Some days the news just gives me a headache...

It's getting more and more difficult to tell the real news from The Onion.

No, really. There was this story that ran on The Huffington Post today, reporting how two Republican legislators in North Carolina have filed a bill declaring each state "sovereign", so that states are perfectly within their rights to establish a religion within a state. The claim is that the First Amendment (I don't know how they feel about the other amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, or the amendments that have been ratified since the Bill of Rights was enacted) applies only to the federal government and so the feds can't stop a state from enacting and enforcing laws that are unconstitutional.

The text of the bill, as published by The Huffington Post, reads:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

I guess, basically, the two North Carolina lawmakers and the nine other Republicans that are also supporting the bill, are thumbing their noses at the federal government, and at the Supreme Court of the United States specifically, and saying "Neener, neener, neener. You're not the boss of us."

Sigh.

I guess these guys have never heard of a little case called Everson v. Board of Education (1947) 330 US 1, which applied the Establishment Clause - "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" - to the states. The Supreme Court did this via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I don't know how many of the state legislators supporting this bill are lawyers, but all of them who are need to get themselves back to law school and repeat their constitutional law class. Everson is not an obscure case. In effect, the Supreme Court ruled in that case that, regarding the establishment of religion, the First Amendment is the boss of the states.

Reading the article, my first thought was that either this was a day-late-dollar-short April Fool's Day prank, or that it was a reprint from The Onion. It appears to be real, however, and meant to counter a suit filed recently that seeks to stop county commissioners in one North Carolina county from opening their meetings with prayer.

When you think about it, the whole thing is just silly. The government can't declare an established religion (that's what the Establishment Clause means) for some very good reasons that are rooted in the origins and history of the United States. All this legislative hissy fit is accomplishing is making these gentlemen look petty and ignorant.

On the other hand, as the Huffington Post story points out, North Carolina also already has a law on the books that disqualifies atheists from holding public office. This law has been unenforcible since 1961, when the Supreme Court ruled in Torcaso v. Watkins 367 US 488 that neither the federal government or state governments can require any religious test for public office.

So, silly it may be, but the state of North Carolina has a history of insisting on flouting the law of the land.

In which I prove, apparently, that anything can become political...

It's another busy day today. Not in exactly the way I had planned, but busy nonetheless. I was supposed to go to an SCA Arts and Sciences Day, but my roommate had to go to a work meeting, and so here I am. It's fine, though. I really need to work on the book I'm writing, which I've been doing already.

However, while I was taking a break and bounding randomly around the Internet, it came to my attention that today is actor Alan Tudyk's birthday. This probably doesn't have much to do with anything except to Mr. Tudyk and his family and friends. However, mentioning this gives me the opportunity to celebrate yet another of my geekdoms and share my love for "Firefly", in which he played the role of Wash.

Now, I didn't come to Firefly until long after its short, but long lamented, run on the Fox network. Yay, DVDs. People kept telling my that I really needed to see the show, which can best be described as a space western. And I kept saying, "Yeah, right." And then I did sit down with the DVDs and watched the entire series in a couple of long sessions. It took me about an episode and a half to realize how brilliant the show is. And it is brilliant.

I know people have mixed reactions to the work of Joss Whedon, who created not only "Firefly", but the "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" television series (and wrote the film of the same name) and its spin-off, "Angel", as well as the series "Dollhouse" and the Internet musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog". He also wrote and directed the 2012 film, "The Avengers", and has done some other film work. I didn't like "Buffy" much, to be honest, and I didn't get to see enough of "Dollhouse" to really figure it out, which was why I wasn't particularly eager to watch "Firefly".

'm glad I finally did watch it. But I know that I'm not going to convince those of you who aren't Whedon fans, so please don't consider this one of those "you must watch "Firefly", if you watch it enough you'll fall in love with it" attempts. Rather, I'm just here to say that I love it, not that you have to. I've had enough people involved with fandoms that I don't care for do that to me that I'm not about to try to do that to anyone.

However, I ham going to show you this, which is a compilation of quotes from the show put up on YouTube by someone calling themselves jblottingink. Those of us who love the show have a particular fondness for quotes from the show, which do a good job of highlighting the personalities of the characters. I don't love all of the quotes contained in this clip, but most of the ones I do love are incorporated in it:



And then there is this case, which grew out of a quote from "Firefly", and one university police chief's knee-jerk reaction to that quote. Instead of me rehashing the facts of the case, which I remember from when it was going on, just watch this video report about it. I'll tell you up front that it is one-sided and sides with the professor who posted the quote that upset the police chief on his door, but I think that it also makes a good point:



And that point is, at least in my opinion, that knee-jerk reactions about anything, to the right or to the left, in terms of being too politically correct or not being politically-correct enough, are dangerous. In this specific instance, people have to look at the context of what someone says, not just that they said it. I think the video has explained very well what was meant by the quote, and it wasn't that the person who said it was going to kill the person they were talking to, which was how the police chief clearly took it. Mal Reynolds, as played by Nathan Fillion, the character the quote comes from, wasn't telling Dr. Tam, who was concerned about it, that he (Mal) wasn't going to sneak up on the doctor and kill him, but would give him a fair chance in a fair fight if (not when) he found the doctor to be a danger to the captain's ship and crew. If anything, the professor, by posting the quote, was telling his students that he would be fair with them, not that he would ambush them or treat them unfairly in any way. All the police chief saw, apparently, was the word "kill" in the quote and immediately saw a threat.

Sigh.

Maybe that's what's wrong with the world today - well, one of the things. There are too many people who can only see words in isolation and are not able to (or willing to?) analyze their context to find out what is really meant by all the words, in context. The Right does it. The Left does it. Even the Middle, or what's left of it in the United States today, probably does it on occasion. They all need to just stop it and realize that the world is complicated, words carry all kinds of meanings not just individually but in association with other words in the sentences and paragraphs surrounding it.

We have an unfortunate phrase in our culture here in the US. Often, when someone gets upset with someone else, they sort of automatically say, "I'm going to kill you" or "I'm going to kill them" when they don't really mean anything of the kind. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with that usage. I'm not generally a violent person, and as far as I can remember, I have never, ever wanted someone dead. I've never even wanted someone I'm upset with or have disagreed with hurt, physically or emotionally. Really. But my discomfort is bedside the point here. I am a reasonable person, and so know that of the people who use this phrase, rarely or constantly, roughly one in a million of them, if that, actually mean that they want to kill the person they name when they say that. That the police chief in the case outlined in the video I've linked didn't get that kind of worries me, and not just because of the free-speech implications of someone in authority having the ability to dictate what people can and can't post on their office doors. What I worry about more is the state of mind of someone who apparently assumes that anyone who uses the word "kill", or posts the word "kill" in a context that is clearly not threatening, poses the threat that they are ready, willing, and able to actually kill someone.

That's just a ludicrous leap to make, I think.

Well. I didn't mean to get all political here today. But when I found the video about that professor's case and saw how it tied in to "Firefly", I wanted to share it.

However. It's Saturday. Enjoy however much you have left of the day where you are in the world. It's lunch-time here, and I think I'm going to find something to eat.

Why am I not surprised?

Enter the conspiracy theorists.

In the wake of the shootings last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, there is a cottage industry growing up around a few conspiracy theorists who are claiming that there was no shooting there at all. No one died, they say, and all those grieving parents? Just what the theorists are calling "crisis actors", brought in by the government to serve their nefarious purposes.

One of the theorists is a professor at Florida Atlantic University. This gentleman, whom I choose not to name because I don't think he deserves it (you can Google "Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory" and find him, and the others; also, Salon seems to be doing a good job of reporting on this phenomenon online), claims he is only doing what a good academic should do, delving "more deeply into controversial public events," according to some reports. Another is a news reader at Cincinnati's Fox affiliate. He has taken to posting videos on YouTube advancing his views on the shootings, and has widened his theory, as have some others, to include the Aurora, Colorado, theater shootings and the Sikh Temple shootings in Wisconsin. Among his contentions: the Aurora shooter and the Sandy Hook shooter are connected through their fathers, both of whom he claims are scheduled to testify in a banking scandal.

The various theories take different tacks. Some contend that the shootings, at least in Sandy Hook, did not happen at all. Others allow that they might have happened, but that they were not the result of a lone shooter. Instead, they claim,, the shootings involved multiple gunmen and are the result of a government conspiracy. The bottom line of these theories, whether admitting that people were killed or not, is that the events were orchestrated in order to whip up sentiment for increased regulation of firearms.

The theories, from what I've read, get even wilder, but there are always wild conspiracy theories, stupid but of no real harm. It isn't even the first time that it has been proposed that what the public has been told happened never happened at all. We've all probably heard the theories that, on 9/11, no plane hit the Pentagon and no plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. There are even those who insist that John F. Kennedy didn't die on November 22, 1963 in Dallas.

I've written here before that I am fascinated by conspiracy theories and that they can be entertaining. I still believe that. But this current round of theorizing is not amusing, is not entertaining, and is in fact dangerous. It is being used for political ends, to try to convince the public that the government is out to get their guns. And although these theories are absurd on their face (how do you fake the deaths of twenty schoolchildren and six teachers, or of six people in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, or of twelve people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado? Really?) there are people who are going to believe it is true.

Now, I'm not saying that the people advancing these theories should be silenced. I'm as big a believer in the speech and press rights conferred in the First Amendment as Second Amendment absolutists are believers in that Amendment. And while it makes a certain amount of sense to ignore their delusions, or their calculated attempts to influence public opinion, I think that in the long run, it is necessary for the mainstream media to stand up and say, this is what these people are saying and, damn it, they're trying to put something over on you, and here's why.

Maybe I'm the one who is delusional, looking for a voice of sanity in all this. But sanity is what is needed right now.

Violent political rhetoric and the First Amendment

I keep thinking that I need to write something about what happened in Tuscon yesterday, but I'm not sure exactly what to say, except that this sort of thing has to stop.

I think it was interesting that during a news conference late yesterday afternoon, the Sheriff of the county Tuscon is in (sorry, I'm winging this and I don't know the name of the county and I want to get this out before I forget what I want to say, so I'm not going to stop to look it up) called out the "vitriolic rhetoric" of some radio and television broadcasters as contributing to a climate which can inflame those with "mental issues" (which is how he described the young man in custody for the shootings), that they are "more susceptible" to the influence of such things Nevada candidate Sharron Angle's statements about "Second Amendment solutions" and a map posted around the Internet that marked with firearm crosshairs the districts of congressmen and women that some on the right want to see defeated.

Well, this morning on some of the Sunday morning political talk shows, some were taking issue with the Sheriff's comments and suggetion that the nation needs to do some soul-searching about the character of some recent political rhetoric. There were complaints that since we don't know the shooting suspect's motivations, the comments by the Sheriff were premature and inappropriate. They also seemed to be trying to say that to complain about what some candidates and pundits have said that could be construed as promoting violence against some other candidates is tantamount to violating the First Amendment.

First of all, I don't think that what ends up being identified as the shooter's motive has anything to do with the question. Even if he was just a "lone nut" (something the Sheriff said yesterday afternoon that his department was not at all convinced was the case) whose motivation was not so much political as pathological, his obvious target was a member of Congress, one who had been threatened by those on the right before and who had been targeted on the list that accompanied that map with the crosshairs on it. That alone, regardless of motivation, makes the discussion of recent political rhetoric appropriate.

Second, but no less important, I beleive it is settled law that the First Amendment does not cover speech and actions that can be interpreted as incitements to riot or violence. You can't get up in front of a crowd and urge them to run amok. And you can't say things about using "Second Amendment remedies" with a wink and a nod. In saying that, you might well be speaking metaphorically (although sometimes, I don't think those who say those things are being metaphorical at all). The problem is, some of the people who are hearing you say it might believe you mean what you say literally, and take it upon themselves to act on it. What you say might not even be actionable, in terms of being charged as an accomplice in an act like the shootings in Tuscon. But my position is that those who say such things don't have entirely clean hands when such events do occur.

This does not mean that I'm advocating that there should not be discussions in which political differences are aired. Not at all. Those disucssions are fully covered by the First Amendment. You can't stop someone saying that they don't agree with another person or with a government policy. You can't stop someone speculating about events, even about dire conspiracies that are mostly in the minds of those who believe in them. They are protected by the First Amendment. But threatening harm to someone who does not agree with you, or who you think is doing something politically nefarious, is most assuredly not covered by the amendment, just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not covered by free speech guarantees.

I think the bottom line in all of this is that our society (and I mean that globally) needs to get over the idea of some people that just because they are angry about something, they have the right to go out and kill who they are angry at and maybe a bunch more people, just because they are angry. Because it isn't just political. We see it all the time these days, sadly, in workplace shootings, in school rampages, and in personal relationships gone bad.

It's madness (but not, in most cases, clinical insanity). And it has to stop.