Eurogreenies

At first I thought this was a pretty good idea - by not lighting the Eiffel Tower, the French Governement would be saving scads of energy, and setting a fine example for the citizenry - all that extra juice could be used driving electric cars to round up the rioting youth in the suburbs. Upon reading the details, the whole thing is typical Euro BS - they are turning off the lights for 5 minutes, once. This will accomplish pretty much nothing.

My proposal: Turn the lights on for 15 minutes, every evening. Long enough for tourists to take pictures, and the Germans to fix their coordinates, then shut them off.

NYT on the SOTU

Since I do not own a bird cage, I usually have little use for the Times. They deserve credit for this neat little tool for searching through the text of President Bush's State of the Union addresses, since 2001. Looking up "deficit " was illuminating. In all fairness, they should make a tool like this available going back beyond Bush, but this is still fun.

Bernanke is on the ball

Watching his testimony on Capitol Hill as I type, fielding questions from Senator Sanders from Vermont, he is sharp, quick with facts and looking to fix what is broke: Control Federal entitlement spending, make sure taxation fits spending, and deal with issues now, not later.

A Strong Constitution

Sorry for the late start in '07. I had a cold. The car wouldn't start. My daughter threw up. It wasn't my fault.....

Sometimes I write in this blog, but more often I read them: Lileks, Autoblog, Opinion Journal, Ernie's, and more than a few others.

I also kill time reading the local paper, and scanning Fatwallet for interesting freebies... careful don't use these when you mean to use these!

Along the way I stumbled across a blog written by a nice fellow who maintains a web community for those interested in the plight of "work-at-home-dads" ... I'm interested, as I sort of work at home, though some might say I'm more of a "not-working-much-but still-at-home-dad". Since it's become impossible to blog about anything without politics being pulled into it, it was just a matter of time....some pretty good points made here about erosions of personal liberties, Presidents snooping around in mailboxes, etc, the whole Ben Franklin Liberty/Security thing.

My response to the question "Should the Federal Government eavesdrop without a warrant?" is in this forum, and follows:

My vote is no.

If an individual is going to really stand up for the Constitution, as it is written, then they also should read the whole thing, all of the amendments, and stand for them all - Cherry picking is not fair. Some to keep in mind :

Amendment 1 - No Federal laws respecting or prohibiting religion. Nothing here about decorations on the municipal building lawn, one way or the other.

Amendment 2 - "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." 'nuff said.

Amendment 4 - As Justin referenced, citizens are supposed to be secure in their persons, houses, etc., until a Warrant is produced - then all bets are off. In practice, this does protect individuals from having their privacy violated, quickly, but if a Judge sees fit, these rights vanish. I recall that one of our community members is a "Men's Rights" specialist - the 4th Amendment has been trampled for decades in family court.

Amendment 6 - 8 - Guidelines around speedy trials, excessive bail, etc, sound nice, but are subjective. Keep an eye on the Judges.

Amendment 14 - "All persons born...in the US...are citizens of the US and the state wherein they reside" This has received more attention as concern regarding border control is rising.

Amendment 16 - "The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived....." Wesley Snipes, are you paying attention?

Amendment 18/21 - Prohibition / repeal. The Federal Government reserves the right to change the rules - and change them back, if they want to. Any Amendment is fair game.

Clearly, there is much more to the Constitution than these highlights. Constitutional experts try their best to spin the language of the framers to suit their political and personal biases, but much of it seems pretty clear to me.
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