negro, even if free, could hold citizenship in the United States”.
They were wrong then.. Ginsberg and Co are wrong now. And what of our Dem candidates for president?:
The leading Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, quickly denounced the decision as a threat to women’s health.
Yeah, maybe, but the evidence presented contradicts this position. It will, however, do wonders for the health of near-term babies who are sacrificed through this barbaric procedure.
Congress, the President and the Supreme Court are in synch here, but we are to believe Hillary, Barack and John all know better.
Again.. congratulations to the US Supreme Court for having the courage to resist the pressure to follow precedent and free the unborn child from the torture of partial birth abortion.
