Bill of Rights Day - December 15

Bill of Rights Day - December 15

[originally published on my posterous.com pages, December 15 2011]

 

Let's celebrate Bill of Rights Day!

 

The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791.

These first ten amendments to the United States Constitution formally recognize our innate freedoms.  We have rights because we are human beings.  Rights are not things that are bestowed by a government.

Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Government can neither impose a state religion upon you nor punish you for exercising the religion of your choice. You may express your opinions, write and publish what you wish, gather peacefully with others, and formally ask government to correct injustices.

Amendment II - 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.

Individuals ("the people") have the right to own and use weapons without interference from the government.

Amendment III - No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The government cannot force you to house its agents.

Amendment IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

You may not be arrested or "detained" arbitrarily. No agency of government may inspect or seize your property or possessions without first obtaining a warrant. To obtain a warrant, they must show specific cause for the search or seizure and swear under oath that they are telling the truth about these reasons. Furthermore, the warrant itself must state specifically and in detail the place, things, or people it covers. Warrants that are too general or vague are not valid; searches or seizures that exceed the terms of the warrant are not valid.

Amendment V - No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

No one outside the military may be tried for a serious crime without first being indicted by a grand jury (of citizens). Once found not guilty, a person may not be tried again for the same deed. You can’t be forced to be a witness or provide evidence against yourself in a criminal case. You can’t be sent to prison or have your assets seized without due process. The government can’t take your property without paying market value for it.

Amendment VI - In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Trials cannot be unreasonably postponed or held in secret. In any criminal case against you, you have a right to public trial by a jury of unbiased citizens (thus ensuring that the state can’t use a "party-line" judge to railroad you). The trial must be held in the state or region where the crime was committed. You cannot be held without charges. You cannot be held on charges that are kept secret from you. You have a right to know who is making accusations against you and to confront those witnesses in court. You have the right to subpoena witnesses to testify in your favor and a right to the services of an attorney.

Amendment VII - In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

The right to trial by jury extends to civil, as well as criminal, cases. Once a jury has made its decision, no court can overturn or otherwise change that decision except via accepted legal processes (for instance, granting of a new trial when an appeals court determines that your rights were violated in the original proceeding).

Amendment VIII - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Bail, fines, and punishments must all fit the crime and punishments must not be designed for cruelty.

Amendment IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

You have more rights than are specifically listed in the Bill of Rights.

Amendment X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The U.S. federal government has only those specific powers granted to it by the Constitution. All other powers belong either to the states or to individuals.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, taken together, mean that the federal government has only the authority granted to it, while the people are presumed to have any right or power not specifically forbidden to them. The Bill of Rights as a whole is dedicated to describing certain key rights of the people that the government is categorically forbidden to remove, abridge, or infringe. The Bill of Rights clearly places the people in charge of their own lives, and the government within strict limits - the very opposite of the situation we have allowed to develop today.

[from  Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership ]

Not THAT kind of federalism

I am not one of those people who believe the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights limits ONLY the central (Federal) government. 

A Washington Examiner article on 20 July 2014 by Blake Seitz contains the phrase, "the constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things."

Oh geez please, Mr. Orthodox Libertarian!

California, for example, has already gone plenty overboard on the Wrongheaded Things, and the process of judicial Right-heading of these things seems injuriously slow.  What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the first amendment right to free speech are tolerated in California and elsewhere because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that the murder of unborn children has overriding benefits.  What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the second amendment right to keep and bear arms are tolerated (method-of-carry bans, ammo bans, handgun roster bans, rifle and shotgun bans by type...) because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that, well, guns are scary.  Or something.  I am sure that California would try to figure out a way around the third amendment to quarter troops (or surplus prison population?) in the homes of citizens if Sacramento politicians could find a way to make a buck out of it.  Same with all of the Bill of Rights.  

There are limits to the "constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things."  Limits that are and of right ought to be imposed by the United States upon the several states.  Yes I am in favor of strong central government within the limits of Madisonian (Constitutional) Federalism.  

What kind of conservative are you, anyway!  (I can hear straw Libertarians jeering like a line of stoats and weasels behind the fence.)  

I guess I'm just much closer to being a Theodore Roosevelt conservative than I am to being a Murray Rothbard pro-abort eugenist holocaust-denier anarcho-libertarian. 

Because America

And to the Republic for which it stands....

And forever in peace may it wave...

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Calls for tighter screening for mental illness make me nervous.

The legacy news media loves to focus its spotlights on instances of violence that tickle their socio-mythic Gräfenberg spot.  When what they term a "mass murder" has occurred, the bass beat booms out, the disco lights start to flash, and the spotlights converge, and the blood dancing begins.  That's sick, really.  Probably mentally ill. 

Immediate conjecture about the Motive of the perpetrator ensues.  My bet is that Motive is something the media types learned from cop shows on TV, and that most of them could not define Motive, nor come up with a story about what Motive has to do with the etiology of a crime event.  As I understand it, Motive is irrelevant as to the fact of guilt in a court of law.  If the facts are substantiated, you will be found guilty of vandalizing your neighbor's car with no regard to why you did it.  Yet Motive continues to be a sparkly bauble to the media magpies. 

Then, eventually, we hear those magpies accuse the perpetrator of insanity.  He's crazy.  Mentally ill.  Those who seek Safety Above All call for gun control, knife control, insanity control. 

"We need better ways to screen out those who pose a danger to society."

Oh, really?  Listen to what you're saying.  Do you really want to go there?

Calling a spoiled liberal-gone-wrong "mentally ill" is an affront to our millions of mentally ill who suffer and function, more or less, every day all around us, and who even in their darkest moments of depression or self-harm, would never cross the line into homicide.

Look at the history of the 20th Century.  Who were the greatest mass murderers?  Governments -- far and away, more than all the wars, hugely and in a wholesale manner that would be unimaginable and unbelievable were it not for the gut-wrenching  fact of the number of those culled by socialist regimes during that bloody century -- the seekers of the perfect society, destroyed their own. 

You're more likely to go on vacation somewhere and get killed by a falling coconut than walk around America and get killed by a kid with a grudge.  But you're far more likely to be killed by a powerful socialist state.  So I for one do not want to give my progressively more socialist government any more information about myself than necessary.  And my health records are not necessary, except in specific cases of competency at law, and similar situations.  And mental health records are health records.  No one's visit to a psychologist should be subject to a review by some Safety Bureau. 

If we value the life part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," then access to the means of defending life is a necessary condition of a free society.  A free society entails some risk.  Sorry, no promise that All is Safe Here.  Regardless of FDR's rhetoric, you don't have a right to feel safe.  You have a right to pursue your own happiness by making yourself safe as you care to -- without running over my right to pursuit of happiness. 

When the Safety Bureau, by whatever name it comes to be called, begins to screen out the rights of the mentally ill, it's only a tiny baby step to screening out the lives of the odd, the weak, the undesirable.  The perfect (and perfectly safe) society always ends with people being thrown into the ovens and the killing fields.

Don't go there. 

Is this where America used to be?

News report late 19 April 2013.  So they got the Boston Marathon bombers.

The fact that an average citizen found Suspect Number Two  after  the lock down order had been lifted plays into my theme today.  Call me cynical, but it's good that Suspect Number Two was found by Joe Homeowner and not a group of Law Enforcement Authority, else he'd have been Dornered.

When Law Enforcement Authority issues an "Order" to shelter in place, absent the conditions of actual public danger (a toxic cloud of chlorine gas, for example), isn't it our prerogative to look Law Enforcement Authority in the eye and respectfully say, "Fuck you!"?

Imagine.  Your town.  The wee hours of Friday morning.  Law Enforcement Authority says don't go to work.  Don't go to school.  Don't open your business.  Don't leave for that long weekend.  Don't get together with friends for a gaming party.  Don't!  Because all of you people moving around out there makes the job of Law Enforcement Authority more difficult.  What do you do? 

1.)  Go along.  Get used to it.  Call it the new normal.  Admit the terrorists won.  

2.)  Go along because of a presumption of good judgement on the part of Law Enforcement Authority, but then tell them after the fact that you are dissatisfied with their trampling of civil rights in their handling of the situation.  Okay, but then what about the  next  time they do it?  Go to option 1 above?  Stick with option 2?

3.)  Go about your business.  The world is a dangerous place on the best of days.  You might get hit by a garbage truck.  You might get blown up at the finish line of that little race you're running with twenty thousand or so of your closest friends.  Go about your business and keep your eyes open for danger and suspicious characters.  Go about your business in exactly the same way you would anyway, but with the added activity of watching for the bad guy. 

I guess I'm saying I'm for option 3.  Of course, Option 3 is likely to put me in danger of being falsely imprisoned (arrested) or Hernandezed.  Proceed with caution.

This is America.  Law Enforcement Authority take on the  office  -- that's why they call them "officer" -- of being the default mode for use of force to protect and serve the public good.  We are the public, so that would be our good they are supposed to protect.  Law Enforcement Authority is  deputed  by the public -- that's why some of them are called "deputy" -- to free us from having to join an ad hoc posse comitatus .  Nowadays (normally) our participation in the administration of justice is reserved to the jury power. 

This is America.  Pardon me for dropping the "F-Bomb" earlier, but I get worked up about Liberty. 

Things just seem to have gotten pretty upside-down in Boston.  

Kill It With Fire

"It can only be killed by fire while awake and by using the Rite of Exorcism if found in its grave during the day."
-- Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings That Haunt Us, Hunt Us, and Hunger for Us, Jonathon Maberry. Kensington Publishing Corp: New York, 2006. p 16-17, from the Wikipedia article on Vampire folklore by region (South Slavic belief).

At the end of World War II, Hitler's body was burned, pulverized, and flushed into the sewers.  Nazi symbols were destroyed and banned.  Men like Eisenhower forced German citizens to face the atrocities they had actively or passively allowed.  "Never again," they said.

They can never all be found and exorcised while asleep.  The evil is always active while seeming dormant.  We are the ones who sleep. 

But the evil continues.  Its undead hunger wakes. 

"I think that September 11 ought to be made a day of mourning everywhere in the West. After all, it will undoubtedly be a day of celebration all across the Dar-al-Islam. 

"We ought never to forget. Never, until the focus of this filthy plague is a hole in the ground, sowed with salt. Never, until Islam is one with the worship of Moloch and Baal. Never, until we can say, 'Mecca delenda est''."
    -- Gerard Vanderleun, What I Saw: Notes I made on September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights, re-posted at American Digest 11 September, 2012.

There is that evil that can only be killed by fire.

 "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the elfstone, Dunadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor.  Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again!  Will you aid me or thwart me?  Choose swiftly."
    -- Aragorn, in Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien.

Tolkien knew that isolationism did not work -- regretted the fact, but admitted it; sometimes the Men of the West have to travel to the gates of Mordor because that is the right thing to do.

North Korean "President" Kim Jong Un threatens nuclear mayhem -- and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tells reporters on 10 April 2013 that Korea is "skating very close to a dangerous line."  Hagel does not appear to be preparing use of a big Pacific Theater flame thrower to Kill It With Fire.  His ilk seem to be off on another Carteresque episode of Why-do-they-hate-us and Is-this-Kim-crazy?  Um, guys?  When the man has the loaded gun pointed at you?  Then it really doesn't matter why he wants you dead or whether he is sane.  Kill It With Fire.

Every time.

Find it.  Kill it.  Burn it.  Pulverize it.  Flush it.  Again.

Never letting a crisis go to waste

After a trip to Russia shortly after the revolution, during which he and others met for six hours with Stalin, American economist and engineer Stuart Chase reported saying, "'Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?"  The quote comes up in an interview in the January 2008 issue of  Reason  in which Nick Gillespie talks to Amity Shlaes, author of the history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man (Harper Collins 2007).

As a public service I offer this unguarded crystallization of policy, this clue to the mind of the old New Dealer, from one of his other books: 

1. A strong, centralized government.
2. An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
3. The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
4. The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
5. The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
6. The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
7. The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
8. The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
9. The control of foreign trade by the government.
10. The control of natural resources.
11. The control of energy sources.
12. The control of transportation.
13. The control of agricultural production.
14. The control of labor organizations.
15. The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline,community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
16. Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
17. Control of industry without ownership.
18. State control of communications and propaganda.

- - -

I leave the cleansing of America from the poison of such socialism as an exercise for the reader.

Saturday 23 March 2013 is "Earth Hour"

Environmentalists will be humming John Lennon's "Imagine" in the dark this Saturday 23 March 2013, in the joiner ritual started in 2007 by the World Wildlife Wrestling Federation or something. 

Starting at 8:30 PM wherever you happen to be, joiners are advised to turn off all their electric lights and appliances for one hour. 

"Awareness" is the goal, apparently. 

I really must remember to turn on all the lights and blare the stereo while running a chainsaw.  Or maybe just watch a video.  How about "Army of Darkness"?

People who know nothing about statistics can also lie

Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza played video games.  (Well doesn't everybody?)

But now it's a big deal.  Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on 19 March 2013 maintained at length that it is now known that "violent video games" produce violent school shooters, and that in fact the makers of the video games could / should be sued for damages by survivors of Sandy Hook Elementary victims -- because a reasonable person would conclude that playing a game leads to sociopathic behavior and homicide. 

"He didn’t snap that day, he wasn’t one of those guys who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore,” the man said. “He had been planning this thing forever. In the end, it was just a perfect storm: These guns, one of them an AR-15, in the hands of a violent, insane gamer. It was like porn to a rapist. They feed on it until they go out and say, enough of the video screen. Now I’m actually going to be a hunter."  The person who said this is identified as "[t]he man to whom I spoke, a tough career cop who did not wish to see his name in the newspaper" by writer Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News.

Well there you go.  

See, reporters and anonymous cops know how the mind works. Little boys who stare at curvy pictures become rapists; players of video games become mass murderers.  Except they don't.  What's the p-value on that "porn to rapist" factotum?  Probably nearly null.  But I bet it's greater than the p-value for gamer to murderer. 

The idea that artists -- authors (even blog authors), movie makers, and video game producers included -- are to be held liable for the insane acts of art consumers, is itself insane.  When legislators or regulators get an idea like that, it is dangerously insane.  Think of the chilling of creative activity.  Think of the Taliban-style enforcement. Thought Police.  They know better.  Like that anonymous cop quoted in the New York Daily News.  He knows better, just ask him. 

I don't for a moment believe the gamer-to-murderer hypothesis.  I'll tell you one thing I do believe.  History.  There is  a strong p-value for the transformation of Big Government to Genocidal Regime.  

Platelet Theory

About 40 years ago I had an accident with a power tool.  An immortal and infallible teenager working for a general contractor who did home remodels, I got into a shoving match with a bottom-of-the-line Skil brand 6" circular saw.  The dull blade bound up, kicked back, bounced off my torso, and back into my left hand.  This was going to require stitches.

As it turned out, no tendons or bones had been terribly damaged.  Many stitches and many years later, it's good as new, plus the added features of having a Wizard Grade lightning-shaped scar on the second knuckle of my left thumb, plus the ability to predict rain 36 hours in advance.  (Don't ask me how it works, but I can feel it.)

But here's what I want to focus on today:  on the way to the Emergency Clinic, the bleeding stopped.

In a battle between skin and steel, skin always loses.  Blood will flow.  But the instant the bleeding starts, it also starts to stop.  At least the body attempts to stop the loss of blood.  Clotting agents being present in sufficient number, and absent high pressure arterial bleeding, the bleeding will stop.

Here's the point.  One platelet cannot stop the bleeding.  But a whole bunch can.  At least they can do their microscopic damnedest to stop it.

What I'm really talking about is Gun Control.

What good can one armed citizen do against the might of a tyrannical government?  That question is used to pooh-pooh the idea that Joe Citizen's right to keep and bear arms was spelled out in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States because Joe just might have to do something to stop a Government Gone Wrong.  One armed citizen -- what good can that do?  Might as well turn all those guns in and trust to the benignity of the controlling power.  What good can one armed citizen do when the bloodletting starts?

What good can one platelet do when the bleeding starts?  

We The People act in unison to defend as well as originally to create these United States.  And yes the fact that the people are free to keep and bear firearms is important every day, whether called into action  or not.  Only by being extremely numerous and widely spread can the body politic be adequately protected by these platelets of freedom.

Restoring the Springfield 1903 Rifle

It's a freedom thing. 




Earlier this year I finished turning a "sporterized" Springfield '03 rifle back into something like its original military configuration.  The hardware pieces were accumulated over the course of many years.  Numrich had in their inventory a "new, unissued" stock and handguard, I finally worked up the courage to begin. 

The "new, unissued" M1903A1 stock looked like it had spent the last 60 years or so in a damp basement.  It had what looked like marks of roots on it, but the wood was sound.  With many hours of fitting and sanding, the action fit and functioned.  Half a dozen coats of boiled linseed oil (per military specification!) actually produced a better looking product than I had feared.



One of the peculiarities of the '03 and '03A1, of course, is the rear sight, shown here with the folding elevator down in the "battle sight" mode.



Designed by someone's feuding in-laws, this item's staggering complexity is surpassed only by its truly inhuman range of adjustment.



It is not your imagination -- the sight really does parallelogram toward the left -- to allow for the drift due to bullet spin.  There may be a Coreolus Effect adjustment, or one for the precession of the equinoxes, for all I know.

Another item that strikes the modern user as quaint is the magazine cut-off, shown here to the left of the rear receiver ring in the center position which allows removal of the bolt.



With the magazine cut-off in the "magazine off" position (lever swivels down toward the stock), the bolt cannot be drawn back far enough to clear the back of the top round in the magazine.  In this mode, the rifle functions as a single-shot rifle.  The rounds in the magazine, according to period manuals, are thus "held in reserve".  All five of them!



With the magazine cut-off in the "magazine on" position (lever swivels all the way up), the bolt comes back far enough to allow the top round to be pushed forward and into battery.  When the last round is expended, the rear of the magazine follower prevents the bolt from moving forward.  The magazine may then be charged with single rounds or a five-round stripper clip. 



Here's the muzzle end.  The thin front sight blade makes a fine target sight.  The picture includes the front sling swivel and bayonet lug band.  You may be able to see the "flaming bomb" ordnance proofmark behind the front sight.





The Springfield in military configuration has a forward barrel band that retains the front handguard retaining band, holds the "stacking swivel", and mounts the bayonet lugs.



The latch in the slot at the rear of the bayonet handle slot fits between the two sections of bayonet lug.  When attached, the hilt loop slips over the muzzle and the handle slot slips onto the lugs.



Here's the end that sends forth the hurt to the enemies of freedom: