A Grand Illusion

I just got blogads but I probably won’t be getting any real ads for a while. So I’ll run ads for free for about a month or so. Let me know if you want to advertise on A Grand Illusion.

After a few weeks in the wilderness, Andrew Sullivan has returned to the fray, galvanized by the Terri Schiavo case. Like George Will and William F. Buckley, he considers the legislative branch’s determination to circumvent the courts a heinous breach of conservative principles:

What this case comes down to is the right of a spouse to determine his or her incapacitated spouse’s fate in the absence of a living will. Civil marriage is indeed a unique and special legal bond. The social right believes this. But they only believe it when it suits them. If it can be used to marginalize and stigmatize gay couples, they are insistent. If it is an obstacle to their absolutist views on feeding tubes for human beings who have ceased to be able to feel, think or emote, then they discard it. Here’s a Tom DeLay quote that says it all:
“I don’t know what transpired between Terri and her husband. All I know is Terri is alive. … Unless she has specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature, I don’t care what her husband says.”
So much for the “sanctity of marriage.” With each passing month, the cynicism and power-lust of these people become clearer and clearer. Here’s a principle: the government should stay out of living rooms, bedrooms and marital bonds. That used to be called conservatism.

I’m trying to redesign the sight and give it something of a more original look–maybe some background color, and so on. Also, I want to create a sidebar on the left side of the screen. But I haven’t the time nor the knowledge to do all these things. Can anyone help me with it?

I can’t really pay you because I’m poor, but you would have my lifelong sycophancy.

From Crooksandliars.com:

Coulter: “Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam – was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?”

McKeown interrupts: “Canada didn’t send troops to Vietnam.”

Coulter: “I don’t think that’s right.”

McKeown: “Canada did not send troops to Vietnam.”

Coulter (looking desperate): “Indochina?”

McKeown: “Uh no. Canada …second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No.”

Coulter: “I think you’re wrong.”

McKeown: “No, took a pass on Vietnam.”

Coulter: “I think you’re wrong.”

McKeown: “No, Australia was there, not Canada.”

Coulter: “I think Canada sent troops.”

McKeown: “No.”

Coulter: “Well. I’ll get back to you on that.”

I think if she ditched her whole uberbitch disposition and ate more sweet potato pie, she would make a great faghag despite having a female hard-on for Hannity.

Anyone with even a passing interest in jurisprudence should read Margaret Talbot’s excellent New Yorker profile of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the most conservative, most outspoken, and most intelligent of the justices. Scalia classifies himself as an “originalist” — one who not believes that judges should adhere to the precise words of the Constitution, but also, according to Talbot, “believes that the meaning of those words was locked into place at the time they were written.” Talbot posits that Scalia’s literalist interpretation of the Constitution is a product of the New Criticism which dominated English and American critical theory through the end of the 1950’s (Scalia’s father Eugene earned a Ph.D. at Columbia and worked as a language professor and translator at Brooklyn College) — a critical approach whose efficacy was whittled, like originalism itself, by the increasing influence minority and gender studies. Talbot questions how Scalia might have voted in the Brown vs Board of Education decision, in which the Court’s opinion shaped judicial policy for the next 40 years (for the record, Scalia says that he “would have voted with the majority in Brown”). More importantly, Talbot wonders whether living judges using the Framers’ original intention was even the Framers’ intention:

The Constitution, it should be noted, does not stipulate th rules for its interpretation — and the idea that the framers would have welcomed scrutiny of its provisions in the light of changed circumstances is at least as plausible as the notion that the framers intended to freeze, for all time, the meaning of due process or cruel and unusual punishment [two more Court decisions from which Scalia has dissented]

Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.

Todd Hayne’s Bob Dylan biopic is going forth. Considered for the role of Dylan: Beyonce, Venus Williams, and Oprah Winfrey.

Not a joke.

Here’s the list of House democrats who voted for the Schiavo bill.

Baca, Baird, Barrow, Bean, Berry, Bishop (GA), BorenBrady (PA), Chandler, Costello, Cramer, Cuellar, Cummings, Davis (TN), Edwards, Engel, Etheridge, Fattah, Ford, Green, Al, Herseth, Higgins, Holden, Jackson (IL), Kanjorski, Kildee, Langevin, Lipinski, Lynch, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, McNulty, Meek (FL), Melancon, Michaud, Mollohan, Oberstar, Pomeroy, Ross, Scott (GA), Serrano, Skelton, Snyder, Stupak, Tanner, Wynn

Special mention: notice Florida’s own Kendrick Meek on the list.

The Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen also voted for it.

But this whole debate really underscores why I gave up on the Republican party. One of the fundmental pillars of the Republican “ideology” is state’s rights. It was why they, supposedly, opposed states being forced to recognize same-sex marriages (that rationale, of course, was deep-sixed by Dubya’s push to pass a constitutional ban). But here they go and once again expose a good heap of hypocrisy by forcing a federal effort to reverse a decision already made (several times) by a state court.

The question everyone is asking (and was asked several times before this morning’s vote) is why make this mess over one person? Well, that’s pretty simple to answer: Mid-term elections!

If they can appeal to just a few more right-to-lifers and Southern Baptists and gain just a bit more leverage in the legislative branch, it’s not asking too much to disregard the core values of their party. Because, afterall, values are very important to the Republican party and their voters….

Did anyone else find it painful watching the party with the most blood on its hands in the United States defend a “Culture of Life”?

It’s a good thing Schiavo is brain dead. At least she’s not cognizant of the circus they’ve built around her.

Feministing has a post on the Equal Rights Amendment on which I commented that the provisions of ERA–especially the one being proposed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (see text below)–are already covered by the 14th amendment.

Text of the Equal Rights Constitutional Amendment

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of
ratification

I was laughed off. This is one of the comments: “Ha ha ha ha ha. Good one. What are you, a first year law student?” Yah, I wish.

My point is that the 14th Amendment, which is probably my favorite amendment, does cover gender equality. Here’s the text:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the
provisions of this article.

(”No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” If that’s not poetry, I don’t know what is.)

Okay, I know the amendment has a clause advocating gender inequality–though not explicitly–but that was mended by the 19th Amendment. I also happen to think you need not look further for constitutional support of gay marriage.

So why is the ERA necessary? Thoughts?

So, Blake’s not guilty. As one who has seen his old interviews on the Tom Snyder show…. um…. well, I won’t be saying anything disparaging about the fella! Matter of fact, I’ll venture to say he is, above all, not a SPAZZ (like the Pope or that Dom bloke)!

From CNN:

BLAKE: I’m going to get a job. I’m broke. Right now, I couldn’t buy spats for a hummingbird. What did Johnny Carson say? You’re innocent until proven broke. Well, by the time Gerry and these troops got here, it was the bottom of the barrel. I was a rich man. I’m broke now. I got to go to work.

But before that, I’m going to go out and do a little cowboying. Do you know what that is? No, you don’t know what that is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

BLAKE: Cowboying is when you get in a motor home or a van or something like that, and you just let the air blow in your hair, and you wind up in some little bar in Arizona someplace, and you shoot one-handed nine ball with some 90-year-old Portuguese woman that beats the hell out of you.

And the next day, you wind up in a park someplace playing chess with somebody. You go see a high school play where they’re doing “West Side Story.” And you just roam around and get some revitalization…

He seems like a swell ol’ geezer, in his own right. He should be in a David Lynch movie….

Oh, wait! He already was in a David Lynch movie!

John Gibson’s amusing rant on marriage.

“…Marriage is something men and women do. They don’t always do it well — you only have to look at the divorce rate, or the number of pregnant women killed by their spouse to realize that.”

Ouch! Take that, Scott! Other than that, I wonder what the number of “pregnant women killed by their spouse” IS.

Another brilliant quote:
“The first knuckle-dragging people recognized they didn’t want to raise their kids like the monkeys, so they set up another system.”

Is that EVOLUTION you’re hinting at, Gibson? Tsk, tsk. What are you, a Godless liberal?

Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s assistant secretary of defense, is his choice to lead the World Bank. I want to laugh. Let me be clear: if he’d chosen Bill Clinton or, God help us, Jimmy Carter it would still have been laughable. An acquaintance who used to work for the federal government once told me that the World Bank is the most corrupt organization in the world, responsible for saddling the Third World with debts it knows those countries can never repay.

With Wolfie — as hawkish as they come — helming the Bank, I suspect that the administration’s predilection for quasi-imperalist gestures will keep the developing world from ever clawing out of the economic mire.

All we are saying is burn your teevee! From TV Squad:

Arrested Development is a non-traditional, genre-bending, richly layered and intellectually complex character-based comedy. Plus, there’s a character named Job, but they spell it GOB – and that’s just blasphemous. For all of these reasons and many more, we think Arrested Development must be cancelled. Shows like this make us work hard, and that makes our brains hurt, and we don’t like that. We don’t need Arrested Development, and we don’t want it.

Who has time to watch television when there’s so much internet porn out there?

Me on Public Image Ltd. Funny how now they seem essential.

Michaelangelo Matos, music editor at Seattle Weekly, wrote a book for Continuum about Prince’s Sign ‘O’ The Times, the Purple One’s best album and certainly the best double album in rock. Matos, who’s a contemporary, is probably my generation’s foremost Princeling. As for the book: no startling insights, just lots of fresh responses to a record that never stops astounding. Matos keeps up with Sign ‘O’ the Times‘ protean shifts; when he analyzes the proto-Timbaland track “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker (the most influential song of the last 20 years?), he manages to pin the song down, wriggling:

What’s surprising about “Dorothy Parker”…is that its drum part sounds through-composed rather than programmed; it keeps twisting around, upending and then righting itself, keeping a constant groove without subordinating itselt to a monolithic beat the way “When Doves Cry” or “1999″ or “It” do. The rest of the track mutates in the same way; the oddly detuned-sounding spider-web clavinet patterns and fluid bassline work in tandem with the drums. The groove twists and turns without ever seeming to resolve itself. When the radio’s on and Joni Mitchell sings “Help me I think I’m falling” and the phone rings and it couldn’t be as cute as you, the beat’s stop-starts shadow the lyric perfectly.