et ceteras

Obamacare

Although the U.S. Supreme Court will not hand down its findings for at least two months, this week the battle over Obamacare -- specifically, the lawsuit brought by 26 states in opposition to it -- is being publicly fought as the opposing sides present their arguments.

Without getting caught up in any of the legal mumbo jumbo about severability and whether the fine for not purchasing health insurance should be considered a penalty or a tax, the bottom line is this: Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government granted permission to force people to enter into contracts. The idea that the federal government could do that is antithetical to the very concept of freedom; and if it is allowed to do so, then by logic and precedent there will be no limit to the power it can wield over us.

If the Court lets “the individual mandate” stand, America will cease to exist -- because America is an ideal, not a piece of land, and the mandate crushes the American ideal under an authoritarian boot.

If the Court strikes down the mandate and allows the rest of Obamacare to stand, America will not cease to exist but will still be in danger -- because even without the mandate, Obamacare extends the reach of the feds much further into private affairs than the Founding Fathers ever intended.

Trayvon

The death of Trayvon Martin is a perfect example of why media members and public figures should not opine about an ongoing investigation when they don ’t have all the facts.

From the 911 tapes it is clear that George Zimmerman decided to chase Martin without provocation. Further, it is clear that if he had not made that decision, Martin would still be alive. This is tragic and it is fair to say Zimmerman should bear accountability, but that is where clarity ends.

Unfortunately, before collecting all the facts, the usual suspects rushed to manipulate their coverage so that Martin’s death would resemble a race murder from the Jim Crow South…The media published photos of Martin from several years ago so that everyone visualized him as a sweet-faced boy of 13 or 14, rather than the 6-foot-2 person he was at the end…And they reported that he was black without saying anything about Zimmerman’s ethnicity, leading everyone to assume Zimmerman was “lily white” because of that Germanic-sounding name…And of course, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton proceeded to stoke the flames of enmity.

Then, when it leaked out that Zimmerman is Hispanic, the media tripped all over themselves trying to ignore and then “deal with” this fact that does not fit their preferred narrative. And ever since that happened, things have only gotten murkier…The more we learn about Martin, the less sympathetic he appears to be. But that of course does not mean he deserved to die…The more we learn about eyewitness accounts, the more it seems like Zimmerman had reason to believe his life was in jeopardy when he pulled the trigger. But that of course does not mean Martin didn’t have reason to believe his life was in jeopardy.

This case is bad all the way around.

Che

Che Guevarra was a murdering thug who sent innocent people to concentration camps for disagreeing with him. He once said “my nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood,” and in a letter to his father he wrote “I really like killing.” He considered it delinquent behavior to listen to rock music, to have long hair, and to write poetry, and his stated goal for Cuba was to “make individualism disappear from the nation.” It irks me that so many Westerners -- many of whom are long-haired rockers and poets, ironically enough -- idolize Che and believe he was a man of the people.

Well, the Irish city of Galway is considering erecting a statue in Che’s honor, and real life Che victim Carlos Eire recently wrote a superb critique of the idea. It was published in the Galway Advertiser and you can read it here. Trust me, you will get more out of his handful of paragraphs than you ever will from one of my blogposts.

And finally…

I rarely, if ever, trust journalists when it comes to…well, anything, but what I was going to say is that I rarely if ever trust them when it comes to reporting on “the environment.” This article about a giant Atlantic sturgeon shows why: In one paragraph it says the species is “quite common,” and in the next it says it is on the endangered species list. Need I say more?