This is not the
time nor the place to argue about this.
What the public should do is resume masking in public places, even if
most there remain unmasked, seek outdoor seating in restaurants, keep current with available vaccines and continue
simple ‘at home’ testing.
That is my
advice. Senior citizens and those with
compromised immune systems, diabetes and cardiovascular histories should pay
particular attention to it.
I am not a
physician, but as Bob Dylan sang back in 1965, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows.’
“A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
In the eyes of too many Americans, the Second Amendment (fully and
correctly reproduced above in
red), is treated by them as if it reads as follows, (in
blue below) justifying rebellion.
Of course, the Framers never intentionally provided making such a ‘poison
pill’ available to take down the Constitution they were creating. Some people today
believe that they did. And some are sitting in Congress.
In their minds, this is the imaginary content of the Second
Amendment: ‘An
unregulated Militia, being necessary to enable the people to overthrow a
government which they believe threatens the security of a free State, or of
that very government itself, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.’
* * * *
The previous
blog posting addressed the problem of gun violence. That issue is of such importance that we are
addressing it again today, a bit more specifically. Please re-read Wednesday’s posting and what
follows.
Unfortunately, to repeal the Second Amendment would require, if initiated in Congress or by a convention of States, the support of two thirds of both Houses of Congress and subsequent approval by the legislatures of three quarters of the States. If we wait for that to happen, all readers of this will be dead from natural causes, an exit strategy at least preferable to gun violence.
Therefore, because
such repeal according to the Constitution (Article Five) seems next to impossible,
a ‘de facto’ repeal of the Second Amendment must be accomplished by an
interpretation of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court, based on the
Amendment’s words, not by political agendas. The
weakness of that solution is that nothing prevents a future Supreme Court from
ruling otherwise, as they recently did regarding abortion rights, but it is the
best that we can hope for.
Such an interpretation should recognize that because we
no longer have militias in this country, the Amendment’s first thirteen words are
totally unnecessary and meaningless. (The National Guard, the closest thing that today’s
States have comparable to such militias, follows the regulations of the
nation’s armed forces and does not depend on its members bringing their own
arms, so the Amendment does not relate to it at all.) So,
let’s forget about miliitias.
This leaves the Amendment’s final fourteen words (‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed’) standing alone, protecting the right of anyone to keep
and bear arms for any purpose and without limitation. This
is very dangerous and was never the intention of the Framers and is the cause of
our being where we are today, in the midst of an epidemic of bloody gun
violence in this country.
In summary, the
next best thing to repeal would be a Supreme Court interpretation that (1) recognizes
the obsolescence of the first thirteen words of the Amendment, and (2) limits its
final fourteen words to ‘a right of the people, not to be infringed, to keep
and bear arms for sport and target shooting, hunting and personal protection of
one’s home or business, as regulated by the States or other jurisdictions, but
excluding any weaponry designed for military use.’
It’s that simple
unless you went to law school and became a judge.
As I wrote on
Wednesday, getting a Supreme Court to do this now would require the President
to nominate Justices who would favor such an approach, even if it meant
expanding the size of the Supreme Court. Without such an expansion, the President would
have to wait for at least three existing Justices to die or retire.
In the 1930s, President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was ready to do precisely that but did not have to
when challenges to his New Deal legislation dissipated, his threat to expand
the Court being sufficient. But FDR had
strong majorities in both Houses of Congress behind him, something President
Biden lacks.
A simple
majority of Senators, including the vote of the Vice-President in the event of
a tie, is all that is needed to approve a nomination to the Supreme Court. THE
CHALLENGE IS ACCOMPLISHING THE PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION BY CONGRESS ALLOWING THAT
INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF JUSTICES!
The Constitution
is silent on the number of Supreme Court Justices, leaving it to Congress, but
the Court’s own website points out that the number of Justices has been changed
six times before settling on the present number in 1869. There is no prohibition on more
such changes being made by Congress, in fact the Judiciary Act of 2021 did
exactly that, including the addition of four more Justices, but that
legislation, introduced in April of 2021, never made it out of committee
consideration.
Unfortunately,
Republican control of the new House of Representatives will soon make passage
of such legislation impossible, the Democratic majority in the Senate, alone
not being enough.
Passage of this
legislation was something Democrats should have fought for while having
majorities in both Houses of Congress.
But they didn’t. And that is not
their problem - - - It is your problem and America’s problem!
JL
*
* * *
Wrapping Up Thanksgiving
Heather Cox
Richardson (in her daily newsletter, ‘Letter From an American,’) included this
in her Thanksgiving Message, after pointing out how the holiday, barely
observed until then, served to inspire Americans at the time of the Civil War
to unite to preserve that for which we all should give thanks.
‘In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from
taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight
against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive.
But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields
even as they continued to work on the home front to create a government that
defended democracy and equality before the law. And they won.’
And speaking of Thanksgiving, I was disappointed in the TV coverage of the traditional Thanksgiving Day parades. True, they have always been commercially sponsored, but this year, the floats promoting various businesses and entertainment enterprises far outnumbered the traditional presence of high school bands, the balloons, and floats manned by the employees of the stores, such as Macy's, which remained the parade's overall sponsor. I seem to remember that parades in other cities than New York used to be featured as well, but they were absent this year. The 'commentators' describing the parade on TV came off as second rate shills for their networks.
Most shocking to me was the presentation of Mariah Carey as the 'Queen of Christmas.' Did anyone consider that this might offend those whose religion already provided them with a Queen of Christmas? They might have crowned Ms. Carey as 'the Princess of The North Pole' or something like that instead.
Hope you enjoyed your Turkey.
The
recent unexpected success of Democrats in most of the country, pushing back on forty years of
conservative efforts to dismantle the policies that have contributed to the
nation's growth, have been conspicuously absent in Texas and Florida. That is not because of the voters in those States, but because
of the non-voters there. Despite issues
that affected their own interests, too many citizens in these two States just
didn’t vote. Only about 49% of eligible voters turned out in Florida and about
45% in Texas. Maine had the highest
turnout, about 60%. Floridians and Texans apparently prefer watching football
and exchanging barbecue recipes to political involvement.
I have written in the past about ‘the pendulum of
history.’ Its leftward swing back toward
equilibrium and even further has already started as the 2022 mid-term elections
indicated. What will it take for this
leftward swing to even encompass places like Texas and Florida and some of the
States of the old Confederacy?
Unfortunately, bad things have to happen in greater
frequency to motivate enough Americans to make such changes. They include the inability for the existing
systems to deal with economic inequality, diseases such as Covid and its
cousins, hunger, loss of personal freedoms, and of course, gun violence.
Without such motivational tragedies, change will not come easily. But it will happen. It will not, however, be without pain and bloodshed, and there is no guarantee that it will ultimately be democratic. Check out the pendulum.
And of course, please forward this posting to anyone you think
might benefit from reading it. The place
to send them is:
https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
It has come to my attention that Google Blogspot, the
platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, has revised its forwarding
abilities. If you click on the envelope
with the arrow at the conclusion of every posting, (it looks like this: 
), you
will have the opportunity to list as many email addresses as you wish, along
with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the full blog
that you now are reading, with all of its bells and whistles. This is a great advance from the very basic
format Google Blogspot originally provided when they forwarded something for you. It might take a few minutes longer for your message to be transmitted but this method of forwarding offers the advantage of being able to forward
jackspotpourri to many addresses simultaneously. Try it.
JL
*
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