Friday, April 20, 2012
George Zimmerman's "apology"
George Zimmerman "apologized" today for killing Trayvon Martin. That's how the media treated the story. None seemed to notice the content of the apology: "I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not." What is he saying there? He's sorry he killed a 17-year old, but wouldn't be if Trayvon were 25? It's ok to kill someone in "self-defense" if you don't know if they're armed, and therefore are justified to assume that they are?
Interestingly, the last assumption would put Zimmerman right in line both with U.S. foreign policy and with U.S. military tactics. Because both use the assumption that if there is some finite, albeit minuscule, chance that some "enemy" will do "us" harm, then "we" are justified in killing them.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Merchant(s) of death
Viktor Bout, who the media calls the "Merchant of Death," just got 25 years for attempting to sell weapons to anti-government rebels in Colombia (actually these particular "rebels" were U.S. agents). Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Arab kings and sheiks who are its allies openly discuss arming anti-government rebels in Syria. Hardly the first such occurrence, of course, since the U.S. armed and funded anti-government rebels in Afghanistan and Nicaragua as well, not to mention Libya, where they not only armed and funded the rebels, they did their bombing for them.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Judicial Activism
Ruling that the Constitution allows strip searches even for the most minor offenses, Justice Kennedy "wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials," exposing the right-wing judicial activism of the Supreme Court. Not only are the courts in "no position" to do so, it is not their job. Their job is to decide if actions are Constitutional, not to decide on the usefulness or practicality of laws, or whether they keep us "safe" or not. That is the job of the other two branches of government. That the Court even "went there" illustrates that for these alleged "originalists" and other "defenders of the Constitution," the Constitution is actually the farthest thing from their minds.
