Standing for Repeal

El Gringo Viejo

    

The Anglican Curmudgeon's Prophetic Paragraph

This paragraph of the Anglican Curmudgeon's is one of the those whose writing appeared on the wall last night, and gave wonder to those gathered.

Daniel interprets at the Feast of Belshazzar
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

 It reads.......

The "Hkolov Cabal" is, of course, the Volokh Conspiracy ("Hkolov" = "Volokh" spelled backwards), a law blog (linked on the right) that has carried extensive debates pro and con regarding Obamacare, but mostly contra. "Lawrence Tribkin" is a take-off on Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, who predicted today that his former student, Chief Justice John Roberts, would vote to uphold the mandate.

     This brief post is to help, and to goad, the OROGs into  reading the full posting at Anglicancurmudgeon.com or two or three blog-entries below here.   It is noted that many have already read the entire entry and enjoyed it....perhaps wistfully...but enjoyed the intellectual gymnastics and the points made.

     El Gringo Viejo was briefly tempted just now to say...."Take that you flaming Bolsheviks, you think that we are all stupid, ignorant troglodytes....!"   But then I thought better of it and left such things unsaid.

El Gringo Viejo

El Zorro weighs in....

El Zorro opines and strokes his chin with contemplation.   He frequently sees things more clearly than El Gringo Viejo and must counsel him and a wide number of fellow members of the resistance to the evil Captain Pasquale.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTyPWvyAF8

He writes within this secret tranmission:


I have found the following at Read excerpts from the Supreme Court's majority opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act:

     "Because THE CHIEF JUSTICE finds the withholding—not the granting—of federal funds incompatible with the Spending Clause, Congress’ extension of Medicaid remains available to any State that affirms its willingness to participate. Even absent §1303’s command, the Court would have no warrant to invalidate the funding offered by the Medicaid expansion, and surely no basis to tear down the ACA in its entirety. When a court confronts an unconstitutional statute, its endeavor must be to conserve, not destroy, the legislation."

      What gives the SC the obligation to conserve legislation as unconstitutional as this?  Possibly a “knee jerk” reaction but this is in my opinion absolute bull c**p!

      The link to the Detroit Free Press (good compost) exposes the Supreme Court as shallow.  They seem to have concluded the mandate had to be a tax because it couldn’t be anything else.  Now let’s argue that it can’t be a tax on the basis that it cannot be a tax.  I do appreciate that they do want to preserve the integrity of the commerce clause but do not for the life of me understand how a tax to compel purchase of anything we do not want or need to buy is constitutional.  The question is, "Do I want or need to buy it.    If in the affirmative I willingly pay the tax, otherwise I don’t buy it and don’t pay the tax.  Is that too simple?  Maybe I am so beside myself I am not seeing something that should be obvious or maybe not.

     As far as Medicaid the SC states that the feds cannot withhold Medicare funding or expansion thereof only if the States agree to participate in the ACA.  What State is going to give up that funding or promise of expansion to opt out?  Methinks not many.

     The Supreme Court shirked it’s responsibility and dumped it into the lap of the States which the feds will control with withholding of other funds.  It’s time to secede from the union of the several states.  The Union needs Texas but Texas does not need the Union.

(Waiting to see what happens to Eric Holder.)

The Previous Post....the legacy of Chief Justice Earl Warren II

The Eagle Weeps Again

in prologue:

      We are not big fans of posting direct from another source, especially a fellow blogger.   This posting in our previous day's effort from the Anglican Curmudgeon, was very necessary, however for the small but growing OROG community.   The Reverend Curmudgeon (we know not if he is ordained...probably not), holds two degrees, both from Harvard.   One is in that mathematical science called music, the other is in that art of insanity and precedent called "The Law".

   Without wishing to appear to be a groupie...it must be taken as a very, very serious recommendation to all OROGs that each review the sporadic submissions on the Anglican Curmudgeon's blog.   Further, the other bloggers of interest to him, which he lists and links very conveniently,  represent a stunning, almost burdensome, challenge of studied people, intelligent people, somber, funny, sharp, light, heavy, sardonic, sarcastic, kind, wry, considerate, and sometimes thunderously judgemental.   It is reading that will put an OROG to sleep sometimes, not from boredom, but just the having to complete one more paragraph....and it is also reading that will keep an OROG up at night, counting broken canons and conventions of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and other religious and lawyerly institutions.

     Review the Anglican Curmudgeon's borrowed entry from yesterday, if you will.   And certainly go there, not here, to water your camels from that better oasis.   But see the sadness and humour of his words concerning this ghastly decision by the Supreme Court, to-day.  Observations he made BD (before decision).

 NOW TO THE POINT:

     The Anglican Curmudgeon's blog entry was placed on this page yesterday because El Gringo Viejo thought it would bear upon this disastrous opinion read to-day by the Supreme Court of the United States.    The swirling confusions around what is such a simple case, the diamond of 58 facets had long since become a common piece of gravel that was simply an assembly of haphazardly placed cracks.   It became the Golden Calf.   The Tower of Babel had already been built by this same Court when it ruled that Barak Obama could personally order the dissolution of the bonds held by institutions and individuals, as well as the cancelling of the shares of preferred stock in the companies General Motors and Chrysler;  not to mention the "ordering" of the closure of 600 auto dealerships....(national socialism, anyone?).

   When they ruled that a president of the United States could order the taking and/or dissolving of privately (and publicly) held financial instruments, and by the wave of a sceptre pass other real estate, ownership, and financial assets to a group he himself would name, this observer felt that the game was over.    It was certainly over in terms of seeking redress from the Supreme Court of the central government.

      Therefore, now all OROGs know why El Gringo Viejo was not looking forward to this decision.   He was not at all hopeful of hearing a verdict of outright unconstitutionality of the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative.    He feared that it would be a further jumble of the mumble mumble, and a further obfuscation of the whingle-dingle and the jibber-jabber....at the very best.   What we have received from Chief Justice Earl Warren II is a lot of both.   We have more mumble-whingle-jibber, and we have a central government elated with the new authority to impose upon America the thing people come here from the rest of the world to escape.

    John Roberts is a Trojan Horse of the highest order.  George Bush must either be sitting in a dark parlour of his relatively modest ranch house outside of Crawford, falling off the wagon and  drinking a gin and tonic and saying "Son-of-a-bottle-opener!  Why would he do something like that?"   or if one is of a darker belief, "Heh-heh, John and I really pulled one over on the rightwing crazy Republicans".

    With this decision the Republic is lost.   We have become an organic law country, doing what is "reasonable" at the moment for this person or that group.   We have ceased to be a country with any pretense of being a Republic ruled by a common law pertaining to all, regardless of creed, colour, social position, age, or other indicatour;   a common law attempting to cover fairly and equally issues affecting both Prince and Pauper.

ALL THAT IS LEFT TO US AT THIS POINT IS TO PLAY THE ROLE OF THE WHITE ARMY AS IT TRIED TO CONSTRUCT SOME DEFENSE AGAINST THE RED ARMY.   BUT THE ROMANOFFs ARE MURDERED AND DEAD.

THIS IS PETERSBURG IN APRIL OF 1865.   THE OUTCOME IS THE SAME.   THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT SAVED THE NATION FOR ALL TIMES IN 1865.  NOW THE SAME CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO SAVE THE NATION FOR  ALL TIMES AGAIN, IN 2012, BY SOLVING ALL THE PROBLEMS THAT THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT HAS CREATED BY REWARDING SLOTH AND TAXING INDUSTRIOUSNESS.

This is the Alamo with no San Jacinto.   The only chance to restore the Republic in any recognisable form is to overturn the Congress, elect another RINO as President of the Central Government, and overturn the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative by an act of Congress signed by the new President.    Even that will be fought tooth and nail, through the Courts by the newly emboldened Bolsheviks.   And, they will win.   They will win because the people will burn down the bakery when the bread runs out and they will drag all the Little Red Hens to the guillotine.

Strike the Flag, Let us all cross over the River.
El Gringo Viejo

    

A Must Read - For Jews, Protestants, Catholics, and Anglicans, and Agnostics, and Cowboys

Unfortunately, not by the Anglican Curmudgeon

The great Brahms once responded to an autograph request by penning a few measures of Johann Strauss' famous Blue Danube Waltz, and then writing: "Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms."

I feel the same way about this marvelous post at Noncuratlex.com, leading up to the Supreme Court's decisions this Thursday on Obamacare: "unfortunately, not by the Anglican Curmudgeon." I'm afraid that, just as you would have to read music to recognize the piece that Brahms was referring to, you will have to be an attorney and Supreme Court scholar to get many of the inside gags in this parody.

At the end, I will offer a few guideposts to orient lay readers to what follows.

Breaking News: Husbands and Wives of Nation’s Constitutional Law Professors Collectively File for Divorce

Posted on June 25, 2012

RENO, NEVADA (Press International), June 25, 2012: The husbands and wives of the nation’s estimated 543 married Constitutional Law professors collectively filed for divorce today in Nevada state court, alleging that their spouses’ complete obsession with the United States Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the Affordable Care Act had effectively destroyed their marriages.

“It all started pretty innocuously, with him writing a simple symposium piece on whether early 19th Century precedents could somehow justify the ACA’s individual mandate,” said Marla Thompson, wife of UC-Irvine law professor Farley Thompson. “But then Farley got obsessed–the ACA litigation just took over his life. He told me that we couldn’t eat broccoli for dinner because the vegetable represented a ‘tool’ in the hands of the ‘Lochnerians.’ He would come home and read nothing but ancient admiralty treatises and Whiskey Rebellion conscription notices. He wouldn’t even carpool to work with me, unless I conceded at the outset of each trip that the government could properly demand that I replace our Honda with a Chrysler.”

Spouses of law professors known to oppose the ACA’s mandate voiced similar complaints. “I wish I had never heard of the Hkolov Cabal,” said Lawrence Tribkin, husband of Notre Dame professor Candace Yanders, referring to the law blog that has served as a central forum for anti-ACA commentary. Yanders, formerly known for her well-regarded work on the Nineteenth Amendment, “guest-blogged” on that site during May 2012. There, she revealed what she learned from 720 continuous hours of listening to the March 2012 oral argument on the ACA, as placed on a continuous loop in her office. In her post, Yanders asserted that if one plays the full audio recording of the oral argument backwards, at one point what sounds like Chief Justice John Roberts’ voice can be heard to say either “the ACA is dead,” or perhaps,”thacadad.”

Yanders, who has petitioned to change her name to “Metta World Barnett,” subsequently was committed to a mental institution for treatment.

On the courthouse steps, other petitioners related dysfunctional behaviors by their spouses such as: insisting, for several months running, that they were “this close” to being invited by SCOTUSblog to offer guest commentary on the ACA; repeatedly manipulating dinnertime servings of mashed potatoes into busts of Paul Clement; passing off suppositions about Justice Kennedy’s likely vote on the ACA as “bedtime stories” to young offspring; and otherwise obsessing about absolutely every single aspect of the ACA litigation.

The worst part, many of the spouses said, was the waiting. “I thought that this would all be over by June 18.” said Ron Anders, the husband of Ohio State University’s Thomas Chavez. “But no decision from the Court. Then, maybe earlier today. Again, no decision from the Court. Meanwhile, all Tom does, twenty-four hours a day, is sit in front of his computer hitting ‘refresh’ on the Supreme Court’s website. He hasn’t showered in something like three weeks now. I wish that we could go back to a simpler time, when all we worried about was what movie to go see on Friday, and whether the Second Amendment applied to the states.”

* * * * *

Now, here are some endnotes for those who couldn't get all the references:

"Farley Thompson" is a made-up name, as are many in this post. It could refer to Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the U.C. Irvine Law School, who has written and spoken extensively about Obamacare, and has gone from predicting two years ago a victory for the mandate, to predicting just a week ago that it could go either way.

"Lochnerians" is a reference to the much-maligned 1905 case of Lochner v. New York, in which the Supreme Court struck down a New York statute regulating bakers' hours on the grounds that it interfered with individuals' freedom to contract for themselves. Those who argue that if Congress can force everyone to buy health insurance, it could also force everyone to eat broccoli to remain healthy are said to be "neo-Lochnerians."

The "Hkolov Cabal" is, of course, the Volokh Conspiracy ("Hkolov" = "Volokh" spelled backwards), a law blog (linked on the right) that has carried extensive debates pro and con regarding Obamacare, but mostly contra. "Lawrence Tribkin" is a take-off on Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, who predicted today that his former student, Chief Justice John Roberts, would vote to uphold the mandate.

"Candace Yanders", aka "Metta World Garnett", appears to be a complex amalgam. First, there is law professor Randy Barnett, who blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy, but who teaches at Georgetown (not Notre Dame), and who has published work on the Ninth (not Nineteenth) Amendment, as well as writing and speaking extensively in opposition to the universal mandate. (He was recognized as a target of this spoof by his co-bloggers in this post.)

Then there is law professor Richard W. Garnett, who does teach at Notre Dame Law School (in constitutional law and political science), and whose employer (Notre Dame) brought one of the lawsuits against Obamacare. He has recently written against the liberal threats made against the Supreme Court justices if the conservative majority (which would have to include Justice Kennedy) rules Obamacare unconstitutional.

"Metta World [Peace]" is, of course, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player formerly known as Ronald Artest, who was recently suspended from seven games by the NBA for elbowing another player.

"Thomas Chavez" appears to be another fictional character. His last name, coupled with the reference to the Second Amendment, definitely refers to the Venezuelan dictator, who recently banned all gun ownership in his country. But "Ohio State" has echoes of one of the key cases cited in support of the mandate: the 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government's power under the Commerce Clause could prohibit Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio farmer, from growing more wheat for use on his own farm (and fine him in the process).

For an earlier parody by Noncuratlex of the Obamacare oral arguments before the Supreme Court, follow this link. (The name Noncuratlex is a play on the Latin maxim "De minimis non curat lex", or "the law does not care about trifles".)

POSTED ON THE ANGLICAN CURMUDGEON....BY THE ANGLICAN CURMUDGEON and pirated by El Gringo Viejo to make sure all his charges could have this laugh among us.   The drinking light is lit.

El Zorro is deceived...

Gringo:

The story about Jake is very strange.  Indeed so if he is fictitious.

As you remember, I was a counselor at Camp Capers just a spit away from Dime Box (I can’t say if old or new).  My summers at Camp were 1962 and 1963 not more than two or three sessions each year.  We had a fellow come around from Dime Box from time to time to do handyman work.  He was about late 20s or early 30s, quiet, and country smart.  He liked the smell of skunk and handled rattlesnakes by hand.  I had conversations with him on Hill Country lore.  His name was Jake.  That is for real!

Z

The open-air Chapel at Camp Capers

Where El Zorro and Mountain Joe worked.
Truly a pleasant place.  Deer by the billions
and birds, and all that stuff.  Just nice.
It's Texas, after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

El Gringo Viejo responds:

     Of course it is remembered!   For OROGs who are not familiar, Camp Capers is set on the Guadalupe River in Central Texas some distance to the northwest of San Antonio.   It is in the German country, not far from Fredericksburg, Comfort, and Kerrville.   El Zorro had a posh job of it, working at the camp....it is quite nice....still.   Probably 40% of all Episcopal squirts in the Diocese of West Texas (actually what is now geographically South Texas) suffered pleasantly through 2 week, 3 week, or 4 weeks sessions there in the Summer.    It was also a place that had Acolytes' Conferences and retreats.

     During my time at Camp Capers (Summer of 1959), we were told that there was a monster man in the oak and cedar forests surrounding the camp.   Supposedly, he was a friend of Charles Lindbergh who had been involved with Lindbergh's flight from Brownsville to Mexico City in 1930.   When the friend left Brownsville to fly to El Paso, weather forced his plane down, and he was never found.  It was assumed he was dead.   But some time after his crash, strange and violent things began happening around the ranches and farmsteads near Waring and Comfort.   There were even tales of a monster....or a badly disfigured man...would wait for people to go out into the night to throw the day's garbage into the farm's burn pit.   He would wait for morsels that he might find....unless it struck his interest to brutally murder and cannibalise the hapless errandeur.

     He was known as "Mountain Joe", and we were not to venture out without flashlights and a "buddy"....perhaps it was so that Mountain Joe could kill and eat two of us instead of just one.   Susan Sizer observed during a conversation about Mountain Joe that it was good that our Camp Director for our session was (Suffragan) Bishop Dicus.  I guess that having a Bishop made the Camp safer or something....I'm really not clear.   At twelve years of age, nothing is too clear, except it was my great desire not to get into trouble and to get back for the rest of my Little League Baseball season. 

     El Zorro is distressed about Jake....but my Jake is fictitious....while his Jake is real....and yet El Zorro had dealt with a Jake from Dime Box....go figure.  I remember El Zorro being gone in those days, but he did not run back to McAllen and say "I met a guy named Jake and he liked skunk scent, and he's from Dime Box!"

     These are the peculiar congruities and phasic focus episodes that El Zorro and El Gringo Viejo have had to put up with since about 1958.   The position of Camp Counsellor was "very prestigious" for a summer job in those days, and only for responsible young people, considering the reality of the rattlesnakes, water moccasins, the heavy rain episodes (it was very possible to be isolated for many days, especially in June and July....huge heavy rains....very pronounced rainy season) and 10 - 14 year old squirts full of all kinds of complexes, anxieties, and pimples.   It provided room, board, and MONEY!!!!  Real paid money.  We complained about the food, I guess, but it was actually quite good.  When my parents came to get me in the 1959 episode,, we barely made it out before the little rural road was closed due to flooding from the heavy on-going rains.

     It was during these times that a fellow came from Runge (RUHN - gee), Texas to our Church in McAllen, on the border.   Runge is not far at all from both Old and New Dime Box.   Runge also has an Episcopal Church.   The fellow's name was Ken Chandler, and he had a younger sister named Judy.   Ken looked like Elvis Presley's younger brother....almost indentical....and his sister looked like his twin.  She was a very attractive girl who adapted well to McAllen and excelled in school.   They were very "country" but in a dignified and classy way.   Hard to explain, exactly.  Perhaps it's a Texas thing.

El Gringo Viejo